http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-honduras11-2009dec11,0,6690516.story

Reporting from Mexico City – The de facto government of Honduras withdrew its offer Thursday to deposed President Manuel Zelaya of safe passage out of the country, asserting he could leave only if he renounced his claim to the office.

The actions by Honduras’ coup-installed rulers threw cold water on efforts to free Zelaya from the Brazilian Embassy, where he took refuge 2 1/2 months ago.

“I could be here 10 years,” Zelaya told a radio station from inside the embassy in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. He said he was being required to sign a letter of resignation in exchange for being allowed to leave, terms he branded “blackmail.”…

Honduras’ de facto leaders said they considered the issue of Zelaya’s presidency moot after the Dec. 2 vote by Congress against reinstating him. They were afraid he might attempt to set up a government-in-exile if he left the country under a status other than political refugee, said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mireya Corrales. “It could be a diplomatic fiasco,” she said.

Honduras’ newly elected president, Porfirio Lobo, does not take office until Jan. 27

http://smart-products.tmcnet.com/news/2009/12/28/4551004.htm

Lobo, a member of the opposition National Party, faces the challenge of winning acceptance by the international community, which does not recognize the de facto government of Micheletti and in general has not accepted the results of the Nov. 29 election, considering that it was held under unconstitutional circumstances.

Lobo says that the international community asks for the total fulfillment of the accord that the commissions of Micheletti and Zelaya signed on Oct. 30 in an attempt to resolve the political crisis, which would free up some $2 billion in foreign aid.

What? Why would the international community not recognize these elections as legitimate? After all, the whole rationale for throwing the elected leader out was to preserve the integrity of elections.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/25/the_sham_elections_in_honduras

This election is taking place in a political environment contaminated by repression, violence, and fear. If the U.S. government recognizes the vote, it will grant the de facto regime led by former parliamentary head Roberto Micheletti a legitimacy it does not deserve; it will needlessly lengthen a crisis that is hurting Honduras, its people, and its prospects for real democracy; and it will harm the U.S. image in the region. Most importantly, there is an alternative to this “see no evil” strategy.

What has transpired in Honduras in recent weeks has eliminated the prospects for free and fair elections. Actions specifically aimed at suppressing political organizing for the election, including mass arrests, illegal detentions, and violence — documented by respected international groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights — have yet to be investigated or prosecuted by the Honduran attorney general’s office.

More than 50 candidates for public office, including several running for congressional and mayoral seats and one presidential candidate, have removed their names from the ballot in protest against the coup regime.

Lists of anti-coup activists have been compiled by local mayors and given to the military. The government’s telecommunications commission has continued to block pro-Zelaya media outlets, forcing them to play reruns of old cowboy movies rather than news critical of the coup regime.

All of this while the Micheletti government reinstated a state of siege last weekend and intimidated opponents by announcing that it has trained hundreds of Honduran lawyers to prosecute individuals participating in a boycott of Sunday’s vote. No matter the turnout, no matter the result, these are not conditions within which legitimate elections can take place…

Washington should maintain its suspension of government-to-government assistance and not recognize the newly elected regime until there is a full restoration of civil liberties and steps are taken to prosecute human rights abuses. Next, the Obama team should work with the Organization of American States and other democracies — the vast majority of which is reluctant to endorse these elections — to find a way to bring Honduras back into the international community. For starters, if the new government is to recover any semblance of legitimacy, it will need to ensure that adequate conditions exist for a broad and pluralistic debate and dialogue, including with respect to any constitutional issues. Moreover, such a dialogue should be seen as responding to the legitimate rights and concerns of Honduran citizens, rather than being branded as treason, as is customary for the coup government today.

