Sham elections proceed in Honduras

On Nov. 29, the illegal “government” of Honduras will hold national elections in total violation of all norms by which democratic and legal elections are held.

It is clear to all that conditions for fair, free and transparent elections do not exist in Honduras.

WW photo: LeiLani Dowell

The elections occur after five months of a political and social crisis that came as a result of the illegal ouster of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya on June 28. In his place the coup installed a reactionary ruling-class representative, Roberto Micheletti.

Since then, the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup has led a massive people’s resistance that has lasted continuously for more than 146 days. It demands not only the restoration of President Zelaya, but a new constitutional assembly that reflects the interests of the masses, not the multinational corporations.

The Zelaya administration had oriented itself toward Venezuela and Cuba, not Washington, forever earning the ire of Wall Street and the Pentagon.

The November elections take place with the full complicity of the U.S. government. In fact, without the heavy-handed intervention of the State Department, the elections might not have proceeded at all.

After several months of negotiations that included many national and international sectors, neither the Constitution nor President Zelaya were ever restored. The elections continue despite this chaos.

In October, the State Department hurriedly sent a delegation to Honduras, brought Micheletti back to the table and brokered a “National Reconciliation Agreement.”

The agreement required the reinstatement of President Zelaya by Nov. 5. But just a few days later, the State Department reversed its position, declaring that Washington would recognize the election results with or without the restoration of President Zelaya.

This is a complete slap in the face of not only President Zelaya and the heroic Honduran people, but of progressive and justice-loving people everywhere.

The U.S. government has taken a huge step backward in presenting a façade of support for even bourgeois democratic values. It has raised the question of whether Washington is reverting to policies resonant of the most archaic and colonial-type mentality of the period of “manifest destiny” in the early 1800s.

How can the U.S. government support elections held under a gun, where most candidates, who never even had a chance to campaign, are now withdrawing out of embarrassment?

The Republican and right-wing hawks are in a tizzy over this position. South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint announced on Nov. 5 that he was withdrawing his opposition to two State Department nominees as a result of President Barack Obama’s reversal of his administration’s “misguided Honduran policy.”

For the most part, the Democrats are not much better. Just as on health-care reform or jobs, they cave in to the right and raise hardly a peep, with an exception here or there. Case in point is the statement by a key ally and friend of the Clintons, Lanny Davis.

Davis is a former special counsel to President Bill Clinton, represents the Honduran Latin American Business Council, and lobbied Secretary of State Hillary Clinton heavily on Honduras. He has spent much media time demonizing and ridiculing President Zelaya, blaming him for the crisis. His characterizations often have a racist tone and are out-and-out lies about Honduras.

Davis wrote in the Nov. 9 Wall Street Journal: “The U.S. government needs to ... endorse the results of the Nov. 29 presidential elections. ... Once that happens, Mr. Zelaya will be irrelevant, a footnote as a president who thought he was above the constitution. And then, on Jan. 27, a new president will be sworn into office. ... That will restore to normalcy the proud little constitutional republic that has always been a loyal and reliable friend of the United States.”

Davis is wrong. Honduras is not the country it was before June 28. It will never return to the days Davis longs for.

Progressive and revolutionary forces in and out of the country all remark on the new level of consciousness and militancy of the movement in Honduras today. There is no going back for the Honduran masses.

But there is considerable danger in Honduras. In a Nov. 14 letter to President Obama, President Zelaya stated that he would not legitimize the elections by coming back in. He wrote: “Thirty-five hundred people detained in 100 days, over 600 people beaten and injured in hospitals, more than a hundred murders, and countless numbers of people subjected to torture directed against citizens who dare to oppose the regime and express their ideas about freedom and justice in peaceful demonstrations. All this converts the November election into an anti-democratic exercise under an uncertain state of lawlessness with military intimidation for large sections of our people.”

The National Front Against the Coup has called for a boycott of the elections. Candidates are withdrawing left and right.

At the same time, Micheletti has threatened those encouraging the boycott with lengthy prison terms. The military is demanding that mayors compile a list of people who are against the coup, amounting to a systematic profiling of resistance.

Most Latin American governments are refusing to recognize the elections. What was the U.S. response to that?

W. Lewis Amselem, the Obama representative to the Organization of American States, said, “I’m not trying to be a wiseguy, but what does that mean ... in the real world, not in the world of magical realism?”

That is a racist comment. Latin Americans and the workers and oppressed of the world are building a new reality. It is one the U.S. had better get used to; there is nothing magical about it.