Honduran lawmakers say 'no' to restoring Zelaya, 111-14

[Bacchus39]

I recall Zelaya was the one who thought Congress should decide. 111-14 is pretty decisive. I wonder which country will grant Zelaya asylum.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091203/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_honduras_coup



Honduran lawmakers say 'no' to restoring Zelaya


TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – Honduras' Congress ended hopes of reversing a coup that has isolated one of the poorest countries in the Americas, voting against reinstating ousted President Manuel Zelaya despite intense international pressure to do so.

The vote Wednesday was part of a U.S.-brokered deal to end Honduras' crisis that left it up to Congress to decide if Zelaya should be restored to office for the final two months of his term — and lawmakers voted against the idea by a resounding 111-14 margin.

Zelaya, who listened to the proceedings from his refuge in the Brazilian Embassy, said even before the vote that he wouldn't return for a token two months if asked. He said he should have been reinstated before Sunday's presidential election and urged governments not to restore ties with the incoming administration of Porfirio Lobo.

"Today, the lawmakers at the service of the dominant classes ratified the coup d'etat in Honduras," Zelaya said in a statement released after the vote. "They have condemned Honduras to exist outside the rule of law."

The Obama administration and some Latin American governments had urged Honduran lawmakers to reinstate Zelaya, who was seized and flown out of the country on June 28, generating worldwide calls for his reinstatement, foreign aid cuts and diplomatic isolation.

But Honduras' interim leaders have proven remarkably resistant to diplomatic arm-twisting since the June 28 coup, rejecting near-universal demands that Zelaya be restored to his office before the previously scheduled election. Now lawmakers have even snubbed international demands that he be allowed to serve the final two months of his presidency.

Lawmaker after lawmaker insisted Wednesday that they were right the first time when they voted to oust Zelaya for ignoring a Supreme Court order to cancel a referendum on changing the constitution. That vote happened hours after soldiers stormed into Zelaya's residence and flew him into exile in his pajamas.

Zelaya opponents accuse him of trying to hang on to power by lifting a ban on presidential re-election, as his leftist ally Hugo Chavez has done in Venezuela. Zelaya denies such intentions.

"My vote is (a lesson) for anyone who pretends to perpetuate himself in power. My vote is so that my son can look at me and say 'Dad you defended democracy,'" said Antonio Rivera of Lobo's conservative National Party.

Lawmakers loyal to Zelaya expressed dismay.

"How can we call this a constitutional succession when the president's residence was shot at and he was taken from his home in pajamas?" said Cesar Ham, a lawmaker from a small leftist party that supports Zelaya. "This is embarrassing. He was assaulted, kidnapped and ousted by force of arms from the presidency."

While legislators debated, 300 Zelaya supporters protested behind police lines outside Congress. Zelaya had won over many poor Hondurans with his initiative to rewrite the constitution, promising he would shake-up a political system dominated by two traditional parties with little ideological differences and influenced by a few wealthy families.

Congress is dominated by Zelaya's own Liberal Party, which largely turned against him in the dispute over changing the constitution. Many Liberals voted against him Wednesday.

The Supreme Court and three other institutions submitted opinions to Congress all recommending that Zelaya not be reinstated because he faces charges of abusing power and other infractions.

Honduras' interim leaders insist the victory by Lobo, a wealthy rancher, in the regularly scheduled presidential election shows their country's democracy is intact.

However, many Latin American countries, especially those led by left-leaning governments, said recognizing the election would amount to legitimizing Central America's first coup in 20 years.

That stance wasn't unanimous in the region, though.

Washington urged Zelaya's reinstatement but it stopped short of making that a condition for recognizing Lobo's government. Costa Rica, Peru, Panama and Colombia backed the U.S. view.

Zelaya's reinstatement was not required by a U.S.-brokered pact that was signed by both the deposed leader and interim President Roberto Micheletti. The pact requires only that a unity government be created for the remainder of Zelaya's term, leaving the decision on restoring Zelaya to office up to Congress.

