Good News US to Cut Off Aid to Honduran Coup Makers

This is very belated, but appears that the Obama Administration is doing the right thing to support democracy in Latin America. Needless to say, it is pissing off some elements of the GOP who only want democracy, when they like the outcome.
***********
U.S. Formally Cuts Off Aid to Honduras Due to Coup

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 3, 2009; 3:35 PM

The U.S. government on Thursday formally cut off millions of dollars in assistance to Honduras because of the coup that occurred two months ago, and threatened to withhold recognition of the new president who emerges from elections scheduled in November.

The announcement came as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya. The decisions represented a hardening of the U.S. position and reflected the administration's annoyance at Honduras's de facto government for rejecting a proposed negotiated solution to the crisis.

The U.S. government joined the rest of the hemisphere in condemning Zelaya's ouster in June and supporting a deal proposed by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias that would restore Zelaya with limited powers.

But Honduras's de facto government, led by Roberto Micheletti, has rejected any return for Zelaya. The Micheletti government insists the removal of the president was legal because he had scheduled a public referendum on rewriting the constitution, in defiance of an order by the Supreme Court. Many Hondurans feared that Zelaya, an ally of left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, was trying to engineer a second consecutive term despite a one-term constitutional limit.

The statement by State Department spokesman Ian Kelly did not specify the value of the aid being terminated, calling it a "broad range of assistance. " About $35 million in aid had been temporarily suspended after the coup.

The statement also said the U.S. government was in the process of revoking visas of members and supporters of the de facto regime. It had previously canceled four officials' visas and stopped issuing new tourist and business visas to Hondurans.
ad_icon

The de facto Honduran government has hoped that the political crisis would end with the previously scheduled presidential elections in November. But for the first time, the U.S. government said it might not recognize the winner of those elections. A similar position has been taken by Mexico, Brazil and other Latin American countries.

"At this moment, we would not be able to support the outcome of the scheduled elections. A positive conclusion of the Arias process would provide a sound basis for legitimate elections to proceed," Kelly said.

That decision was expected to further anger Republicans in the U.S. Congress who have already been critical of U.S. policy toward Honduras.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/03/AR2009090302624.html

 

The coup makers represent the small number of Honduran families that keep all the income for themselves, leaving the rest in grinding poverty and without education. Honduras needs to change this so that the majority of the people can advance.

The aid can be turned back on once the coup makers are beaten back.

From a purely US point of view it is good for our image that we be seen occasionally as fostering the democratic goals of people around the world, rather than using the term "demcoracy" to advance reactionary agendas.

 

This is the line by the small elite. It pissed them off that Zelaya betrayed his party and class background. It was sort of like the outrage when Franklin Roosevelt betrayed his class and helped a lot more Americans join the security of the middle class.

 

I think you missed the point on Roosevelt. The US Constitution has been amended to the good. The Honduran constitution was put in to keep the small elite unchallenged. It is legal to take steps to change it and also very necessary.

 

More good news. Zelaya is back in Honduras. Below is an excellent article by a well known Latin American scholar which analyzes the consequences and how the coup makers have probably lost their cause.
****************

Zelaya's Midnight Ride
by Greg Grandin

In a bold move, the democratically elected president of Honduras Manuel Zelaya - ousted in a military coup in June - has returned to Tegucigalpa, entering the country in secret, traveling overland with a small group of advisers. He is currently in the Brazilian embassy, and crowds of supporters are gathering around the building to demand the restoration of Honduran democracy. That Zelaya traveled at night, crossing "rivers and mountains," as he put it, all the while managing to evade Honduran intelligence - largely funded, trained, and provisioned by the US military - is quite a feat - and also a hint that Zelaya still commands the loyalty of some sectors of the military and police.

It's unclear what will happen next. Roberto Micheletti, the president installed by the coup, has imposed a fifteen-hour curfew -- which will undoubtedly be extended -- reminding reporters that there is a standing order for Zelaya's arrest. Yet Zelaya's return is sure to galvanize those opposed to the coup, whose protests over the last three months have prevented Micheletti from consolidating power.

It has become increasingly clear that Micheletti's strategy of trying to hold out until scheduled presidential elections in late November was not working, with a movement within Honduras for a boycott of the vote gaining steam and most Latin American nations saying they would not recognize its results. Since the prospect of holding elections with Zelaya in prison - or perhaps still rallying supporters from his Brazilian refuge -- would only underscore the illegitimacy of the coup government, it seems that it will have no choice but to negotiate directly with Zelaya his return to power.

That Zelaya chose the Brazilian embassy as where to make his stand undoubtedly with the approval of the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva despite denials, is also a strategic masterstroke, for it shifts the away from Venezuela and Hugo Chavez as the Honduran plotters have tried to frame the crisis and toward Lula, everyone's favorite democratic leftist. Brazil's Foreign Minister, Celso Amorim, responded to the coup government's demand that Brazil turn Zelaya over by saying that any threat to the legitimate president or the embassy would be a grave breach of international law.

Those backing the coup perhaps sense that their game is up; a communiqué issued by the National Front Against the Coup reports that some businessmen and military leaders who supported Zelaya's overthrow are leaving the country. Meanwhile, back in the US, the Washington Post has decided to actually forgo reporting on the story, instead allowing Michelletti space on its op-ed page -- in a piece probably written by one of the coup's US flaks, like Otto Reich or Lanny Davis -- to make one last pitch for the November election, which he promises will be a "constitutional expression of self-determination and a demonstration of national sovereignty." Reich or Davis -- ur, I mean Micheletti -- forgot to mention that the coup government, in effort to ensure high turnout, has threatened to throw in jail anyone who doesn't vote in that election, and has revoked the citizenship of the environmentalist Catholic priest José Andrés Tamayo, born in El Salvador but living in Honduras since 1983, for calling for a boycott of those elections.

If this is a moment of truth for Honduras, it is also one for Washington. Since his ouster, Washington has sent mixed messages, refusing to condemn the coup with the same force as the Organization of American States and the European Union, and refusing to apply as much pressure as it could - freezing the foreign bank accounts, for instance, of those behind the overthrow - that could force the restoration of democracy.

But Zelaya's dramatic return takes place on the eve of this Wednesday's meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, where he had been scheduled to speak as Honduras' legitimate leader. That the UN will probably issue a statement demanding his restoration on the eve of US president Barack Obama's inaugural address to that body will place pressure on the US to take a clear stand.

Zelaya's return, says Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, "will finally force the US to "choose sides." With the Organization of American States convening an emergency meeting in which it will undoubtedly voice strong support for Zelaya, it is, as Weisbrot notes, "pretty clear that the rest of the world will stand with Zelaya, for his return to the presidency, and for the restoration of democracy in Honduras."

And sure enough, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, acknowledging that Zelaya's gambit has indeed changed the terms of the debate, issued a statement saying that the time was "opportune" to restore Zelaya to the presidency. Better late than never.

Greg Grandin is the author of Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (Metropolitan) and Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City. He can be reached at grandin@nyu.edu.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/22-3

 

This is an example of making a small seemingly logical small point that misses the forest for the trees. In a country like Honduras where the elite controls both parties and the Constituion was put in to insure their control, having a genuinely popular populist leader who wins reelection does challenge the eltie's domination despite the empty logic concerning term limits.

 

It is really an amazing situation now that Zelaya has returned and is holed up in the Brazilian embassy. The Coup leaders have beaten hundreds of the supportes or Zelaya that were gathered in front of the consulate. Some have been reported killed. Reports that over 1500 have been arrested for peaceful protests.

I wonder if the conservatives on the bbs still see the coup leaders as such democrats and good guys.