Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle
Lies posted: the Clinton Corollary and a simple question
Let this be a contribution to the “Truth Commission” that the U.S. insists is one of the requirements of the broken Accord yet to be fulfilled. There are some truths on which all seem to agree. I agree with Micheletti and with Pepe Lobo when both last week parroted a line that some “adviser” (whom, I gather, thinks little of history, perhaps M. Klugman) must have provided them: That “President Zelaya is already history”. Many Honduran Presidents will be forgotten, as they in fact resigned themselves to manage different kinds of crisis. As many in The Resistance Movement I accept that the President’s restoration is a theme of the past. No one is any longer interested, including the President. But The Coup will make P. Zelaya an obligatory historical reference. Several of the issues I will deal with here --maybe all-- are problems of history; they can no longer be mended. Some of us however still believe history is relevant and since it is my trade, I feel obligated to deal with these issues. Coup mongers will not make any of what happened right because it is past, or make Zelaya a less relevant figure calling him “historical”.
Then again there are statements subject to interpretation and on which people can disagree: whether or not the regime established in Honduras was “representative democracy” or whether constitutional reform would have been sufficient to remedy our structural problems; whether or not reelection is convenient (although it is frowned upon in the Latin American tradition as a ruse of dictators, it is routinely practiced here in the U.S. and apparently most U.S. allies such as Uribe, Garcia, Fernandez and Arias believe in reelection); whether it is in “America’s best interest”, to let the Coup stand. These are matters of opinion, things debatable, although of course opinions can be more or less well founded. But there are also lies. Blatant lies. Simple misstatements. Incontrovertibly untrue assertions. I would like to introduce Dr. Noam Chomsky asking a simple question about four of many lies.
1. Claiming that the Poll scheduled for June 28th was “a vote” or was “a referendum” and that its purpose was to allow President Zelaya to extend his term or be reelected is a lie.
The Poll was a poll, justified by P. Zelaya’s platform to empower citizens and the Citizens Participation Law, passed by Congress on Inauguration Day. No possible result of the poll, or of the referendum the poll called for, could have allowed -much less authorized- P. Zelaya to stay in power, nor to call off the November 29th elections. Neither the poll nor the referendum would have authorized his future candidacy.
If the results of the poll had been binding, they could have only forced the referendum that would have occurred this last Sunday under the supervision of the Electoral Tribunal. The result of that referendum, if it had been in our favor, would only have obligated the new government (elected two weeks ago) to convene a Constituent Assembly in the next four years. But since it was not binding, the only result of a favorable answer of the populace to the poll on June 28th would have been to justify a petition by P. Zelaya to Congress to order that the referendum (Cuarta Urna) be installed by the Electoral Tribunal, a petition Congress could have denied.
One hundred times this point has been explained exhaustively. It seems logical that Coup mongers in Honduras should ignore the explanations since the contrary argument is pivotal to their thwarted formalistic logic. But how can one explain that the American Press would once and again since the first and to this day repeat the coup regime’s accusation that President Zelaya was holding an illegal “vote” in order to stay in power, as if it was its own theses. And why has not the State Department ever clarified this lie? Behind a lie is there always a mystery?
2. It’s a lie that the President’s forceful removal was not a coup because various “Independent institutions” in Honduras backed this organized conspiracy and that it constitutes a peaceful “Constitutional Succession”. An old ruse with words. In his recent book on Chile, A Nation of Enemies, Arturo Valenzuela, recalls that after the 1973 Coup against P. Salvador Allende, Pinochet repeatedly stated that this “was not a Coup”. (It was “A Military Movement to save the Nation”.) The fact that Congress, the Supreme Court and of the Electoral Tribunal coincided against P. Zelaya is invoqued as if it was not evident that all these institutions derived from a congressional dictum and violated the boundaries of their authority in legitimating the consummated kidnapping and expulsion of the President by force of arms.
