Guardian: "Trampling on Honduran democracy"

[Elmore Furth]

Ten families in Honduras control most of the economy and the media and dominate the state apparatus. Zelaya doubled of the minimum wage, the introded free school meals and the provided of agricultural machinery for small farmers.

It looks like the US government has given up the fight to reverse the coup.

Firedoglake gives an interesting time line of events of the coup.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/16337

On Sunday, Honduras's coup regime, with the support of the US, is staging a presidential election of a special kind. Voters will have a choice of two candidates: the coup supporter Porfirio Lobo or the coup supporter Elvin Santos. The anti-coup candidate, Carlos Reyes, has withdrawn his nomination and condemned the election as fraudulent.

In line with demands from trade unions and social movements, Zelaya had proposed a referendum on constitutional reform to be held on the same day as a new president was elected. This proposal has been ludicrously misrepresented as an attempt by Zelaya to extend his term in office; a charge that is logically impossible to sustain but that, with the help of much of the international media, became the central justification for the military takeover.

Following a state department visit in late October, the regime finally caved in and signed a deal which provided the mechanism for Zelaya's return to office. But behind the scenes, Clinton was already preparing to sell out Honduran democracy.

For weeks, the hard right of the Republican party, under the leadership of Senator Jim DeMint, had been threatening to block Democrat nominees for key posts in Latin America. Clinton wanted a way out of the impasse, and DeMint, a fanatical supporter of the Honduran coup, offered her a trade-off: we will agree your nominees, he told her, if you will agree to recognise the outcome of the Honduran election, regardless of whether Zelaya is returned to the presidential palace. Clinton, never a fan of leftwing Latin American leaders, was happy to acquiesce.


Trampling on Honduran democracy