Monday, December 07, 2009

The Mess In Honduras

The first reports I read on the election stated that turnout was low, but suddenly there were reports that 62% participated. I thought that was strange, but this video reports that the turnout was around 49%. In one area where 340 people were registered, only 111 voted. The coup resisters said that the vote would be questionable, and it seems that they were correct.



Follow this link to read more on the electoral fraud which took place in Honduras last week. Less than 50% actually participated in the vote, not the 62% the government is claiming.

The pundits in the U.S.A. are always making crazy claims about elections in Venezuela and Bolivia, while ignoring actual fraud in Honduras. Their fear of Hugo Chávez blinds them to what is really going on. Unfortunately, the rabiblanco pro-oligarchy president of Panamá has supported Lobo and the coup plotters.

4 comments:

Brother David said...

I guess Padre that we will agree to disagree on Honduras for I fear that you are misinformed and mislead.

It was not a coup. It was an out of control president who was legally ruled out-of -order in his push for a plebiscite referendum regarding rewriting the national constitution. He was told his move was illegal by his own party, by the federal congress, by the independent electoral tribunal in Honduras and eventually by the Supreme Court of Honduras. Yet he persisted. He was removed from office by the Supreme Court. They ordered the military to remove him from the presidential palace and render him to prison. The military sent him to Costa Rica instead. That was the one wrong move on anyone's part.

The removed president has been irresponsible in every move he has made since being removed from office. Having once supported his claims, most major governments eventually distanced themselves from his antics.

This news broadcast in the video flies in the face of the on-the-ground reporting many of us saw as we watched this election unfold live on 29 NOV through major news outlets such as BBC World and CNN International. The Real News wants us to believe that the turnout was small. If so, why did the news outlets reporting from Honduras on election day report that the polls remained open additional hours to accommodate the voter turnout? Why did they show live, lines of folks lined up to exercise their right to vote after the normal poll closing hours? Who is lying, the major networks reporting live, or this days after the facts video?

Padre Mickey said...

David, since you're the first not-a-spittle-flecked-right-wing-gringo that I've read support the actions of the Hondurans I will simply disagree with you, but I, too, think that perhaps you have been misled.

As far as I can tell, only Panamá and Colombia have accepted the results, while Costa Rica is waiting to see that there was no fraud.

Did Zelaya screw-up? Yes. Was he out of control? I disagree with you there. Did Micheletti do the right thing? No, it looks like a right-wing coup, to me.

I will admit that I don't always accept CNN or BBC on everything, and I don't accept everything from alternative sources like these guys.

I'd love to hear from some Hondurans IN Honduras.

Brother David said...

No, it looks like a right-wing coup, to me.

Padre, go back and check your facts. Zelaya and Micheletti are members of the same political party, the Liberal Party of Honduras. After the Supreme Court of Honduras ordered Zelaya removed from office the federal Congress elected a member of Zelaya's own political party to serve as interim president. Micheletti was president of the Congress. Zelaya's own party, the Liberal Party, never lost control of the government. There was nothing conservative or right-wing about any of it. The Liberal Party and the National Party are the two major opposition parties in Honduran politics, equal to the Democrat and Republican parties in the USA.

However, the winner of the election, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, is a member of the conservative party, the National Party, in Honduras. Both candidates in the 29 NOV election were nominated by their respective political parties prior to Zelaya's antics which eventually resulted in his constitutional removal from office by the Honduran Supreme Court.

So if I may translate this into Statesonian, this is what you are claiming with your statement. A Democrat controlled Congress impeached & convicted a Demoncrat President, removed him from Office and then by vote of Congress elected the Democrat Speaker of the House to replace him. Some months later an election was held with previously nominated candidates, which elected a Republican president. But in reality all of this was a right-wing coup carried out by the Democrats to supplant their own party with a Republican President!

Padre Mickey said...

David, I hope you realize that a party can have right-wing and left-wing members. The PLH is a right-leaning party, and Zelaya upset that wing of his party. Sure, Micheletti is PLH, but right-wing PLH, and Lobo is PNH, the opposition.

Let's look at a hypothetical unitedstatsian situation to prove that right-wingers in a center-left party could pull off a right-wing coup: If Gore and Lieberman had actually been put into office after winning the election in 2000, we would have had a center-left president with a center-right vice president. If Gore did something to upset the right-wing (which he does even though he holds no political office) and Lieberman, following his darker nature (as he always does), helped impeach Gore, we'd have a right-wing coup. Sure, they followed the rules, just like they did with Clinton's impeachment, but Clinton was impeached for being a Democrat, unless you believe that he was impeached for "lying."

According to this article, both the Ibero-American Summit and the Latin American Parliament have denounced the "election" in Honduras. Hardly anyone is buying it.

Okay, so it wasn't technically a coup, but your statement But in reality all of this was a right-wing coup carried out by the Democrats to supplant their own party with a Republican President! is correct! So I guess we'll continue to disagree on whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. I say bad thing.

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