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CENTRAL AMERICA |
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Micheletti to Step Down Briefly for Honduran
Elections
TEGUCIGALPA – The leader of the Honduran de
facto government installed by the June 28
coup, Roberto Micheletti, said he will step
down for a week on either side of the Nov.
29 election to choose a successor to ousted
President Mel Zelaya.
“My intention, with this measure, is that
the attention of all Hondurans be
concentrated on the electoral process and
not on the political crisis,” Micheletti
said Thursday night in a nationally
broadcast address.
After explaining the rationale for the Nov.
25-Dec. 2 leave of absence, he vowed to
“immediately” return to his post in the
event of a “general disruption or order and
tranquility.”
Honduran opponents of the coup, backed by
most of the international community, say a
free and fair vote is impossible given the
repression imposed by the de facto regime,
which is blamed for at least a dozen deaths
and numerous other human rights abuses.
Zelaya dismissed Micheletti’s plan to
temporarily step down as a machination “to
deceive fools.”
“This latest maneuver of Micheletti is a
veneer, which he clearly confesses with his
position. He is a stain on democracy, that’s
why he is wanting to leave for a week, we
ask that he leaves forever,” Zelaya told
Radio Globo from the Brazilian Embassy in
Tegucigalpa, where has been holed up since
slipping back into the country Sept. 21.
Hours before Micheletti’s announcement,
Zelaya urged Hondurans to continue peaceful
resistance to the coup and suggested
delaying the elections at least until after
Dec. 2, when Congress is to begin debate on
reinstating the ousted president, whose
terms ends in late January.
The elections “have no legality, do not
enjoy international support, especially from
the OAS (Organization of American States)
and the United Nations,” Zelaya said earlier
Thursday in a statement.
“All countries have officially said they do
not recognize this electoral process, except
the United States of America, which speaks
with ambiguity,” Zelaya said.
The U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state
for Western Hemisphere Affairs said
Wednesday at the end of a visit to Honduras
that Washington supports both the
presidential election and the now-fractured
accord meant to resolve the crisis sparked
by the coup.
“Nobody has the right to take from the
Honduran people the right to vote, to elect
their leaders,” Craig Kelly said,
emphasizing that the United States remained
committed “to working to implement the
accord.”
During his two-day visit, Kelly met
separately with Zelaya and Micheletti to
review implementation of the pact signed
Oct. 30 by representatives of the two men.
Zelaya pronounced the pact dead early this
month after Micheletti pressed ahead with
formation of national unity government
before Congress addressed the matter of
restoring the legitimate president.
Critics say the de facto regime was
emboldened when Kelly’s then-superior,
Thomas Shannon, said early this month that
Washington would recognize the election
winner regardless of whether Zelaya was
reinstated.
OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza
has ruled out sending OAS election observers
to Honduras under the current circumstances.
And most members of the OAS and the Rio
Group, a hemispheric club that excludes the
United States and Canada, say they won’t
recognize the elections as valid without
Zelaya’s reinstatement beforehand.
Micheletti contends Zelaya’s ouster was not
a coup, insisting that the troops who
dragged him out of the presidential palace
and put him on a plane to Costa Rica were
simply enforcing a Supreme Court ban on the
president’s planned non-binding plebiscite
on the idea of revising the constitution.
But while coup leaders and their apologists
accuse Zelaya of seeking to extend his stay
in office, any potential constitutional
change to allow presidential re-election
would not have taken place until well after
the incumbent stepped down. EFE |
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