Micheletti Willing to Meet With Zelaya to End Honduras Crisis

Source: Bloomberg

Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Honduras’s acting President Roberto Micheletti said he is willing to meet with ousted President Manuel Zelaya and discuss ending the political crisis if Zelaya accepts presidential elections in November.

Micheletti won’t discuss canceling arrest warrants or charges against Zelaya, who was ousted in June, according to a statement written by Micheletti and read in English by Carlos Lopez Contreras, the acting foreign minister, at a televised news conference in Tegucigalpa late yesterday.

“I’m ready to discuss how to resolve the political crisis under the framework provided to us by the Honduran Constitution and I’m ready to do so with Mr. Zelaya as long as he explicitly recognizes the constitutionally mandated presidential election,” Micheletti said in the statement. “We seek a political solution but can’t solve his legal problems.”

Zelaya returned to the country two days ago and is being housed at the Brazilian embassy in the capital after his previous attempts to return in July failed. His homecoming may have put Micheletti on the defensive and caused him to seek a negotiated solution to the conflict, Christopher Sabatini, senior policy director at the Council of the Americas in New York, said in a phone interview.



Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aaDhlwZxatWU

Coup plotters and the media keep misleading.

I think Micheletti is done. And I think he knows it.

the Constitution so that he himself might be re-elected?

But I guess it is just a matter of perspective: a real military coup overthrowing an elected government vs an proposed referendum to change a law.

Odd what some people focus on.

and limited the president to ONE term among other things in order to enhance the power of the "School of the Americas" trained military which is supported by US tax dollars.

It's a good idea to let the people decide who they want in public office--so Thomas Jefferson and most of our Founders thought. That's why they considered term limits anti-democratic.

But the funny thing is that Zelaya NEVER PROPOSED RAISING HIS OWN TERM LIMIT. Only the ignorant, or the ill-intended, keep repeating that goddamned lie.

The Constituent Assembly to re-write the entire Constitution was a GRASS ROOTS PROPOSAL coming from groups like the teachers' union and human rights workers, that Zelaya agreed to champion, in a common, widespread movement to improve Honduran democracy and to empower the poor majority. Even now the crowds around the Brazilian embassy are calling for a new Constitution. Zelaya cannot benefit from it. He is termed out. All he proposed was an ADVISORY vote of the people on whether or not they wanted to convene a Constituent Assembly. It would not have had the force of law. It would have had to go to Congress. It would have taken years to implement even the first stages of a re-write. Zelaya was RESPONDING TO THE PEOPLE--as a good president should. And the Oligarchy panicked at the prospect of the people of Honduras having any say in the country's political/legal structure, and, in league with rightwing forces here, thought they could stop it by force. The falsehood that Zelaya was seeking to extend his own term of office was written by lying, scumbag, rightwing 'think tanks' in Washington DC.

Absolutely right.

My comment above was not intended to be critical, just realistic, perhaps. My impression has been, having watched/listened to the deliberations of the OAS some hours ago, live, courtesy of Venezuelan TV, along with plenty of other (albeit hasty) reading, that this is (edit: immediate, and international) the issue.

So, what do you think your State Department thinks about this?

It's sort of like, are you STILL beating your spouse?

The referendum was non-binding and asked only one question: whether voters would favor the election of an assembly to write a new constitution. This was unlikely to have led to a constitutional assembly before the November 29 elections. The idea that Zelaya was doing this to gain a further term was the right-wing's scare puppet to justify the coup, nothing more. Clearly, however, they feared what results the referendum was likely to bring, and want no revisions to a constitution originally written to favor the oligarchy.

I shall note that Uribe in Colombia extended the term limits, and no one in the US corporate media, insofar as they were even aware of it, dared to call that unconstitutional -- let alone suggest it provided legitimate grounds for a military coup!

In my city, Bloomberg just had the City Council overturn the citizens' referendum that established term limits without a new vote of the people. This was clearly illegitimate. He's running the most expensive campaign in city history, by a factor of three or four times at least. It's as close to an openly fixed election as you're ever going to see.

So. Would this justify a coup d'etat in which the NYPD kidnaps Bloomberg, deports him to New Jersey, and installs Donald Trump as the new mayor? After all, Bloomberg clearly is acting with utter contempt for democracy.

Quite the opposite with Zelaya: his suggested referendum had nothing to do with term limits and was non binding. Please don't propagate the myths used by the Honduran dictatorship to justify its violent and repressive seizure of power from the elected constitutional government.

What a pantload this "willingness to talk" is.

I watched the statement by acting foreign minister Lopez Contreras yesterday on Telesur.

He made it clear that the restitution of Zelaya to the presidency was non-negotiable, so the whole question of meeting with Zelaya to resolve the crisis is moot.

Many Honduras were offended that Lopez Contreras would read goriletti's proposal in ENGLISH on Honduran television. Probably about one percent of Hondurans understand English.

Btw, have been listening to resistance station Radio Globo the past hour and callers are reporting up to six dead at the hands of the police in Tegu's poorer sections. Many more injured and detained.

Even if the coup falls apart tomorrow, more time would be needed to replace the authority behind the election, which is now the fascist coup government. Zelaya should encourage total abstention and total mobilization to prevent these farcical "elections."