An election made in Washington

Friday 27 November 2009

Calvin Tucker

On Sunday, a minority of Hondurans will cast their votes for a new president in an election which can only be described as farcical.

The legitimate President Manuel Zelaya is imprisoned in the Brazilian embassy surrounded by riot police, having re-entered the country after being overthrown in a military coup last June.

The coupsters are in charge of counting the votes, but they can't lose anyway, because their opponents have withdrawn from the contest and the resistance movement is calling for a boycott of the poll.

Human rights abuses and killings mount up.

The US, almost alone in the world, has said it will recognise the result. But what is less well known, at least outside Honduras, is that the terms of this election were decided in a little-known back-room deal between the hard right of the US Republican Party and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Four weeks ago, it all looked very different. Under pressure from both Clinton's State Department and resistance from the Honduran people, the coup regime finally caved in and accepted the San Jose accord, a Costa Rican-brokered compromise that would see Zelaya back in office, albeit as head of a "unity government" and with him promising to shelve plans for a constitutional referendum.

Although this would have left much of the power in the hands of the army and other state institutions controlled by the elites - hence the reason the accord garnered US support - it would at the very least have got the army off the streets and independent media unmuzzled.

When Zelaya was seized by the military on June 28, Barack Obama spoke of the "terrible precedent" that would be set if the coup was not reversed.

And in the weeks and months that followed, a significant amount of economic aid was withdrawn and critically the US threatened to join the rest of the world in refusing to recognise elections conducted under conditions of censorship, torture and assassinations.

To the surprise of some and the dismay of others, Obama appeared to making good on his promise to seek "a new chapter of engagement" with Latin America.

The coup leaders, whose intention all along was to run out the clock on the Zelaya presidency by hanging on until tomorrow's election, were mortified. But there was little they could do.

When the State Department sent a high-level team to Honduras in late October, the regime ate humble pie and signed an agreement which provided the mechanism for Zelaya's return to office.

But what exactly was it the coup leaders were conceding? On the face of it, Zelaya appeared to be the lamest of lame ducks. He would have to share power with the oligarchy that deposed him, he would be prohibited from arguing for constitutional reform and, in any event, his one-term-only presidency expired within weeks.

As the Washington Post put it two months earlier: "This outcome would be a victory for the Hondurans who supported Mr Zelaya's ouster because they feared he was attempting to mimic Mr Chavez's dismantling of Venezuela's democracy.

"Mr Chavez would lose his Honduran puppet by means he could not contest. A new president would be chosen in an internationally monitored election this fall."

What the Washington Post didn't understand, but both President Zelaya and the coup regime did, was that Zelaya's return to office had the potential to unleash an unstoppable momentum for democratic reform, possibly culminating in resistance leader Carlos Reyes being elected president.

Someone else who understood the implications was the ultra-right Republican senator for south Carolina Jim DeMint. DeMint had become an unofficial spokesman for the coup regime and was intent on doing everything possible to ensure its survival.

For months, he had been using his position as senator to block the State Department's nominations to key government posts in Latin America. Clinton was looking for a way out of this impasse and DeMint offered her one.

On November 5, just days after the coup leaders signed San Jose, DeMint issued an extraordinary press release: "Secretary Clinton and Assistant Secretary Shannon have assured me that the US will recognise the outcome of the Honduran elections regardless of whether Manuel Zelaya is reinstated.

"I am happy to report the Obama administration has finally reversed its misguided Honduran policy."

If anyone doubted the terms of the trade-off, DeMint helpfully spelt them out: "My goal has always been to work with the administration to get the policy on the Honduran elections reversed. Now that this goal has been achieved, I will lift my objections to the two nominations."

When the State Department confirmed the news of its volte-face to a stunned international community, the coup leaders understood the message only too well.

With US recognition now in the bag, they were no longer under pressure to reinstate the legitimate president. Zelaya was furious, but the San Jose deal was effectively dead, killed by the very same State Department that had played such a key role in imposing it.

So Sunday's election goes ahead with the blessing of the US, but not of the Honduran people, their president or the rest of the world. But the forces inside and outside the US administration that conspired to wreck Obama's vision of a new era in regional relations still have to contend with popular opposition to the coup.

After 150 days of marching, striking, blocking roads and getting used to day and night curfews, the smell of tear gas and the grief for friends and family members murdered by the coup regime, the Honduran people are in no mood to surrender. The most decisive battles are yet to come.

Calvin Tucker is co-editor of 21stcenturysocialism.com.