 |
HONDURAS: Analysts Call Coup a "Return to the Past"
By Thelma Mejía
TEGUCIGALPA (IPS) - Sunday’s coup d’etat shows that
in Honduras, democracy - which was restored in 1982
- is still hemmed in by the military’s alliance with
the economic and political powers-that-be, according
to local analysts.
The entire region immediately condemned the
overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya, who was
dragged out of bed by the military and flown on an
air force plane to Costa Rica still in his pajamas.
"The era of instability and military regimes of the
1970s and 1980s is apparently not a thing of the
past as we had thought, since it was a
civic-military alliance that was responsible for
this setback to democracy - the ouster of President
Zelaya," analyst Rolando Sierra, a historian at the
public National Autonomous University of Honduras,
told IPS.
The history of military coups in this Central
American country has been marked by collusion with
political sectors linked to the traditional Liberal
and National parties.
Zelaya took office in 2006 as the Liberal Party
candidate. But shortly afterwards he alienated his
fellow party members when he took a turn to the
left. His support base now consists of leftists and
social and human rights organisations.
The coup was carried out in the early hours of
Sunday morning, the day a non-binding referendum was
to be held to ask Hondurans whether or not to hold a
formal vote, parallel to the November general
elections, on creating a constituent assembly to
rewrite the constitution.
Congress, nearly all of whose members are opposed to
Zelaya, declared that the informal vote planned for
Sunday ran counter to the constitution, which
forbids plebiscites and referendums in an election
year. The courts, the electoral authority, the
attorney general’s office and the office of the
inspector-general also declared the referendum
unconstitutional.
The legislators claimed that Zelaya’s aim was to
reform the constitution to allow presidents to run
for a second term.
After Zelaya was forced into exile, the legislature
replaced him with Roberto Micheletti, the head of
Congress, who under the constitution is next in line
to act as president should the office become vacant.
Micheletti belongs to the Liberal Party, but is
opposed to the ousted president.
"Apparently we have been unable to reach a more
evolved stage of democracy. The coup d’etat
demonstrates that we are still a fragile democracy,
and what we are seeing is a return to the past,"
said Sierra.
Sociologist Mirna Flores commented to IPS that "a
political conflict can’t be resolved by means of
weapons: those were the ‘solutions’ provided by
authoritarianism."
"What we are observing is a crisis of the political
party system, where the leaders of the political
forces are refusing to accept even the tiniest of
openings to an expansion of democratic
participation," she said.
Honduras today is seen as "the anti-democracy in the
region, because what has happened is a throwback to
the history of military coups in Latin America,"
said Flores.
The coup was repudiated by all of the governments in
the Americas, including the administration of Barack
Obama in the U.S., and by the Organisation of
American States (OAS).
At a special meeting Sunday, the OAS Permanent
Council adopted a resolution "vehemently" condemning
the coup d’etat and demanding the "immediate, safe
and unconditional return of President José Manuel
Zelaya Rosales to his constitutional functions."
The Permanent Council also called a special session
of the OAS General Assembly, to be held at the
organisation’s headquarters in Washington, DC on
Tuesday.
Leaders of the countries belonging to the Central
American Integration System (SICA), along with
Insulza and representatives of the Mexican
government, were discussing the situation Monday in
Nicaragua.
The presidents of the member nations of the
Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) bloc
also condemned the coup at an emergency meeting in
Nicaragua Monday, in which Zelaya took part.
Honduras' eight ALBA partners - Antigua and Barbuda,
Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Saint
Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela - recalled
their ambassadors from Tegucigalpa until Zelaya is
reinstated.
The streets of the Honduran capital were deserted
Monday, after protests held by hundreds of Zelaya
supporters Sunday, especially members of the
left-wing Democratic Unification (UD) party, who
burned tires and held a vigil outside of the
presidential palace.
On Sunday, the army declared a curfew and cut off
electricity, while planes, tanks and helicopters
patrolled the city.
Bertha Oliva of the Committee of Families of the
Detained-Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) said
arrest warrants have been issued for at least 14
activists.
"People have been illegally detained, including
Zelaya administration officials. And with respect to
freedom of expression, the public TV station Canal 8
was closed, and the rest of the media, especially
on-line outlets, remain subject to censorship,"
Oliva told IPS.
Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas was expelled to
Mexico on Sunday night after being detained and held
for several hours at an air force base, said
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, speaking from
Managua, where Rodas ended up.
Gladys Lanza, the head of the "Visitación Padilla"
Women’s Peace Movement, told IPS that her group
decried "any plot" by the country’s elites "to break
with the state of law that the people have built up
over so many years."
The minister of the presidency, Enrique Flores Lanza,
one of the eight cabinet ministers who are in
hiding, called for the creation of a peaceful civic
movement to demand Zelaya’s return.
The analysts who spoke to IPS said that while the
military’s role in the crisis was perhaps not
surprising, the participation of the political
parties was. "What kind of democratic parties are we
talking about, if they took part in a coup? It looks
like we are lacking democratic socio-political
actors, which is disturbing for society and the
country at large," said Sierra.
He said it looked like the democratic institutional
framework built up over the last 27 years had
collapsed.
In the mid-1990s, Honduras created the National
Forum for Convergence to open up a political
dialogue among a broad range of social, political
and economic sectors. But because of a standoff
between the executive and legislative branches, "it
never worked, it never took a stance on anything,
and it simply became invisible," he criticised.
Lawmaker Toribio Aguilera of the National Innovation
and Unity – Social Democracy Party (PINU-SD) told
IPS that "something regrettable has happened, which
was painful for democracy, but necessary.
"The former president left no alternative, because
all possible solutions were proposed and discussed,
but he continued to break the law, and no one is
above the law or the constitution," said the
legislator.
Congress decided Sunday that Micheletti will be
acting president for the last six months of Zelaya’s
term, and that the November elections will go ahead
as planned.
Zelaya, in the meantime, strongly denied that he had
stepped down for "health reasons," as stated in a
letter he supposedly wrote, which was read out in
Congress Sunday.
The observers consulted by IPS predicted continued
uncertainty and instability, because the new
government appointed by Congress would not only have
to achieve internal consolidation and bring about
real changes, but would also have to withstand the
pressure from the international community. |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