The whole of the Supreme Court had just been elected by that same Congress without any consideration of the President’s proposals, with eight magistrates for the Liberal Party and seven for the Nationalist Party and the Electoral Tribunal had been selected by this same Congress a few days before the coup, with the blatant illegality of choosing elected officials (a congressman and an alderman) as representatives for each of the traditional parties, when the law specifies that elected officials cannot be Magistrates. So The Court and The Electoral Tribunal responded to Congress and to the Parties’ bosses and were in no way “independent”. Under the Constitution, the Coup regime argues it “defends”, Congress does not have the power of impeachment. That is why it invented the “lie” of the resignation letter it had to discard later when denounced and the Supreme Court lacks authority to dismiss a President.
Although Congress could have conceivably accused and The Court arraigned the President and called him to trial, this never happened. The supposed Supreme Court order to “arrest” the President is another lie; it was never mentioned until after the Coup and it was never complied with; the President was not arrested; he was kidnapped. The Supreme Court never accused him of anything before he was out of the country. It never ordered him to present himself for judgment; it never subjected him to an interrogation, much less give him an opportunity to defend himself. Nor has this Supreme Court arraigned his kidnappers, although it has timidly stated the military “overstepped” its orders.
Now, the American State Department has not wholly embraced this lie; almost all officials up to Mr. Obama have called it a Coup. After some hesitancy, even the State Department has termed it a Coup. (Though it refused to call it a Military Coup, which seems crucial to the aid issue?) But the American Press and American academics and many very vocal congressmen have repeatedly insisted that “it is not a coup”. (See please Senator DeMint’s declarations and Dr. Schomaker-Matos’s and the Washington Post editorials recommending recognizing electoral results on these grounds.) Lies also are functional, they serve purposes.
3. Whoever claims that the November 29th elections were legitimate because they had been “called for” before the Crisis, and its results “express the will of the people”, lies. The U.S. State Department has embraced this lie in the name of pragmatism, because supposedly it helps solve the problem. Elections celebrated under an illegal coup regime, under militarized control, in a police state, could not be legitimate. On formal grounds, the results are repudiated in an irreversible manner by most major Latin American countries, despite incredible pressure from the State Department. More importantly, because of massive abstention despite cohersion (and most Hondurans know they did not vote, the spin will not fool them) and because elections were celebrated after five months of brutal repression, thousands of illegal detentions, human rights abuses, selective assassination and censorship, their results are repudiated by a very large proportion of the Honduran citizenry.
The conspirators lie when they claim that there was a “massive” turnout. Even after careful cosmetic treatment of the numbers, the Electoral Tribunal has been forced to downsize participation from an initially triumphant absurd announcement of 80%, to 65%, to 52%; however, even this figure, backed by the n.g.o. funded by the U.S. government and based on The Electoral Tribunal’s numbers is a lie. According to our most careful calculations, 35% of the population voted for any given candidate; never had there been so many white or blank votes, with which the total participation might rise to 42%. Independent polls taken after election tell us that 58% of Hondurans repudiate the coup. So, the results are not representative of a popular sentiment and they will not be accepted by the majority as legitimizing a new government, despite recognition by the U.S. and four other Latin American governments, which are already having great trouble with their own citizens and parties for conceding such a favor to the State Department. The U.S. has effectively undermined their political base and its own credibility. It is, in considering this the N.Y. Times last week came to the conclusion Dr. Chomsky stated several months before, that President Obama’s foreign policy is the same as Mr. Bush’s.
And it is a lie that “Zelaya’s opponent won”, as the U.S. Press insists on, because, although Lobo was his rival in elections four years ago, President Zelaya was not running in this election, and his detractors were Micheletti and Liberal Party candidate Santos, who were humiliated horrendously by the refusal of liberal partisans to back them.
And recognition of electoral results has not helped to solve the problems raised by the Coup, which were never an issue in the election; it has complicated them, catalyzing a definitive schism in the Continent and making Honduras even more unstable and difficult to govern. No one is planning to invest in this country and the economy is in meltdown. Only a minority will obey its new government peacefully. Continued repression has dampened but will not vanquish resistance, over which presidential control “is history” now. In the face of worsening human rights abuses certified by all international organizations, and even by the U.S Embassy website dedicated to that issue (although this was silenced by spokesmen), to pretend the problem is on its way to being solved is an outstanding lie and covers up a regime of terror in the name of belied Democracy. “Disturbing” A. Llorens says when I point to the beheaded corpse of a Resistance leader a couple of days ago!
