Honduras's New Government Vows to Maintain Power

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By Juan Forero
 

CARACAS, Venezuela — Honduras’s new government vowed on Monday to remain in power despite growing worldwide opposition to the military coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

Although the United States and its allies condemned the coup, the most vocal opposition came from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who convened a summit of leftist allies in Nicaragua to find a way to restore Zelaya.

“This coup will be defeated,” Chavez said in the meeting in Managua, also attended by the leaders of Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and other countries allied with Honduras. “We have to be very firm, very firm. This cannot end until Jose Manuel Zelaya is returned to power, without condition.”

Earlier, Chavez had pledged to “overthrow” Roberto Micheletti, a Honduran congressman and member of Zelaya’s party who was sworn in as president Sunday afternoon. Hours before the swearing-in, heavily armed troops burst into the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa, broke through the door of Zelaya’s bedroom and roused him from bed. He told reporters that guns were pointed at him and that he was later put on a plane and flown into exile in Costa Rica.

On Monday, Micheletti responded to Chavez’s threat on Honduran radio, saying “Nobody scares us.”

“I am sure that 80 to 90 percent of the Honduran population is happy with what happened,” he said. Micheletti also said that he had not spoken to any other Latin American head of state.

Venezuelan state television and CNN en Español carried images of demonstrators who defied a curfew and taunted soldiers outside Honduras’s presidential palace. Zelaya, speaking to reporters in Managua, Nicaragua, demanded that he be restored to power but said that violence was not an option.

He also said that many Hondurans had no idea about the worldwide condemnation of the coup because private television stations in his country blacked out coverage, playing cartoons and soap operas instead.

Across the Americas and Europe, countries called for the reinstatement of Zelaya. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, an influential regional power, said his government would not recognize any Honduran administration not headed by Zelaya. “We in Latin America can no longer accept someone trying to resolve his problem through the means of a coup,” Silva said.

In the United States, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. would work with other countries within the Organization of American States to “fashion a strong consensus condemning the detention and expulsion of President Zelaya and calling for the full restoration of democratic order in Honduras.”

The OAS, based in Washington, has called for Zelaya’s reinstatement, and the United Nations also condemned the coup and said Micheletti should make way for Zelaya’s return.

The ouster in the poor, coffee- and banana-growing country of 7 million people revived memories of coup-fueled turmoil in Latin America in years past. Zelaya, who has spoken frequently with reporters, has been quick to mention the political chaos that military overthrows have traditionally caused.

“Are we going to go back to the military being outside of the control of the civil state?” Zelaya said in comments to the press. “Everything that is supposed to be an achievement of the 21st century is at risk in Honduras.”

Zelaya, 56, is a rancher who came from Honduras’s wealthy classes but allied his government with Chavez. He was in the last few months of his presidency when the coup took place.

Senior administration officials in Washington said Sunday that U.S. diplomats had been negotiating behind the scenes to stop the coup. “We have worked hard to avoid this,” a senior Obama official said in a background briefing with reporters. “This has been brewing a long time.”

U.S. officials said the Honduran military, which has traditionally maintained close ties with the United States, had broken off contact with U.S. diplomats after the coup.

Military coups in Latin America have become rare, but Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said Sunday’s events in Honduras reminded her of “the worst years in Latin America’s history,” when coups were common and often led to cycles of violence. The coup draws the Obama administration into its first real diplomatic test in the hemisphere, in a country where people have complex feelings toward the United States. The Reagan administration’s contra war against the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua was fought from Honduras, one of the poorest countries in Latin America, whose fragile economy is supported by remittances from Hondurans living in the United States.

Zelaya was removed from office as Hondurans prepared to vote Sunday in a nonbinding referendum asking them whether they would support a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution. Zelaya’s critics said he wanted to use the referendum to open the door to reelection after his term ends in January, an assertion that he denied.

The referendum — which U.S. officials described as more of a “survey” than a true vote — was condemned by broad swaths of Honduran society as an obvious power grab. The Honduran Supreme Court called the referendum unconstitutional, and leaders of Zelaya’s own party denounced the measure.

The Honduran Congress voted to accept what it claimed was Zelaya’s resignation letter.

Zelaya denied that he had signed such a letter. A senior U.S. official said, “It is hard to take that letter seriously given how President Zelaya was removed from office.”

Correspondent William Booth contributed to this report from Mexico City.

This story is filed under: Politics

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