Micheletti: “I will not resign.”

After meeting with Pepe Lobo on Monday Roberto Micheletti, leader of the coup regime in Honduras, was in the news yesterday to make an announcement. “Though the world wants it, I will not resign,” Micheletti declared on HRN radio Wednesday. The intransigent de facto president added that his term in office was constitutionally granted to him.

“I was elected by the Congress and the only one who can remove me from this position is the National Congress itself…The Congress made an historic decision and I believe that from that moment Zelaya should understand that he doesn’t have the option of returning to power, even if our friends, our neighbors, or the world want him back, in this country he’s not coming back to power.” (my translation).

The national human rights commissioner, Ramon Custodio, went so far as to say that if Mr. Micheletti were to resign he would be the one committing a “crime against the public order.”

And more translation of Micheletti’s words at Honduras Coup 2009:

“Even when the world asks me, even when the countries that have been intransigent watching us with hate, without justification, even so I will not do it. And what does it matter, some days, when we have practically six months of leading on these topics? What does it matter to the international community that I might stay another day, another two days? I don't see what could be the interest of the other countries of the world that I have to leave one day, two days, seven days, eleven days before January 27. What's the sense of that?”

Also on Honduras this morning, numbers from the recently released Latinobarometro survey for 2009 show very high disapproval of the way Micheletti has handled the crisis, as well as strong disapproval of the coup, in general. From CNN, 65% of Hondurans disapprove of Roberto Micheletti’s handling of the crisis (48% - Disapproval of Manuel Zelaya’s leadership before coup). And 58% of Hondurans disapprove of the coup itself. Interestingly, 24 percent of respondents in the other Latin American countries approved of the coup, the survey found while the countries where respondents felt a coup was most likely are notably all governed by left-leaning presidents. 36% of Ecuadorians, 34% of Brazilians and 30% Venezuelans said a coup was possible in their country.

Finally, the AP reports on the murder of gay activist and prominent anti-coup leader, Walter Trochoz, who was killed as he walked down the street in Tegucigalpa. Previously, on Dec. 4, Trochez was briefly kidnapped by four masked men who beat him up and threatened to kill him because of his participation in the anti-coup movement. This according to the International Observatory on the Human Rights Situation.

In other news this morning,

• The LA Times reports on defense contractors in Colombia who are flying crop dusters over coca fields and dropping herbicides under the auspices of Plan Colombia. The paper writes:

“Although the amount of coca produced in Colombia declined by 28% last year from 2007, according to United Nations figures, the effectiveness of the eradication program is under intense scrutiny in the United States, and funding has recently been curtailed. The flyboys, most of whom come from Texas or the Midwest, have dusted more than 3.2 million acres of coca in the last 14 years, some of it under a program that was launched five years before Plan Colombia got underway.”

At Plan Colombia and Beyond, Adam Isacson posts the letter (mentioned a couple of weeks ago) that was recently sent by 53 House members to Sec. of State Clinton, calling for major changes in U.S. Colombia policy.

And in the Washington Post yesterday, an editorial calls on Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to rule out changing the constitution so that he might run for a third term. Per usual, the editorial is largely about Hugo Chavez.

“This systematic erosion of political institutions and the rule of law is one of the ways in which Mr. Chávez and his followers threaten to drag Latin America back to its bad old days of caudillos and coups. Nations that have tried to leave that history behind have an obligation to establish a clear alternative model based on rule by the people, not a series of strongmen. That is why it is so important that the man who in many ways embodies the alternative to Chavismo, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, firmly commit himself against seeking a third term in next year's presidential election.”

• Via Mercury Rising, America’s Quarterly writes that the supervisor of presidential security in Guatemala was murdered this week in a coordinated attack in Guatemala City. The security agent was specifically in charge of protecting President Alvaro Colom’s own children. AQ: “The attack is the latest in a series of incidents involving the Secretariat for Administration and Security (SAAS). In September, the director of SAAS was detained on espionage charges following the discovery of covert audio and video recording equipment in the president’s offices and residence. It also follows a series of death threats against the president received by the agency, which were issued by the Mexico-based Golfo drug cartel.” Guatemala will end 2009 with more murders than in 2008.

• In the Wall Street Journal, news that Mexican President Felipe Calderon has proposed major political reforms that would establish a second-round vote for presidential elections, cut the number of seats in Congress and allow federal lawmakers and local officials to be re-elected. In an attempt to end political gridlock, the WSJ writes, “The president's bill takes aim at an enduring political taboo here: re-election.” But the proposals must pass the Mexican Congress currently controlled by the PRI. While many agreed that the reforms are badly needed, most analysts say they are unlikely to pass.

Also on Mexico, the Inter-American Human Rights Court condemned Mexico Tuesday for not investigating the 1974 disappearance of a left wing guerrilla sympathizer. According to the AP, “the decision marked the first time an international court has ruled against Mexico in a human rights case stemming from the conflict with leftist guerrilla groups in the 1970s.”

Mexico also received 5 helicopter from the U.S. Tuesday, part of the $1.4 billion Merida Initiative.

· And at NACLA, Katherine Hoyt has a piece about a recent study sponsored by the Nicaragua Network that examined the Ortega government’s anti-poverty programs. Their investigations look at ALBA-supported projects in particular, and Hoyt writes:

“Based on our sample of visits, we felt the government's anti-poverty programs were making a difference, but it was necessary to travel outside the capital to see and feel that difference. Zero Hunger may not be a national development plan but it is a policy to bring an important sector of the population out of deep poverty. On the question of the policies of free education and health care, we found mostly praise although there was concern that the problem of class size could substantially affect the quality of education that children were receiving. In short, the polarization that we found was disheartening, but we found less polarization once we left Managua.”