Honduran Accord Solidifies Coup D'Etat Rule - by Stephen Lendman
On October 29, Honduran coup d'etat "president" Roberto Micheletti announced that:
"....a few minutes ago I authorized my negotiating team to sign a final agreement" to let Congress and the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) decide whether or not deposed President Manuel Zelaya may return to office and complete the remaining weeks of his term, expiring on January 27. If he does, will it matter?
Zelaya is a wealthy businessman, a member of the right-wing Liberal Party (PL), a former National Congress Deputy from 1985 - 1998, a former PL Minster for Investment, and president from January 27, 2006 to when he was deposed on June 28.
His 2005 presidential campaign was largely on a law-and-order platform with pledges that, if elected, he'd address Honduras' crime problem with more police programs against and reeducation ones for violent international and local street gang members.
Zelaya also joined Venezuela's Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA) based on fair, not one-sided "free" trade; complementarity, not competition; solidarity, not domination; cooperation, not exploitation; and respect for each nation's sovereign freedom from corporate control.
According to supporters like Alejandra Fernandez, a Honduran student, he also:
"raised the minimum wage, gave out free school lunches, provided milk for the babies and pensions for the elderly, distributed energy-saving light bulbs, decreased the price of public transportation, (and) made more scholarships available for students." In addition, he built roads and schools in rural areas. "That's why the elite classes can't stand him and why we want him back. This is really a class struggle." One the Resistance is detemined to win and hardliners aim to crush.
The Coup d' Etat
On June 28, dozens of Honduran soldiers stormed Zelaya's residence at night, arrested him in his pajamas at gunpoint, and exiled him to Costa Rica in violation of the 1982 Constitution that states:
"No Honduran may be expatriated nor delivered by the authorities to a foreign state," nor may a democratically elected leader be deposed.
On July 3, the Honduran army's top lawyer, Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza, admitted as much in a Miami Herald interview saying:
"We know there was a crime there. In the moment that we took him out of the country, in the way that he was taken out, there is a crime. Because of the circumstances of the moment this crime occurred, there is going to be a justification and cause for acquittal that will protect us."
He meant protection from the Constitution's Article 239 (crafted by a military government to subordinate civilians to repressive rule) that states:
"No citizen that has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President.
Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years."
