Sixty percent of Honduran voters turned out 29 November to elect a new president, and they chose centre-right National Party candidate Porfirio Lobo over the former president Manuel Zelaya. Lobo is expected to play a unifying role, with support from several members of Zelaya’s own Liberal Party. Zelaya lost support when he began to move further left and closer to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales. Zelaya was forced out of the country into exile for several weeks but returned secretly in September. He has since been living in the Brazilian embassy. Lobo was defeated by Zelaya in elections in 2005. There were some clashes between police and protestors, but they appear to have been limited. Interim President Roberto Micheletti had banned gatherings before the election, to avoid violence.
Links to other sites: BBC, Voice of America
Jose Manuel Zelaya, who was deposed as president of Honduras in a coup 28 June, says he will not participate in a presidential election slated for 29 November and that he has asked his supporters to renounce it. His announcement came in a published letter explaining his case to US President Barack Obama. His decision is a blow to hopes for a negotiated settlement that arose when he and Roberto Micheletti, who pushed him from power, signed a US-brokered agreement in October that called for a unity government until the election. It also called for Congress to decide if Zelaya should be returned to power, but Congress has opted to hand that decision to the country’s highest court. The elections are causing problems for Honduran citizens outside the country, who are unsure where and how to vote: in Florida the Honduran consulate says citizens should vote there, but the Honduran government says the consulate no longer has the authority to authorize this.
The dispute is the latest in a series of diplomatic tussles involving Hondurans. The Honduran ambassador to the UN was expelled from the UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva 14 September after the group’s president, Alex van Meeuwen of Belgium, decided that Delmer Urbizo, the Honduran ambassador, was not the legitimate representative of the government of Honduras. Van Meeuwen made his decision after various points of order called by a group of Latin American countries who questioned the Honduran’s credentials and the legitimacy of the government he represents. Argentina, Brazil, Cuba and Mexico argued that the UN General Assembly had called on organizations not to recognize the interim government of Honduras. But Urbizo has told GenevaLunch there is no Honduran government in exile under former President Zelaya, and therefore the Honduran people is being deprived of its legitimate right to be represented in international forums.
Links to other sites: CNN, Miami Herald
The UN General Assembly has approved 114 to 18, with 44 abstentions, the controversial Goldstone report into atrocities in the Gaza war in the winter of 2008/09, and recommended that the Security Council act if both Israel and the Palestinians had not conducted their own investigations within three months. CNN, New York Times
Honduras‘ former President Manuel Zelaya says the agreement reached one week ago that would have led to a power-sharing government and his reinstatement as president is dead, after the two sides failed to agree on the government by Thursday, 5 November. The Supreme Court still needs to make a recommendation to the Honduran Congress on whether Zelaya may complete his term. Al-Jazeera, BBC
Morgan Tsvangirai says he will end his three-week boycott of the Zimbabwean unity government “effective immediately”, and has given Robert Mugabe 30 days in which to implement his side of the bargain that led to the deal. Tsvangirai walked out after Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party began to harrass Tsvangirai’s MDC party members. Al-Jazeera, BBC, The Guardian
The agreement between the two rival sides in Honduras’ four-month constitutional crisis will be decided by the Congress, which is in recess, after taking into consideration an opinion of the country’s Supreme Court.
The agreement would allow Manuel Zelaya back into the presidential palace to serve out his term at the head of a national unity government to be installed by 5 November, would lift international sanctions on the country, establish a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the events of the past four months, and sets the stage for elections to be held 29 November whose outcome will be accepted and recognized by the rest of the world.
The Supreme Court in June voted to oust Zelaya for attempting to change the constitution in favour of a second term for himself. Congress then installed interim president Roberto Micheletti. Commentators say it is unlikely the Supreme Court will reverse itself. Congress may decide to vote in favour of the agreement in the interests of ending the strife. The opposition Nationalist party candidate is currently leading the polls. Reuters India, Reuters South Africa, Wall Street Journal
Update 24 October 12:20 The de facto president of Honduras, Roberto Micheletti, has proposed that he resign from the presidency if Manuel Zelaya, the president deposed by the military 28 June and sent into exile, withdraws his claim to be reinstated as president. A government of national reconciliation would be installed until new elections, programmed for 29 November. Zelaya has said that free and fair elections cannot be held in the current circumstances. Zelaya’s term would have ended in January.
