DN! Headline: Zelaya Reaches Deal for Return.

[EFerrari]

Zelaya Reaches Deal for Return to Honduras

Former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has reached an agreement to return to Honduras after over a year in exile. On Sunday, Zelaya joined current Honduran President Porfirio Lobo in Colombia to formalize a deal for his return and pave the way for Honduras’s readmission to the Organization of American States. On his weekly television program, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said the deal would include the main group that opposed the coup regime.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez: "We have been mediating, and there is a document to be signed, and it will soon be made public, where there are four points that President Zelaya requested through us, and they are included there. The first one is that President Manuel Zelaya, ousted by a coup, be allowed to return to his homeland, and I believe there is even a date, and that the National Resistance Party be recognized as a legal and legitimate political force in Honduras."

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/23/headlines#11

No more at this link.

[naaman fletcher]

1. Do you consider this a good thing?

I have not followed Honduras as closely as many here have, but while it is good that Zelaya can return, isn't this agreement at the same time in essence a validation of the original coup? I am not sure how I feel about this.

[Judi Lynn]

2. If the conditions are well known for his return, it could be good.

They have been terrorizing, persecuting, torturing, murdering people opposing the coup all this time. If they can be bound to recognize the human rights of these Hondurans who legitimately oppose their dirty coup, they will have to put an end to the terrorism, or put a good dent in it.

Find it very interesting that all that noise they made about refusing to allow the people to reform their filthy constitution is going to be withdrawn, if they keep their word, and go ahead with the referendum as promised. They really should have international observers to be on hand when they count the returns on the referendum.

Thanks, EFerrari! Rec.

[Peace Patriot]

3. The significance of this accord is the new clout of the leftist democracy movement in LatAm,

whose elected leaders threw Honduras out of the OAS, for the U.S.-backed coup d'etat, and blocked its return until certain conditions were met, including...

---The return of illegally ousted President Zelaya to his country, whose removal amidst fake charges against him was the pretext for the coup, and

---Recognition of the anti-coup coalition, representing the majority of Hondurans, as a legitimate political party.

With these two conditions met--which would have been unheard of in former days of U.S. domination of the region--the Honduran people have a chance to set their own course, despite how difficult it may still be.

Rightwing death squads are still operating in Honduras, trying to decapitate the grass roots leadership and terrorize journalists--similar to a decade of such murderous activity in Colombia in preparation for U.S. "free trade for the rich." The Pentagon is building NEW military bases in Honduras (as in Colombia). And the Honduran oligarchs are still in control of the political system thanks to the fraudulent U.S. sponsored "martial law" (s)election. And the USAID, CIA and other U.S. agencies--as well as U.S. corporations--are no doubt continuing to pour millions of dollars into rightwing candidates and causes.

If the U.S. can be kept out of the business of 'monitoring' Honduras' next election, and the election system--which is controlled by the U.S.-funded Honduran military (the ones who shot up Zelaya's house and exiled him from the country at gunpoint) (--with a refueling stop at the U.S. military base in Soto Cano, Honduras)--can be rendered fair and aboveboard, with true international monitoring by objective parties--these are big IF's--then Lobo's U.S./coup-installed government will be turned out of office and a REAL representative of the people elected president.

I'm not sure what Zelaya's status may be in the next election. Honduras' current constitution (written by Reagan's henchmen in the 1980s) permits the president only ONE term. (The purpose of this was to cement the powers of the military and the rich oligarchy.) Zelaya's term was truncated by the coup. Also, as part of this restoration of Honduran democracy--required by the Latin American left, for OAS membership--Lobo has agreed to some manner of constitutional reform and that process has yet to fully unfold. I doubt that, whatever the new rules may be, they will be in place for the next election. Some Latin American countries, for instance, permit a termed out president to run for the office of president again later (not successively). But I'm pretty sure that the current (Reagan-written) Honduran constitution doesn't permit that. Zelaya, however, was not fully termed out. He was violently ousted and exiled--an action that plainly violated the old constitution which forbids the exile of any Honduran citizen (let alone the president). Will there be some agreement that he can run in the next election? It only seems fair.