4. Finally, there is the consummate lie. U.S. Undersecretary of State Valenzuela declared last week that, “since June 28, the U.S, has been consistently principled” with respect to Honduras, it has worked with multilateral organizations, condemned the Coup, continued to recognize Zelaya as President throughout the crisis and that it would have wanted to have him restored and was “disappointed” by the Congress’s decision against restoration. (US State Dept, Dec 3) And Ms. Clinton echoed the day before yesterday that “the U.S. has remained dedicated to democratic principles”. It is the worst lie of all, because it is transparently cynical and official. The U.S never condemned human rights abuses publicly. Its spokesmen didn’t even mention those abuses until a few days ago. It announced it would cut aid, but never even slowed down the more substantial channels of the Millennium Account.
The U.S. said it would subscribe a multilateral policy, as promised by Mr. Obama to his electors and to Latin American presidents at Trinidad in April. Immediately after the Coup (in which some of its agents were complicit), the U.S. condemned it as illegal and unconstitutional. It declared that it would back the O.A.S. and the U.N. resolutions (which called for the “immediate and unconditional return of President Zelaya”). However, Secretary Clinton used a more ambiguous language; she refused to say if the “return to constitutional order” meant a restoration of President Zelaya to his office. It was not clear why.
A week after the Coup, the U.S. foreign policy establishment single handedly, unilaterally, selected P. Oscar Arias as mediator and demanded that P. Zelaya negotiate a solution with the coup regime, and share his cabinet with the coup, which already controlled the other branches of government. Mme. Clinton expressed hope for dialogue when P. Zelaya returned to the country only to be rebuked by Ambassador Amselem who, in the O.A.S the day after, termed the President’s return “foolish and irresponsible”. And when the San Jose “Agreement” was declared a failure, because of the regime’ intransigence by P. Arias, by S.G. Insulza, by P. Lagos and all others, Mme. Clinton called President Zelaya and asked him to “cooperate with former Assistant Secretary Shannon who –supposedly- was going to Honduras to get an agreement signed that would return him to power”.
The ink was not dry on those accords when Ambassador designate to Brazil T Shannon (who hoped his nomination would then be approved by the U.S. Senate) declared that his government did not require the return of the President to his office and would recognize elections whether or not that happened, effectively eliminating the one point of pressure on coup capos to accept restoration. Since then, U.S. diplomats have frenziedly pressured its Latin American allies to follow suit in recognition. But where is consistency and which are the principles?
I suppose they are the same as when --after the Pinochet Coup, according to Arturo Valenzuela-- in the midst of monstrous repression, the State Department declared “that it was not for the U.S but for the Chileans to decide whether this process was legal”. Things do not seem to have changed much since Dr. Kissinger declared then (and again Valenzuela is my source) before the coup against Allende “I do not see why we have to stand by idly when a country goes communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people”. Maybe that was a statement of principle, an axiom of doctrine. Not many people would argue that Honduras was “going communist” with the June 28 poll that called for a referendum on constitutional reform but in these “democratic” days, things can be more rigorous. Mme. Clinton has begun to clear the mystery when she expresses as a Corollary to Kissinger’s Principle, her own concern with “governments that once democratically elected undermine constitutional and democratic order, the private sector and people who do not wish to be pressured”. That is to say be warned you are already democratic enough and change is forbidden. This would be a principle very similar to that used by autocratic regimes to impede democratic movements of a different sign. And though it could be a warning to others, it came too late for us to understand.
In the end, Dr. Chomsky I want to ask a simple question: whether I am justified, as a historian, in calling people who have made these false statements, “liars”. Or, if this is unjustified or unfair, or too unkind or improper, what should I call them?
