Zelaya may return to Honduras even if he faces arrest

[Judi Lynn]

Source: McClatchy

Zelaya may return to Honduras even if he faces arrest
Tyler Bridges
August 15, 2009 5:21 PM
McClatchy Newspapers
(MCT)

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - Ousted President Manuel Zelaya's closest collaborators in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, are advising him to return to Honduras even if that means that the de facto government now in power will arrest him immediately.

They say that Zelaya's return would dramatically scramble the political landscape in this small Central American country, where Zelaya's replacement, President Roberto Micheletti, seems intent on withstanding widespread international pressure to step aside.

Driving the thinking of the Zelaya advisers is the Micheletti government's steadfast refusal to sign an agreement crafted by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias that would restore Zelaya to power for the remaining five months of his term with limited powers.

''I think Zelaya ought to go to San Jose (Costa Rica), sign the agreement and come to Honduras,'' Victor Meza, the senior official in Zelaya's cabinet as minister of internal security, said in an interview. ''A majority of his ministers here have come to the same conclusion, that he needs to come here. He'd be taken out of prison on the shoulders of the people to the Casa Presidencial.''


Read more: http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp?Section=WORLD&ID=565632766357929991

[Peace Patriot]

1. Beware of the psyops and disinformation in this article. It is thick.

For instance...

"It's also not clear whether a groundswell of popular support for Zelaya actually exists. His (Zelaya's) calls for a popular insurrection to topple Micheletti have gone unheeded, and pro-Zelaya protests have petered out. / Micheletti's advisers believe that most Hondurans side with them."

Yup, "Micheletti's advisers" believe that "most Hondurans" side with them--or else they get whacked up side the head, cs-gassed, the tires of their protest buses shot out, dragged from the buses and made to walk home, imprisoned (over one thousand political prisoners), or arrested, tortured and killed and their bodies left out in public view so all can see and know the consequences of not siding with the coupsters.

McClatchy was a decent news service on Iraq--the only one--but they are putrid on Latin American issues, likely the influence of the putrid Miami Herald. This article drips with distortions, clever language and bald-faced lies. And, to top off their fascist confection, they drag this poor taxi driver into it--a quite typical "scab" personality, IF McClatchy is quoting him correctly on his use of the word "peace": "'What I want is to be able to work,' said Reymundo Aguilar, a 40-year-old taxi driver. 'The marchers in favor of Mel (Zelaya), they block the streets. So do the people in favor of peace (Micheletti). We're the ones who suffer the most, the poor.'''

This is McClatchy's parenthesis--"...the people in favor of peace (Micheletti)." Did the taxi driver mean this? Hard to say. He is, in any case, something of a myopic idiot. Who raised the minimum wage by 60% (offending Chiquita Banana and other global corporate predators)? Not Micheletti and his ruling elite! And who lowered bus ticket prices for those "who suffer the most, the poor"? Not the coup gang! But maybe that's Reymundo Aquilar's real beef--the poor can afford to ride the buses, and not be gouged by taxi drivers.

And no other ordinary Hondurans are quoted! None! Not one of the many thousands of protesters! Not one of their leaders! Not one of the thousands who walked across Honduras in converging marches last week. Not one family member of the 'disappeared,' of the murdered or of the numerous political prisoners. Not one of the activists in hiding--including priests and other human rights workers--for fear of their lives. McClatchy is egregiously editorializing on behalf of this rightwing coup, by trying to position this taxi driver as the 'reasonable' middle ground between the overthrow of democracy (the coup) and protestors who don't want peace. And the latter allegation has been created by our corpo/fascist press, last week, by their focus on a couple of instances of vandalism (in which no one was hurt) that occurred far from the big marches (and--little doubt--were perpetrated by coup agents provocateur), to slander this overwhelmingly peaceful citizen resistance against the coup.

It is impossible to know if anything in this article is true--it is so biased. I don't trust one word of it--including the opinions of "President Manuel Zelaya's closest collaborators in Tegucigalpa, Honduras" (Zelaya is NOT in Honduras), which McClatchy generalizes with "they say that...," yet produces only one quote, from Victor Mesa. How do we know who "they" are? How do we know that Mesa has not defected to the coup and is trying to set a trap for Zelaya? McClatchy's effort here is clearly to demoralize Zelaya's supporters and send a "game over" message to Zelaya, trying to pressure him to return to Honduras without the Arias agreement in place.

The article shows yet more bias by its dragging Hugo Chavez into it--yet another rightwing "talking point." Zelaya's relations with Chavez were no different than Venezuelan relations with dozens of other countries--involving oil barter and other economic initiatives through the trade group, ALBA, in Central America, and--in South America, UNASUR, MERCOSUR and others. Venezuela has widespread cooperative relationships with numerous Latin American leaders, and is close friends and allies with many, including Lula da Silva in Brazil, Chrstina Fernandez in Argentina, Tabare Vasquez in Uruguay, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Fernando Lugo in Paraguay. Honduras, stuck in the middle of three leftist countries--with leftist or left-leaning governments on every border--an OAS now dominated by leftist governments, and all trade groups now dominated by leftist leaders, would have been utterly stupid not to "veer to the left" as McClatchy describes it--stupid like the leaders of the Honduran coup, who now face sanctions and condemnation by virtually every government in Latin America, not to mention the EU (heavy sanctions) and the UN General Assembly. Stupid like Bushwhacks (who are running this coup from Washington--John McCain prime among them). Stupid, venal, narrow-visioned bullies, whose only concern is their own pocketbooks and all that filthy booty that McCain and others are shoveling their way. Hugo Chavez is their "talking point"--the bogey man that they and our corpo/fascist press have created, which bears no resemblance to reality, and is herein used as an excuse for dragging Honduras' president out of bed at gunpoint, exiling him to a foreign country, declaring martial law, shutting down the media, and using live ammunition against peaceful protestors??!!

Junk journalism. Not to be trusted.

[Alhena]

2. That approach has really worked well in Burma ...

they'd just put Zelaya in comfortable house arrest where he the world would eventually forget about him.