It looks like his restoration to office, to finish his truncated term, was not part of this deal--and thus will not likely happen. But his status is clearly a question that needs answering--if, indeed, he wants to run for president again (with rightwing death squads freely running around the country murdering leftists and journalists, with complete impunity).

Honduran democracy--elections and the justice system--need to be restored. And constitutional reform is critically needed. Zelaya can be one of the leaders of these restorations and reforms without being president. And maybe that's what he intends. I don't know. The Honduran people clearly have OTHER good leaders--the ones who have kept the democracy movement alive within Honduras during these violent times. Yes, some are dead. One was a teacher, shot to death right in front of his students. Another was literally decapitated and his body left by the road, for all to see and be afraid.

But many Honduran leaders who have survived all this have NOT yielded to fear and it is their courage and their leadership which has made this deal possible. The Honduran people obviously do not need a famous honcho in a cowboy hat, as president, to implement their reforms. He is an inspiring figure and can lend his voice and his ideas from the sidelines--or as president, if something can be worked out in the interim between constitutions, to give him that chance. Either way, it's the PEOPLE and THEIR democracy revolution that counts, as has been the case all along. Zelaya, in his first term, did nothing that did not come directly from the People--including the trade unions' and other grass roots groups' proposal for constitutional reform. That was THEIR idea, and he responded by wanting to query the voters on the issue (a mere advisory vote: "do you or don't you want to vote on forming a constitutional reform assembly?). And for that, and for raising the minimum wage and for a few other mild offenses against U.S. corporate/war profiteer interests, he was stripped of his office and thrown out of the country.

THAT injustice needs to be redressed but it is the greater injustice--to all Hondurans and to the murdered, the beaten, the imprisoned, the threatened and those fired from their jobs--that is the most important. However it is done, and whoever the leaders of it will be, democracy and fairness must be restored.

Chavez and the other negotiators of this agreement--and the other leftist leaders of the region, including, notably, Brazil (as to dealings with the U.S.) in their firm stance on this issue--have done what they can. Now it is up to the people who started this revolution--the Honduran people themselves--to finish it. They certainly know it won't be easy. But, only a decade ago, it would have been impossible. That is what the Bush Junta did to U.S. corporate/war profiteer interests in Latin America.* They turned Latin America away from the U.S. and toward independence.

That was a direction that Latin Americans were inclined to go, in any case--a desire built up over the previous decades--but the Bush Junta confirmed that democracy, social justice and prosperity for all would not be permitted in Latin America, and, to achieve them, Latin Americans must pull together and throw off U.S. domination.

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*(I don't think that Obama/Clinton designed the coup in Honduras. It occurred only six months into the Obama administration, before they were able to turn any attention to Latin America--distracted as they were by two wars and the Bushwhack-induced economic meltdown. I think the Honduras coup was designed by the Bush Junta and sprung on Obama, with operatives like Jim DeMint (SC-Diebold), John "death squad" Negroponte, and John McCain (telecommunications interests in Honduras) playing it out, blackmailing Obama on his LatAm appointments, and trying to head off Obama's initial promise to LatAm of U.S. "peace, respect and cooperation." The Obama team handled it very badly, indeed (especially Clinton), and have taken the onus, most of it deserved. Outgoing president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, in his last speech, said, "The U.S. has not changed." This is what he meant--Honduras. And it has taken two years for the Obama administration to crawl out of that hole and start edging back to that initial promise. I do think they are shifting away from the bludgeon of coups and Pentagon war planning to economic goals, partly because they have been told, in no uncertain terms--probably by Lula's successor, Dilma Rousseff--that they must, and maybe because they are inclined more that way, and able to see reality better than the Bushwhacks. And maybe they figure Libya's oil will be sufficient for a while--no need to stir up trouble in this hemisphere. I wonder, though, what Diebold will have to say about it in 2012.)