Second Coup Fails, as Lonely Oligarch Plots Third Honduran Coup of 2009

Posted by Al Giordano - September 29, 2009 at 9:12 pm

By Al Giordano

Adolfo Facusse – the Honduran business magnate who earlier this month was hauled off an arriving airplane in Miami by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents then deported straight back to Honduras – is one of those fast-and-loose players who, even while deserting the Titanic, will look for some advantage in securing the best lifeboat exclusively for him, or at least stuff whatever silverware he can grab into his pockets on the way out.

And so it was today when Facusse announced his grand plan to solve the problem of a coup that he had supported but that has now demonstrably failed.

Facusse proposes that:

- Coup “president” Roberto Micheletti would step down and be rewarded for his service by the creation of a non-existant post, Congressman for life (“vitalico,” is the word he used, same as that enjoyed by Augusto Pinochet in the Chilean Senate during and beyond his own dictatorship).

- Micheletti and all other coup leaders – including the military brass – would get advance amnesty for all the crimes they committed on and since June 28.

- Elected President Manuel Zelaya would be recognized as such for about fifteen minutes while he signed over all his powers to the Armed Forces and some kind of “civilian” counsel made up of politicians in the current political parties based on their current percentages of seats in the Congress.

- 3,000 “UN Peacekeeping troops” – but only from the the following three right-wing countries: Colombia, Panama and Canada – would be deployed throughout Honduras to enforce this deal. (Because we all know that those fun loving Colombian troops and the paramilitaries they bring along for the joyride are so capable when it comes to protecting the human rights of the citizenry.)

- Zelaya, in exchange for getting to be recognized as president for fifteen minutes more, and a secret decoder ring, would then quietly and powerlessly wait until January 27 when he would face whatever “corruption” charges the coup regime has cooked up for him.

"We set the wheels moving again, although we don't know how far they'll take us," Facusse told reporters, claiming that Micheletti has also signed off on it.

Coup General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, of course, loves, loves, LOVES the plan, gushing:

"I see that we're quickly approaching a solution, which is what we're all waiting for.”

Facusse, head of the National Association of Factories (ANDI, in its Spanish initials), was, only a few weeks ago leading the proposal that all businesses that are members of the Honduran Council of Private Business (COHEP) offer price discounts to voters to encourage them to participate in the November 29 “elections.” It was like a democracy clearance sale, with Crazy Fito shouting "EVERYTHING MUST GO! OUR PRICES ARE INSANE!"

But a funny thing happened on the way to the ballot box. Coup dictator Micheletti – installed in large part due to Facusse’s anti-democracy efforts – two nights ago decreed a 45-day State of Siege, canceling basic Constitutional rights to free speech, press, transit, assembly and due process. I called it The Second Honduran Coup of 2009, and the naked admission that The First Coup had failed to establish control over the country and its people.

The cloak of “democracy” and “constitutionality” fell off the coup regime overnight on Sunday. Leading presidential candidate Pepe Lobo rejected the decree, as did the current president of the coup Congress, and business leaders who saw the new rules would be bad for their wallets told Micheletti that it wasn’t going to work. And now Micheletti is slowly backing away from it, so slowly that he hopes nobody will notice then demand that his jackboots return the transmitters and equipment they stole Monday morning from key TV and radio stations.

All this time over the past three months, Micheletti, Vásquez, Facusse and the rest of their gang of reverse Robin Hoods thought that if they just stalled for time they would be able to run the clock out and impose November 29 "elections" on a fixed playing field as the final solution. But as Mexican pollster Dan Lund noted today, Micheletti's Sunday night decree inverted that dynamic: Now there is not possibly enough time left on the clock to overcome the damage done by Micheletti's decree to the claim that elections so soon after The Second Coup and its authoritarian vices can possibly be free or fair. Lund writes:

"The timing of the elections set for November 29, 2009 is now a straight jacket, especially in the context of current confusion, the emergency decree... the complex media situation (an open and truly fair media being the sine qua non for an election of this significance), and the need for enough reconciliation to give confidence to the whole process."

Facusse’s proposal is in effect on behalf of The Third Coup, or at least a trial balloon toward its attempt. But beyond its whacky proposals above, The Third Coup has an even more fatal flaw: It was developed in a back room by rich and powerful magnates, without so much a consulting, much less dialoging with, a single worker, or farmer, or student, much less their organizations that represent the great mass of the mobilized Honduran people. For it is their power from below that has prevented both malicious coups this year from triumphing. No regime - not any more - can hold on to power in Honduras unless it sufficiently satisfies the amalgam of social movements that are now popularly referred to as The Resistance.

Furthermore, to attempt to reward Micheletti just two days after he bared his despotic teeth – in effect, betraying his other coup plotters in their lust for portraying this pustch as “not a coup” - with a lifetime unelected post in Congress, as Facusse’s proposal does, indicates a mindset so far removed from the realities demonstrated over the past summer, so profoundly out of touch with the overwhelming sentiment of the majority of his countrymen and women, that it offers a glass window into the mysterious mind of the oligarch, trying one more time to extract advantage over everybody else, even as his best made plans come crashing down all around him.

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Spread widely. General Joe

This hemispheric awakening is being fostered by independent media artists/sources who you can easily follow. Some are:

www.narconews.com

www.telesurtv.net/noticias/canal/senalenvivo.php

www.venezuelanalysis.com/

http://chiapas.indymedia.org/ Spanish

Join this struggle for justice and true freedom. Our brothers and sisters across the Americas are doing their parts from conditions of extreme hardship and danger. Surely it is time for us to “step up” from here.