Article by Angelo Alves, member of the Political Committee and of the International Department
In Honduras, the country where its legitimate president is confined within the Brazilian embassy’s premises, for over two months; where the rebels tear agreements apart, with the connivance of the so-called "international community"; where those who pursue the struggle for freedom and democracy are persecuted and killed; where popular demonstrations are violently repressed, something happened, which some called "elections". A similar farce as those so often mentioned by the Avante! in other texts and that, invariably, always have the same purpose: the attempt to legitimate a crime, to whiten the criminals and subdue a people, as in the Honduras, as in Afghanistan.
If there were any doubts about the Honduras situation, now all is very clear. Negotiations and agreements – since São José up to the recent Tegucigalpa "agreement", torn apart by the Michelleti click – have been but diversion manoeuvres of a conjoint rebel strategy and of imperialism in order to win time, trying "to anesthetize" popular resistance towards the coup d’état and "legitimate it".
Soldiers on the street, oppressing the people; military sieges to resistance premises and zones of influence; hundreds of foreign "observers" monitoring" the "electoral process", mostly North-Americans passing by Hondurans; strange explosions immediately used by rebel policial and military forces to charge the resistance, with absence of proofs; several irregularities within the "electoral process"; false data and highly inflationed on what concerns participation ( 70% of the Hondurans were to have answered positively to Zelaya’s appeal to boycott the elections and the rebel regime announced a 60% participation), the story of "elections", which Obama’s administration ad joint –under-secretary of State, considered as "just and transparent", on Monday, declaring they were " an important step-ahead" for the country. If there were anybody with doubts about the USA’s direct and indirect involvement in the coup d’état, they are totally dissipated.
Therefore, just as the doubts on the role of personalities such as Oscar Arias, president of Costa Rica and the secretary-general of the dying OEA, Jose Miguel Insulza, are dissipated, equally "pioneers" of the rebel elections recognition, together with Alvaro Uribe.
In fact, on an administration which has just approved the commitment of more than 30 000 soldiers to Afghanistan point of view, of approving the highest military budget ever, in the USA’s history and of reinforcing its military presence in Latin America, with seven new military bases in Colombia, these coup elections might have been a step ahead. A step ahead, because the coup d’état in Honduras is far reaching, beyond its political reality. It is inserted within an imperialism retaliation strategy against Latin America’s progressist processes under way and is, above all, a "smart power" efficiency test of the "Nobel" Obama ‘s administration on the subcontinent. And, therefore, the struggle for the non-recognition of these Honduras coup elections represents a political and anti-imperialist character, of a strategic reach. The recognition of these "elections" is a real threat against the Latin America peoples’ and a step more for new, deeper and dangerous conflicts in the region.
At the moment of this text’s editing, we have not heard about the 19th Ibero-American Summit, which takes place in Estoril. But, any other position than an unequivocal non-recognition of the Honduras coup elections, would certainly be a very bad sign for the Latin America people – who have just elected another progressist government in Uruguay, headed by an old guerrilla, once called "a terrorist" by the reactionary right-wing – and a hard blow within the already fragile credibility of this space and these summits.