[Peace Patriot]

1. Clearly, the Obama team stabbed Zelaya in the back and got what they wanted--

a rightwing government, backed by the vicious oligarchy, to protect the Pentagon's assets and the assets of Chiquita, et al, in Honduras. This was also part of a strategy of turning back the "pink tide." One of the Junta generals said so, quoted in a report on the coup by the Zelaya government-in-exile. He said that, by their coup, they were "preventing communism from Venezuela reaching the United States." Lot of hubris by the Honduran military if they were not, in fact, implementing a U.S policy. This was the same legislature that threw Zelaya out, using a forged resignation document and inventing a pack of lies about him in this absence. The whole thing stinks to high heaven of US manipulation.

The telling thing is that US corporate/war profiteer policy can only be imposed in this region by killing leftists and by martial law. Some one hundred political activists have been murdered so far, in Honduras, and thousands have been wounded, beaten up, imprisoned, tortured, raped and threatened in various ways (job firings, home invasions, government "lists"). The free press has been eviscerated, and human and civil rights "suspended." Given democratic conditions, the Honduran people would choose a government like those in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala--governments that attend to the interests of the vast poor majority, such as the Zelaya government was doing (Zelaya has a 67% approval rating in Honduras). Ergo, democracy had to be, and was, destroyed--to secure this country as a US asset and stem "the pink tide."

Very disturbing. It's no wonder that governments like Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and others, and even Mexico--and the OAS, the Rio Group, UNASUR, ALBA, the EU and the UN--are disgusted with the Obama administration on this matter. They all know what this is all about and Hugo Chavez said it out loud, that Obama "is the prisoner of the Pentagon." He was speaking of the SEVEN new US military bases in Colombia (adjacent to Venezuela's major oil region), with NO LIMIT on US troops and 'contractors' who can be deployed there, total diplomatic immunity for US troops (and 'contractors') and US military use of all Colombian civilian airports and other facilities. But it appears to be equally applicable to Honduras, where the Pentagon wanted to secure the US military base and port facilities.

[lunamagica]

2. It's over for Zelaya. Arias new position on the matter speaks volumes, n/t

[Peace Patriot]

3. Arias is a jerk, and is part of a very small minority. Nice company he finds himself in--

the narco-thugs running Colombia and the corrupt "free tradists" running Peru. Disgusting.

----------------

75% of the leaders of Latin America are on the side of the people of Honduras and the president they elected in a REAL election!

[lunamagica]

4. Funny how Aria's opinion was highly regarded here when he was

trying to get Zelaya back to power.

As for the will of the Honduran people; What they want is peace. My family voted, and the day went on peacefully, except for a crowd of about 500 in San Pedro Sula.

The losing candidate of The Liberal Party has accepted the election results and offered to work with the winner to get the nation back on track. He'd be the first one to denounce the elections if he suspected fraud. He ran to win, and wouldn't give the presidency up that easily.

Honduras is not a protectorate of any of the nations you mentioned. It will not be ruled, or be ran according to the will of foreigners.
People get really resentful of the intrusion when this is a national matter, and should be solved within its borders.

[UTUSN]

5. Handing him his crown, uh, I mean HAT

Last week Univision ran an interview done by Jorge RAMOS with him, and every so often the camera would pan over to the side, about 6 feet away, and this "bodyguard" dude was standing rigidly at attention holding the hat. Can't be doing much bodyguarding by not moving the eyes to follow the client or looking around for threats out there. The caption to the picture of the hat on the books/pedestal said the word (in Portugese?) of the manual says "Exit" (saida?). The bodyguard was probably getting some stretching around time off.


"Manuel Zelaya talks on his mobile phone within the Brazilian embassy while his white cowboy hat is held by a bodyguard, Boris Muños. Photograph: Esteban Felix/AP"