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President Zelaya and his negotiators, and the Resistance, have set that day as the deadline for the Junta to step down and reinstate Zelaya, or, they say, the talks will have failed.
They are not going to let these people dick around any more. But I wonder what's going to happen. The Junta is increasingly desperate and irrational. Their coup is falling apart, but they may not fall without harming a lot of people. They've got squadrons of Darth Vader cops everywhere. There's no way they can hold this together through the election. It is absurd. I remember reading a comment by a Junta general a few weeks ago that the military "is not going to permit a boycott of the election." What are they thinking of doing--dragging people out of their homes to the polling place? How can the military "prevent" a boycott of the election? So that scenario--an entirely rigged election, with all their henchmen running things, the opposition media shut down, hundreds of leftist campaign workers in jail, one candidate with broken bones from a police beating, and the military dragging people to vote--is untenable, really. They can't hope to achieve any legitimacy with such a scene.
The other thing I was quite startled to read was Greg Granden's report in The Nation that Oscar Arias recently said that Honduras' Constitution is "the worse in the world," and if a fair election cannot be conducted, the only solution is a Constituent Assembly (what Zelaya and the poor majority wanted all along). I can't understand why this wasn't a major headline. Well, I can understand it--it gives the lie to the Junta's lie about Zelaya's motive for proposing the Constituent Assembly (that he just wanted to lift his own term limit), which the corpo/fascist press has repeated and repeated, as if it was a legit charge--without bothering to quote the resolution, or look into the facts--and Oscar Arias saying that the present Constitution is for shits makes the corpo/fascist press look like the snakeoil salesmen that they are.
BUT I thought it was momentous. Arias is the US-designated initial negotiator. I don't know if he's cut himself loose from Clinton, or is reflecting current Clinton/Obama policy, that a Constituent Assembly is the only solution. It's hard for me to believe that the US would ever be on the right side of anything. I hope it's true. But I can't figure how anybody's going to get that organized in time to fend off a confrontation on Wednesday in which the bad guys are armed to the teeth and spoiling to bash some more leftist heads.
I don't think it's that unthinkable that Obama/Clinton may, at this point (don't know about initially), be battling for control of US foreign policy against the McCain/DeMint cabal (and all the Bushwhack moles at State, in the Pentagon and the CIA), and may see a Constituent Assembly as a solution. The Honduran coup could be seen as an act of sabotage against the more polite US domination that they had intended in Latin America. They may be pissed. And they may think they can retain their objectives in that process--keeping the US military base, striking a blow at ALBA (no alliance with Venezuela) and keeping the corporate sweatshops, but possibly compromising on items like the minimum wage, or on getting rid of Honduras' absurd ONE term on the president, while preserving the essence of a political system that they can control. I don't think they want the current situation in Honduras to continue, nor do they want an explosion of Junta violence. The current crisis is not going to achieve any legitimacy even for a backgrounded Junta. There is no way a fair election can be achieved by the end of November. So they must have a Plan B. And holding a C/A election may be it.
And maybe that's why things are so quiet. There is a plan. It will be set in motion by Wednesday.
If this is true (and not just wishful thinking on my part), it will be infinitely better for the people of Honduras--to have a political fight about the C/A reps, and about the Constitution, etc. They may win some, they may lose some. But at least the process will give their movement long term focus and cohesion (rather than just resistance, and getting your head bashed, and living in fear). It gives them something to build on, and it will be a major victory for the grass roots to have a C/A at all, even if they get only a tenth of what they want out of it.
One more thought--an item that supports this notion (of an Obama/Clinton Plan B), and that is the curious announcement, yesterday, that the talks had yielded two agreements, 1) Zelaya and Mitcheletti will form a joint cabinet, and 2) the Junta has dropped its demand for amnesty for themselves. The latter either means that they trust that their stacked judicial system will never go after them--so that it was an empty, giveaway item--or that they actually DO have an amnesty agreement (an informal one) and it is in exchange for a C/A. Not prosecuting them is a big thing for Zelaya to give up, and he doesn't want it known yet that he did so. I know it's odd to think that the opposite of what was said is true--but their "giving up" amnesty is odder still. Also, it is a common provision of peace deals in recent Latin American history, in similar situations--amnesty all around. (There may be prosecutions 20 or 30 years later, but not now.) Zelaya or a spokeperson quickly stated that Zelaya had never proposed amnesty for himself, because he doesn't need it--he did nothing wrong. A touchy matter, eh? That's what I mean. The whole thing is odd. And I hope and pray that this is why: The US is going to endorse holding a C/A and force the Junta out.
I'm sure I wouldn't have this hope if I hadn't read The Nation article. But Oscar Arias saying what he said alters my view of the situation.
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