Oh, that.
But what about the big agreements negociated with Hilary and the state department etc…?
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/12/01/democracy_loses_the_honduras_election

Finally, it is a gaping failure for U.S. diplomacy, which shifted from indignation with the June 28 coup to indifference, to confusion, and finally to acquiescence — all in less than five months. The crisis laid bare the State Department and the White House’s completely incoherent approach toward Latin America. The United States should be particularly embarrassed about the collapse of the purported agreement between Micheletti and Zelaya, heralded as a diplomatic triumph by everyone from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Sen. John Kerry. Before the champagne stopped fizzing, the big triumph morphed into a big debacle, when it became clear that the Honduran Congress had no intention of reversing the coup by reinstating Zelaya before the election. Either the U.S. diplomats announced the accord believing that the Honduran Congress was ready to reinstate Zelaya (in which case they were taken for a ride by the Honduran political elite), or they announced it knowing full well that the votes were not there. In the former hypothesis, they behaved with remarkable incompetence; in the latter, with remarkable cynicism. In both cases, Washington’s credibility as an interlocutor of future political crises in the region is damaged.

Final result?

The Honduran political elite are reading this outcome as an unconditional victory and, above all, as a license to return to politics as usual, as though nothing had happened. That will mean a return to the usual tooth-and-nail fight between factions of the well-heeled oligarchy — each cheered on by segments of the impoverished populace — for the spoils of a weak state. With such a political style and such a lack of political leadership — both made obvious in this episode — it is no wonder that Honduras is dead last on the fight against corruption in Central America, according to the figures just released by Transparency International.

A familiar tune, played by many countries before and after.

Less than two days after senior American officials arrived in Honduras, the leader of the nation’s de facto government signed an agreement that would allow the return of the country’s ousted president, paving the way for an end to Latin America’s deepest political crisis in years.

and the role played by the United States:

During a half-hour telephone call last week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton took a leading role, making it clear to Mr. Micheletti that the United States was growing impatient with the stalemate and demanding that democracy be restored.

Mr. Micheletti later joked with his aides that she stuck so close to her message it appeared she had a limited vocabulary. “I kept trying to explain our position to her,” he said, according to officials close to the talks, “but all she kept saying was, ‘Restitution, restitution, restitution.’ ”

Speaking on Friday in Pakistan, Mrs. Clinton called the deal a “historic agreement.”

“I cannot think of another example of a country in Latin America that, having suffered a rupture of its democratic and constitutional order, overcame such a crisis through negotiation and dialogue,” she said.

It looks like a new day in America/latin American relations.

The crisis in Honduras is evolving constantly, but now appears to be in a basic stand-off. The military and police forcibly cleared the area around the Brazilian embassy and cut off its power. Soldiers patrol the neighboring rooftops, and at times have launched tear gas into the embassy.

The airports are closed, which conveniently prevents any would-be negotiator (such as José Miguel Insulza) from arriving in the country. And pro-Zelaya media is being harassed.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/silbido-del-perro-by-digby-certain-kind.html
Your president is a nigger. Have a nice day.

See, before I didn’t have any sympathy for the coup regime, but now I pity their diplomacy.

Basically, what I was trying to say is, if the people don’t want him and the international community wants the restoration of democracy, conducting a snap election, a recall election in the spirit of Gray Davis, as a condition of letting Zelaya return might be a nice way to settle things.

In other news, or lack of, it appears telesur reporters have been detained and will be thrown out of the country.

In 1985, [Michelletti] tried to turn the Honduran National Congress into a National Constitutional Assembly in order to reform the same Magna Carta that the coup leaders are now defending as their transcendental symbol during the current political crisis.

Members of Congress and politicians accuse Manuel Zelaya of trying to extend his term and change the Honduran Constitution, but what he tried to do was hold a non-binding opinion poll. Micheletti, on the other hand, did want to [extend the president's term and change the Constitution] 24 years ago.

It’s from telesur, so it may be as biased as all hell, but it might be worth looking into as well.

Some say Michelletti’s strategy is to negotiate and stall until the momentum to reverse the coup drops and world attention is focused on other things.

If that’s the case, it’s going to become an expensive strategy as more aid gets dropped because of democratic ambiguity.

If I were in Honduras with an unpopular president at my border and the international community at my neck to restore him, I’d negotiate a snap election in which Zelaya could return, run in, and lose.

What a clusterfuck.