[Peace-discuss] Good take on US/Honduras, etc.

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Latin America Drags a Reluctant Washington
	Into Supporting Democracy in Honduras
	July 1, 2009, The Guardian Unlimited

The military coup that overthrew Honduras’ elected president Manuel Zelaya 
brought unanimous international condemnation. But some country’s responses have 
been more reluctant than others, and Washington’s ambivalence has begun to raise 
suspicions about what the U.S. government is really trying to accomplish in this 
situation.

The first statement from the White House in response to the coup was weak and 
non-committal. It did not denounce the coup but rather called upon “all 
political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of 
law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter.”

This contrasted with statements from other presidents in the hemisphere, such as 
Lula da Silva of Brazil and President Cristina Fernandez of Argentina, who 
denounced the coup and called for the re-instatement of President Zelaya.  The 
European Union issued a similar, less ambiguous, and more immediate response.

Later in the day, as the response of other nations became clear, Secretary of 
State Hillary Clinton issued a stronger statement, that condemned the coup – 
without calling it a coup. But it still didn’t say anything about Zelaya 
returning to the presidency.

The Organization of American States, the Rio Group (most of Latin America), and 
the United Nations General Assembly have all called for the “immediate and 
unconditional return” of President Zelaya.

The strong stances from the South brought statements from anonymous State 
Department officials that were more supportive of President Zelaya’s return. And 
by Monday afternoon President Obama finally said, “We believe that the coup was 
not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras . . .”

But at a press conference later on Monday, Secretary of State Clinton was asked 
if “restoring the constitutional order” in Honduras meant returning Zelaya 
himself. She would not say yes.

Why such reluctance to openly call for the immediate and unconditional return of 
an elected president, as the rest of the hemisphere and the United Nations has 
done? One obvious possibility is that Washington does not share these goals. The 
coup leaders have no international support but they could still succeed by 
running out the clock – Zelaya has less than six months left in his term. Will 
the Obama administration support sanctions against the coup government in order 
to prevent this? The neighboring governments of Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El 
Salvador have already fired a warning shot by announcing a 48-hour cut-off of trade.

By contrast, one reason for Hillary Clinton’s reluctance to call the coup a coup 
is because the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act prohibits funds going to governments 
where the head of state has been deposed by a military coup.

Unconditional is also a key word here: the Administration may want to extract 
concessions from Zelaya as part of a deal for his return to office.  But this is 
not how democracy works. If Zelaya wants to negotiate a settlement with his 
political opponents after he returns, that is another story. But nobody has the 
right to extract political concession from him in exile, over the barrel of a gun.

There is no excuse for this coup. A constitutional crisis came to a head when 
President Zelaya ordered the military to distribute materials for a non-binding 
referendum to be held last Sunday. The referendum asked citizens to vote on 
whether they were in favor of including a proposal for a constituent assembly, 
to redraft the constitution, on the November ballot. The head of the military, 
General Romeo Vasquez refused to carry out the President’s orders. The 
president, as commander-in-chief of the military, then fired Vasquez, whereupon 
the Defense Minister resigned. The Supreme Court subsequently ruled that the 
president’s firing of Vasquez was illegal, and the majority of the Congress has 
gone against President Zelaya.

Supporters of the coup argue that the president violated the law by attempting 
to go ahead with the referendum after the Supreme Court ruled against it. This 
is a legal question; it may be true, or it may be that the Supreme Court had no 
legal basis for its ruling. But it is irrelevant to the what has happened: the 
military is not the arbiter of a constitutional dispute between the various 
branches of government. This is especially true in this case, in that the 
proposed referendum was a non-binding and merely consultative plebiscite. It 
would not have changed any law nor affected the structure of power; it was 
merely a poll of the electorate.

Therefore, the military cannot claim that it acted to prevent any irreparable 
harm. This is a military coup carried out for political purposes.

There are other issues where our government has been oddly silent. Reports of 
political repression, the closing of TV and radio stations, the detention of 
journalists, detention and physical abuse of diplomats, and what the Committee 
to Protect Journalists has called a “media blackout” have yet to draw a serious 
rebuke from Washington. By controlling information and repressing dissent, the 
Honduran de facto government is also setting the stage for unfair elections in 
November.

Many press reports have contrasted the Obama administration’s rejection of the 
Honduran coup with the Bush administration’s initial support for the 2002 
military coup that briefly overthrew President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. But 
actually there are more similarities than differences between the U.S. response 
to these two events. Within a day, the Bush administration reversed its official 
position on the Venezuelan coup, because the rest of the hemisphere had 
announced that it would not recognize the coup government. Similarly, in this 
case, the Obama administration is following the rest of the hemisphere, trying 
not to be the odd man out but at the same time not really sharing their 
commitment to democracy.

It was not until some months after the Venezuelan coup that the State Department 
admitted that it had given financial and other support “to individuals and 
organizations understood to be actively involved in the brief ouster of the 
Chavez government.”

In the Honduran coup, the Obama administration claims that it tried to 
discourage the Honduran military from taking this action. It would be 
interesting to know what these discussions were like. Did administration 
officials say, “You know that we will have to say that we are against  such a 
move if you do it, because everyone else will?”  Or was it more like, “Don’t do 
it, because we will do everything in our power to reverse any such coup.”?  The 
administration’s actions since the coup indicate something more like the former, 
if not worse.

The battle between Zelaya and his opponents pits a reform president who is 
supported by labor unions and social organizations against a mafia-like, 
drug-ridden, corrupt political elite who is accustomed to choosing not only the 
Supreme Court and the Congress, but also the president. It is a recurrent story 
in Latin America, and the United States has almost always sided with the elites. 
In this case, Washington has a very close relationship with the Honduran 
military, which goes back decades. During the 1980’s, the U.S. used bases in 
Honduras to train and arm the Contras, Nicaraguan paramilitaries who became 
known for their atrocities in their war against the Sandinista government in 
neighboring Nicaragua.

The hemisphere has changed substantially since the Venezuelan coup in April of 
2002, with 11 more left governments having been elected. A whole set of norms, 
institutions, and power relations between South and North in the hemisphere have 
been altered.  The Obama administration today faces neighbors that are much more 
united and much less willing to compromise on fundamental questions of 
democracy. So Secretary of State Clinton will probably not have that much room 
to maneuver. Still, the administration’s ambivalence will be noticed in Honduras 
and can very likely encourage the de facto government there to try and hang on 
to power. That could be very damaging.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in 
Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of 
Michigan. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis 
(University of Chicago Press, 2000), and has written numerous research papers on 
economic policy. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/latin-america-
drags-a-reluctant-washington-into-supporting-democracy-in-honduras/