Hondurans will boycot dictatorship’s ‘elections’

This is a Sepultura music video, with images from recent happenings from Honduras.

From Brtitish daily The Morning Star:

Hondurans plan to boycott elections

Tuesday 11 August 2009

by Tom Mellen

Honduras‘s popular Resistance Front has warned that it will boycott presidential elections scheduled for November unless President Manuel Zelaya is returned to power.

Thousands of anti-coup activists kept up pressure on the coup regime, with protesters converging on Tegucigalpa after marching for several days from eastern Honduras, as other groups headed by foot to San Pedro Sula, the country’s financial hub.

They chanted: “Get out putschists, get out Micheletti,” referring to Roberto Micheletti, the former president of Congress who seized control after the military forced Mr Zelaya out of the country on June 28.

Andres Tamayo, a Salvadoran priest and Resistance Front activist,

and environmentalist

said: “Our goal is to re-establish constitutional order by returning Mr Zelaya to power.

“If the coup leaders don’t accept, there won’t be any elections because we will boycott them.”

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who has served as mediator between the elected president and the coup chiefs, has demanded that the interim administration allow Mr Zelaya to return as president of a coalition government.

But Mr Micheletti has rejected this and also opposes holding early elections, as required by Mr Arias’s proposal.

He has further raised the ire of the international community by announcing that he plans to go ahead with a presidential election on November 29, which coup backers hope will undermine demands to restore Mr Zelaya, whose term ends on January 27.

On Monday, leaders from Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) member states emphasised that they would not recognise election results in the country as long as the coup regime remains in control.

At the third UNASUR summit in Quito, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and 12 other leaders renewed calls for Mr Zelaya’s immediate and unconditional return to power.

And as US President Barack Obama sat down for a summit with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Mexico yesterday, he stressed that “President Zelaya remains the democratically elected president and, for the sake of the Honduran people, democratic and constitutional order must be restored.

“Our three nations stand united on this issue,” Mr Obama affirmed.

Meanwhile, an international trade union solidarity mission led by the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas wrapped up a fact-finding mission to Honduras at the end of last week.

In a statement released today, it saluted the Honduran people for “continuing to take to the streets to call for the return of President Manuel Zelaya and the re-establishment of democratic institutions in the country.”

Solidarity picket in Amsterdam: here.