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I'm quoting the entire first section, because it is such a good leadup to its punch line--and what punch line! What comes next (my translation)
Tue, 12/29/2009 - 13:44 — AP
Carta de Lisandro
libertarioshn.blogspot.com
December 26, 2009
2009 is over and with it goes the most intense year of our recent history. This year we experienced the growth of political consciousness and the mobilization of a people who, from the left, we always believed to be asleep. To our delight we watched the narrow streets of our cities fill with fury and indignation, taking on lies and terror with pride and courage. We learned to recognize one another, to listen to our music, to write our own poetry, to paint our dignity in capital letters.
This was also the year in which ambition, opportunism and desperation laid bare the bloodthirsty nature of a mediocre elite, capable of doing whatever it takes to maintain their historical privileges unchanged, who, supported by a pseudo-fascist middle class legitimated state terrorism by virtue of their fear and loathing of the majority.
Now we are all naked for history to see and while the new year is an opportunity for us—on a personal level—to evaluate our goals, to RE-recognize our failures and prepare ourselves to create conditions that will make us into better people, clean ourselves up and forgive in order to have a fresh start in the new year, we should also understand that, in the case of Honduras, there will be no blank slate. "Neither forget nor forgive," proclaims the slogan of COFADEH and these words ring especially true on this day. We are naked, and we will continue laying our essence bare, because the Honduran crisis, far from coming to a close, remains and if anything is intensifying.
In the new year 2010, Porfirio Lobo Sosa will receive the presidency of a country in ruins (if he does indeed receive it, which remains in serious doubt). The possibility to achieve the consensus necessary to reach a solution to the current political crisis is in his hands, and he will fail, because we all know that Lobo lacks the necessary qualities to carry out that task, just as he lacks real interest in it.
Our national economy is bankrupt and this isn't just coming from me, it comes from the figures released by international organizations that watch in horror as the horrific coup adventure threatens to drag all the fragile regional economies down with it. An internal debt of over 10,000 million lempiras owed to private banks with an unrepayable 10% annual interest, a 4% decrease in the economy and development that will require the new administration to devalue the currency between 20 and 30%, to increase value-added tax from 12 to 15%, raise property taxes, vehicle taxes, import and export taxes, income tax and most appetizing of all for big international capital: privatize the few national resources still in the hands of the state.
Apart from unpopular economic reforms, Lobo will have to lead negotiation on the new national teachers' contract, which they've been trying to get rid of for ten years. Manuel Zelaya managed to pay the teachers the debt owed them using funds from the ERP , a product of the external debt forgiveness program during the Maduro administration, capital that the new government will not be able to count on.
Agrarian conflicts have begun to appear on the national political scene. The growing pressure of the landless to gain access to more and better resources for agriculture against the greedy interests of the landowning class will create an unprecedented battlefield. In the near future, unemployment in the big urban centers will push more agricultural workers to organize and take over the fallow lands monopolized by banks and the oligarchy. Migration is no longer an escape valve for the crisis because the borders have closed and furthermore unemployment in the United States is pushing more of our compatriots to a shame-filled return.
Facing such an environment of ungovernability, both the current and the new administration will use the only resource they have left: Force.
Full-blown oppression, state terrorism and political assassinations have become the only tool for controlling an organized nation capable of putting serious pressure on the dis-government and there is little Lobo can do to get out of the circle of death drawn around him by his closest allies. His bodyguards, in addition to keeping him from harm, will have the delicate task of monitoring him. At Porfirio Lobo's 62nd birthday party, Walter López Contreras, de facto minister of the Micheletti regime gave him a macabre political "gag" gift, in the name of the dictatorial administration: pajamas. (MORE) http://www.quotha.net/node/672(my emphasis) |
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