Boycott Honduran mock election, Zelaya says

This video is called Honduras: Where does Washington stand?

From British daily The Morning Star:

Zelaya calls for Honduran election boycott

Monday 16 November 2009

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya as called on his country‘s citizens not to participate in next week’s presidential election.

President Zelaya, who was deposed and exiled in a coup d’etat on June 28, also announced that he had written to US President Barack Obama calling on him not to recognise the results of the election, declaring that it had “no legitimacy if it is held under the gun.”

Speaking from the Brazilian embassy in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa, where he has taken refuge after secretly entering the country, Mr Zelaya also rejected any further efforts to make a deal with coup leader Roberto Micheletti.

Insisting that he had no reason to negotiate over the matter, Mr Zelaya insisted that, “in my position as president elected by the Honduran people, I reaffirm my decision that, from this date forward, no matter what, I will not accept any agreement to return to the presidency.

“My term of office ends on January 27 2010,” he declared, adding that neither the Honduran Congress nor the country’s Supreme Court had the authority to depose the president.

An agreement brokered by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias last month had called for Mr Zelaya to be returned to office at the head of a “unity” government that would have included supporters of Mr Micheletti’s coup regime in the president’s cabinet.

However, Mr Micheletti broke the agreement by allowing Congress, which is dominated by coup supporters, to debate whether Mr Zelaya should return to the presidential palace, while naming all the members of the cabinet himself.

“I have given up talking to Micheletti and I am forced to accept that this dialogue is false, that Micheletti is a liar and the only thing that discussion with him has served is to strengthen the de facto regime,” Mr Zelaya said.

Alarmed by suggestions by US diplomats that Mr Obama was willing to recognise the results of the November 29 election even if it was held under the auspices of the coup regime, Mr Zelaya also demanded that the US “lead by example” and refuse to do so.

The continued repression of trade unionists by the regime set up in Honduras after a June 28 coup makes it impossible to hold free and fair elections, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in a Nov. 13 letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton: here.

The plight of Honduran maquila workers in the aftermath of the coup: here.

On November 18, 1909 the US administration of William Howard Taft sends war ships to the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua as it prepares to depose the regime of President José Santos Zelaya: here.

US Group That Supported Overthrows of Democratically Elected Governments in Haiti and Venezuela Will Observe Elections in Honduras: here.