U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has agreed to meet with deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, according to reports this morning. The Washington Post says the meeting could occur as early as today as Zelaya flew from Honduras to Washington, D.C. late last night. As the paper writes, negotiations have taken on new urgency as at least two protestors were killed Sunday in Tegucigalpa as they awaited the arrival of Zelaya back to the country. According to photojournalist Stephen Ferry, unprovoked troops fired on a group of Zelaya supporters who had torn down a chain link fence near the airport. However, as I reported on yesterday, the Honduran military blocked the plane from landing. A meeting between Zelaya and Sec. of State Clinton would be the highest level meeting between a U.S. official and the Honduran leader who was ousted on June 28. To this point, the U.S. has preferred behind the scenes negotiations through the OAS and other third party countries. “I don’t want to pretend we’re without influence,” said a senior administration official to the New York Times. “But we’re talking about the development of democracy here, and our goal is to help Honduran actors resolve their own problems. Intervention short circuits that goal, and allows the people who created the problems to walk away from them.” Meanwhile, the de facto government in Honduras has also stepped up negotiation efforts, forming a four-person commission to open direct talks up with the OAS in Washington, D.C. as well. And Roberto Micheletti commented on Sec. of State Clinton’s forthcoming meeting with Zelaya, saying “I trust Secretary Clinton recognizes that the rule of law is why we are here today, and why Mr. Zelaya must be held accountable for his unconstitutional acts.” For his part, Manuel Zelaya has vowed to re-attempt his return to Honduras in the coming days. The Wall Street Journal says an announcement on that matter will likely come after his meetings with Sec. Clinton and top U.S. officials who will reportedly discourage his forced reentry in order to prevent increased bloodshed in the Central American country. And the Miami Herald adds to these reports saying Washington could cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in Honduran aid this week if the situation is not resolved, although I have seen no other reports recently with a specific timeline for such an action.
There are more reports on the results of Mexico’s legislative elections as well this morning. The New York Times says a front page photo in a Mexican daily of ex-President Carlos Salinas leaving a voting booth is a telling indicator of the direction Mexican voters turned in Sunday’s election. Salinas, who let office amidst corruption charges and economic woes, led the PRI in the early 1990s, and, according to the paper, voting the PRI back into power is in many ways the returning to power of a party identified with past corruption. For many, this issue of corruption now seems to define all political parties in the country, including the governing PAN, and many held a “perverse nostalgia for the PRI’s style of corruption, “anti-modern but functional,” as the NYT writes. In the Wall Street Journal a quote from one political analyst about the PRI perhaps best summarizes voter attitudes toward the old Mexican party: “Among voters, they [PRI] have credibility as a governing party that can be summed up like this: ‘We might be corrupt, but we're more efficient than the other guys.’” The LA Times adds more on the specific results saying the PRI leads in five of six governor’s races, in addition to storming into power in Mexico’s Congress. It fell short of an outright majority but, according to the LAT, should be able to form a coalition with smaller parties to advance its own agenda in the Chamber of Deputies.
Also, the Miami Herald reports on a four-day summit of Caribbean leaders (CARICOM) being held in Guyana right now. The meeting thus far has focused on obtaining much needed cash from international financial institutions, the paper writes. But, rather than lay out specific plans for confronting the economic crisis, the meetings ended only with an agreement to form a task force that would soon put forward recommendations on the matter. In other Caribbean news, the MH also reports that new UN special envoy for Haiti, Bill Clinton, will make his first visit to the country this week in an attempt to refocus world attention on the interrelated issues of economic struggle and environmental destruction there. The former U.S. president is expected to meet with Haitian President Rene Preval during his visit.
And ending this morning with today’s opinions, a return back to Honduras. The NYT runs a must-read piece by columnist Roger Marín Neda of the Honduran daily El Heraldo. Writing about the general apathy of many Hondurans over the June 28 coup, Marín Neda says the following: “After almost 30 years of formal democracy, Julia [a small shop owner interviewed in the piece], like most Hondurans, has lost all trust in politicians. While we have had basic liberties and precarious growth, our leaders have thoroughly failed to ease this country’s poverty and longstanding social divide. For these reasons, many Hondurans are apathetic about politicians — and politics in general.” He adds, “Until a new generation of young, uncontaminated, democratic politicians take control — and the deep inequalities in our economic system are addressed — we will not be able to trust our leaders.” Andres Oppenheimer also writes on Honduras in the MH arguing that “the Honduran military coup should serve as a wake-up call for all nations in the hemisphere to react more swiftly to the constant violations of the rule of law in countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, and not wait for the situations to blow up, like in Honduras.” And conservative columnist Carlos Montaner also writes in the MH, contending the ouster of Zelaya was not a military coup but maintaining that general elections should be moved up from November to August in order to prevent bloodshed and restore an elected government to office.
No comments:
Post a Comment