"...if Zelaya were to be restored to the presidency, even just symbolically, to preside over the November elections and supervise a transfer of power to its winner, it would represent a significant victory for progressive forces in the hemisphere. Here's why:
1. The attempt by Micheletti and his backers - both in and out of Honduras - to justify the overthrow of Zelaya by claiming it was a constitutional transfer of power will have definitively failed. If this justification was allowed to go unchallenged, it would have set a dangerous precedent for the rest of Latin America.
2. Efforts to rally support for the coup under the banner of anti-leftism, or anti-Chavismo - much the way anti-communism served to unite conservatives during the Cold War -- will likewise have failed.
3. It will confirm the political influence - and unity - of Latin America's progressive governments, particularly Brazil and Venezuela, which have taken the lead in demanding that the coup not stand - a position that aligned them with much of the rest of the world.
4. It will be an important push back for Republicans like South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint and Otto Reich, who tried to use the crisis to push for a more hardline US policy against the left in Latin America. It is DeMint who has put the hold on Shannon's confirmation, as well as on the confirmation of Arturo Valenzuela, Obama's pick for Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs.
5. It will hopefully help the Obama administration realize that in many Latin American countries, there is no alternative to working with the left. In Honduras, the violence of the coup government, as well as the fact that the extended crisis smoked out its less than savory supporters, like Reich, awoke not too pleasant memories of the Cold War. Reich recently penned an essay urging Obama to replicate Ronald Reagan's successful Latin American policy, which the Iran-Contra alum believed paved the way for the fall of the Berlin Wall. Many, however, remember too well Reagan's patronage of death squads and torturers. And reports that Honduran planters were importing Colombian paramilitaries to protect their interests were not helping defenders of the coup make their case. As protests continued, it became clear to all who paid attention that it was the good guys - trade unionists, peasants, Native Americans, environmentalists, feminists, gay and lesbian activists, and progressive priests - who were demanding the return of Zelaya.
6. Zelaya's return would be a huge boost for those good guys, who are largely responsible for the inability of the coup government to consolidate its rule. Against all expectations, they have defied tear gas, batons, bullets, and curfews, and engaged in creative and heroic acts of resistance, growing stronger and more unified than they were before the coup three months ago. They will engage with the new government from a position of strength, while the elites who have long ruled Honduras will be fractured and chastised.
The accords brokered by Shannon force Zelaya to renounce any attempt to convene a constitutional convention, yet the National Front against the Coup - the umbrella group that has coordinated opposition to Micheletti - has made it clear that that demand is "non-negotiable" and that it would continue to push for it, no matter who is president.
It was of course fear of a constituent assembly that provoked the coup in the first place, and it is an irony probably not lost on those who executed it that a large majority of Hondurans, according to a recent poll, now think that such an assembly would be the best way to solve the country's political crisis.
The last thing Micheletti and his supporters want to see is Mel Zelaya, with his white cowboy hat and wide smile, addressing a large crowd filling the streets of Tegucigalpa celebrating his reinstallation, building momentum for fights to come. And this is why Shannon's deal is anything but done.http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091116/grandin------------------------------
Though the election will be a sham--'lipstick on a pig,' truly--it was never reasonable to expect the U.S. to reform Honduras' putrid political/governmental system (we can't even reform our own). And I tend to agree that, if Zelaya is restored, it will be all of the six things above, and will set the stage for reform--difficult as it will be--and something more. Obama will handing Jim DeMint and cabal their asses, rather than the other way around. If Obama's stated policy of peace, cooperation and respect is to have any chance at all of being implemented, the traitors and saboteurs
here had to be defeated.
I don't think the Junta can get away with not restoring Zelaya to his rightful office. They are both treacherous and erratic, truly. But we're talking really big booty now, that Shannon is holding over them--the billions of that other sham, "the war on drugs." I think their greed will prevail.
I'm not in favor of Corporate Rule with a nice face, nor of course Corporate cruelty and war. Neither is democracy, and neither will yield social justice. But stopping the carnage in Honduras and creating some breathing space for change--if those are the results of this agreement--will give the people of Honduras an opportunity to absorb what has occurred, and to pull together to do what needs to be done next--a long difficult struggle for fundamental change. This is what Grandin means by his last sentence--that the Junta may also see this, and balk at the agreement, and try every trick to keep Zelaya from finishing his term of office--a term they have already shortened by four months. They really do fear him as the rallying figure for reform. It is also maybe too easy to see US trickery in this agreement. The US (its real rulers) of course don't want change either. They want to retain the US military base in Honduras (Zelaya proposed converting it to a commercial airport), and their use of Honduras as a stepping stone toward interference and even war against Honduras' neighbors (which has a long and bloody history), and their sweatshops and their corporate farms. Clinton no doubt wants to keep all this. Obama? I don't know. He sometimes seems like a prisoner of the forces around him, rather like Zelaya trapped in the Brazilian embassy, surrounded by the Junta military. But I think--or maybe just hope--that this battle with DeMint, McCain and other warmongers will give him some strength and some reach within the government, and better knowledge of who he can trust.
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