Honduras' sham election
Shaun Joseph analyzes the upcoming elections in Honduras--a sham vote orchestrated by the coup regime after it broke its commitment to restore Manuel Zelaya.
November 24, 2009
JUST OVER five months since the June 28 coup d'etat against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, elections scheduled for November 29 will complete the current phase of the struggle over Honduras' future--but only by opening another, perhaps darker, period.
A "peaceful" resolution to the Honduran drama was widely expected after October 30, when U.S. negotiators brokered the Tegucigalpa/San José Accords between representatives Zelaya and the golpista (coup-maker) government headed by Roberto Micheletti.
But Washington's hands-off behavior in the following week allowed Micheletti to break the agreement by unilaterally announcing the formation of a "unity government," headed by himself, while the golpista-controlled Congress deliberately dithered on the question of restoring Zelaya to office, which was the prime condition of the opposition to the coup regime to recognize the elections.
Although the Accords are obviously in tatters--members of the "unity government" aren't even known, nearly three weeks after they were supposed to be installed--the U.S. insists on acting as if everything is still going according to plan. This is because the agreement, were it not a fiction, would legitimize the upcoming elections and lead to the normalization of Honduras' international relations, which is important for North American corporations, especially in the fruit, textile and mining sectors.
http://socialistworker.org/2009/11/24/sham-election-in-honduras