Zelaya returned to Honduras secretly two weeks ago and has been in the Brazilian embassy since then
The de facto government made the announcement Friday, 23 October as talks between the two sides broke down, after the government missed a midnight deadline to reinstate Zelaya. Zelaya rejected the demand, which he said was similar to a proposal made several weeks ago. Reuters, Romandie News,
Honduras ordered all members of the Argentine embassy in Tegucigalpa to leave the country within three days, Tuesday 18 August. But Argentine foreign minister, Jorge Taiana, on a trade mission in Mexico, said he had not been informed of the deadline, and his diplomats were staying put. The Honduran ministry of foreign affairs said it was expelling the diplomats in line with “strict reciprocity” for the expulsion last week of the Honduran ambassador in Buenos Aires, who stated publicly that she approved of the forced removal of Manuel Zelaya as Hondura’s president last 28 June. The interim government of Honduras said its relations with Argentina would be conducted through the Argentine embassy in Israel. Honduras previously expelled Venezuelan diplomats, most of whom have stayed because President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela says he will not take orders from the interim government. BBC, Clarin (Spa), CNN, La Nación (Spa)
Honduras’ ousted president Manuel Zelaya is in neighbouring Nicaragua at the head of a caravan of vehicles set to cross the border near El Progreso, Honduras. He has said he hopes the soldiers guarding the border will lay down their arms and recognize him as their president. The de facto government in Honduras imposed a 18:00 to 06:00 curfew on the border region and has said it will arrest Zelaya if he enters the country. US and Organization of American States (OAS) officials have counselled caution, warning of the possibility of violence. CNN, El Heraldo.hn (Spa)
The European Union’s external affairs commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, said Monday 20 July that she was suspending EU aid of €65.5 million to the impoverished Central American nation of Honduras as a result of the political stand-off there. She said the decision was “difficult” . Hillary Clinton called Honduran Interim President Roberto Micheletti from New Delhi, India and warned of “harsh consequences” if the negotiations between the de facto government and ousted president Manuel Zelaya failed to reach an accord. The measures are seen as increasing pressure on the government in Honduras.(CNN).
Talks broke down Sunday 19 July between opposing parties in the Honduran constitutional crisis, mediated by former Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, who said he would try for three more days to reach a settlement. The de facto Honduran government of Roberto Micheletti rejected a proposal to allow ousted president Manuel Zelaya to return as head of a unity government till early elections are held in October. Arias evoked the possibility of civil war if an agreement were not reached, saying most Hondurans had weapons. The Honduran deputy foreign minister, Marta Lorena Alvarado, rejected the possibility of strife, but Zelaya said he was organizing “internal resistance” in Honduras to prepare for his return. Zelaya was bundled into a plane 28 June by Honduran soldiers and flown to Costa Rica, after attempting to push through a referendum on his reelection which had been rejected by most institutions in Honduras. He attempted to fly back to Tegucigalpa, the capital, 5 July but was unable to land. Two people died in clashes with the military that day. BBC, CNN, El Heraldo.hn (Spa)
Oscar Arias, former president of Costa Rica and Nobel prize winner, will lead talks with rival Honduran political forces in an effort to find a settlement to the crisis that has swept the Central American nation following the ouster of its president 28 June. The meetings were announced in Washington following talks between ousted president Manuel Zelaya and US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.
Violent clashes at the airport at Tegucigalpa, Honduras late 5 July between supporters of ousted president Manuel Zelaya and soldiers claimed the lives of at least two people. Zelaya’s small airplane was denied permission to land by the interim government, and the runway was blocked by military vehicles. The government said it would arrest Zelaya if he landed. Zelaya was bundled out of the country 28 June after attempting to institute changes to the constitution permitting a second presidential term. The government has said it will hold new elections but will not permit Zelaya to return. The Organization of American States (OAS) and the UN General Assembly have condemned the actions. BBC, CNN, Tiempo (Spa)
A defiant Manuel Zelaya, until recently president of the Central American nation of Honduras, told a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Nicaragua 29 June that he would return home this week. The Honduran military had bundled Zelaya onto a plane to Costa Rica early the previous day. US President Barack Obama called his ouster a coup and a “dangerous precedent”. In a bid to extend his four-year term, Zelaya clashed with congress, the supreme court, the Catholic church and even his own party, the Liberals. Elected as a centre-right candidate, Zelaya has increasingly allied himself to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. In the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa, troops fired tear gas at protestors who were supporting Zelaya. BBC, Los Angeles Times, NYT
President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was overthrown Sunday in an army coup and exiled to Costa Rica. Interim President Roberto Micheletti has announced a curfew. Zelaya’s leftist politics and efforts to change the constitution to allow for presidential re-election angered the army, Congress and the courts, reports Reuters, and his ouster provides the first challenge to US President Barack Obama’s Latin American policy. BBC
An earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale struck near the Gulf island of Roatan early in the morning 28 May, causing six deaths and extensive damage in towns on the Northern coast of Honduras and the Gulf islands. It was followed a half-hour later by a 4.8 magnitude aftershock. In El Progreso, a section of a bridge across the Ulua River collapsed.
The government of Honduras says that a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) which it is hosting 2 and 3 June in San Pedro Sula will go ahead. CNN, El Heraldo (Spa), La Prensa (Spa)
