My previous diary, which includes links to a detailed history to the roots of this crisis is here.
To summarize:
- the right-wing candidate Juan Orlando Hernandez, widely suspected of having been installed by narcotraffickers and an associate of Trump’s own John Kelly, used control of the courts to override the constitution and permit him to run for another term.
- This was precisely what we accused former President Manuel Zelaya of trying to do and thereby justified having Zelaya removed by the military in what our own ambassador called a military coup (but which our State Department refused to recognize as such).
- This having further irritated a citizenry that has extremely good reason to be irritated, they decided to try to defeat him at the ballot box. The progressive candidate, Salvador Nasralla was winning in a romp until ::boom:: magical computer crash/massive delays and when the machines come up, suddenly the right-wing candidate is pulling ahead. Not even an original scenario for election theft, which everyone in Latin America is aware of.
- Even one of the judges on the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, which oversees the election, expressed “serious doubts” about the vote counting.
- People protest, cops beat them down, and Americans in droves shrug their shoulders as democratic aspirations in one of the minor vassal states are once again crushed with the assistance/indifference of our government.
A nice summary, including video is available from The Real News:
Also note this connection to the Trump administration. Jonathan Blitzer, The New Yorker:
The White House chief of staff, John Kelly, however, has been a vocal defender of Hernández since the days when Kelly led the U.S. military’s Southern Command, and he is among those in the Administration who see Hernández as the United States’s only reliable ally in the region. In fact, there has been an understanding in Washington that Hernández’s tactics are disturbing but tolerable. During the past several years, tens of thousands of Central Americans have arrived at the U.S. border, fleeing violence at home.
But the stench is high enough that even some western media are starting to notice. The Economist:
Before the vote, The Economist obtained a tape of what appears to be a training session for party members who would man polling stations. In it, the trainer instructs the workers how to carry out “Plan B”, a set of apparently fraudulent “strategies” that includes filling in leftover ballots, spoiling ballots and damaging barcodes on tally sheets if they record a majority for opposition parties. The purpose of this technique, says the government employee leading the session, is to delay inclusion of tally sheets favouring the opposition in the preliminary count. As Mr Hernández pulled into the lead on November 29th, opposition supporters consulting the TSE’s website claimed that nearly all tally sheets excluded from the count favoured Mr Nasralla.
Even the people who run coups think this election theft was done poorly. Freddy Cuevas, WaPo:
Retired Gen. Romeo Vazquez, who led the coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya in 2009, blamed the unrest on the electoral tribunal’s delay in returning results.
“The crisis has already begun in Honduras,” he said. Things will not settle down once the results are released either, because people are convinced the vote processing was manipulated. “The electoral court is not doing things correctly and things have gotten out of control. The people believe there was fraud because the court did not make the election results immediately known.”
If you are one of the handful of Americans who believe that democracy is something that not just Americans deserve, you can follow developments via anthropologist Adrienne Pine here and at Honduras Culture and Politics here.
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Update: The government has established a “State of Siege”. As former Defense/Foreign Minister Edmundo Orellano says:
Translation: “A State of Siege during vote counting? The same as a Coup d’Etat. “
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Added 12/2/17, 12:41PM Eastern Time.
Since coup defenders will not take the time to read the history I have so carefully compiled, here are the key links. Attempts to deny what they say will be treated with appropriate disdain.
1. Our Ambassador to Honduras himself said the removal of Zelaya was a military coup. He was supported in this by his Deputy Chief of Mission and It was reiterated by director of Policy Planning at the State Department Ann-Marie Slaughter. The whole f—king world said it was a military coup. Claiming that it wasn’t a military coup is Cheneyism (e.g., Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction).
2. The fact that it was a military coup meant that aid to the regime had to be cut off. Not just military aid, but all aid. See Max Fisher, Washington Post. Instead, aid was flowing to the people who conducted the coup through “development grants.”
3. The State Department illegally failed to cut off aid for months after the coup took place.
3. Secretary Clinton herself has admitted she did everything that those who wanted to cement the coup in place wanted. Denying that she had culpability for what happened is Cheneyism. [fn1, fn2]
4. Definitely read this and this.
fn1. I voted for Clinton knowing she had done this very wrong thing in Honduras. I am not sorry for doing so. I am pretty sure she would not be behind the coup that is currently taking place. Acknowledging that people we admire and support politically have some terrible blindness on some issues is what adults do.
fn2. The historical record is clear that overthrowing governments leads to even worse consequences than those we fear from them. With Iran, for example, we are still paying for a coup conducted well over half a century ago. Our grandchildren will be paying for the evil we are doing in Honduras today.