This post is written by Marco Caceres of
Project Honduras. I think it points to the importance of timing in journalism. Journalists try their best to share information. They have a duty to communicate the truth. Obviously much of what's available in the media is open to interpretation. The existence of this available information overload forms significant public opinion in world events.
The story Marco tells below did happen. But, I have not read more than a handful of articles about this part of the "coup" story. That's really unfortunate...
*****
Contrary to the popular view that has developed during the past couple of weeks, the "coup" in Honduras did not occur on Sunday, June 28, 2009, but rather on Thursday, June 25. What the world witnessed on Sunday morning in Tegucigalpa was a police action ordered by the Supreme Court of Honduras to put down a coup perpetuated by President Manuel Zelaya three days earlier.
On Thursday morning, Mr. Zelaya had given a rousing speech to hundreds of his supporters in the Presidential Palace. He then urged them to follow him on a special “mission" and proceeded to check with his staff to see if the buses had arrived. Mr. Zelaya would not specify what the mission was. He simply told people to follow him… as if he were Moses guiding them to the Promised Land. Over the next few hours, Mr. Zelaya led a caravan of buses and other assorted vehicles through the streets of Tegucigalpa headed toward Toncontin airport. The caravan grew into a mob of people.
That afternoon, the mob, led by Mr. Zelaya wearing his signature white Stetson, arrived at Hernan Acosta Mejia air force base next to Toncontin. Mr. Zelaya and the mob were met at the gate by Gen. Luis L. Prince, the commander of the base. Mr. Zelaya told Gen. Prince that he had come to retrieve the thousands of boxes of ballots for the scheduled poll that Sunday that were being stored in one of the base's warehouses. Faced with a highly charged mob led by a president demanding entry, Gen. Prince opened the gate. Mr. Zelaya and the mob poured in and proceeded to the warehouse. They backed up trucks and began loading up the boxes, with President Zelaya smack dab in the middle of the commotion. It was a surreal environment... something akin to Teddy Roosevelt and his "Roughriders" charging up San Juan hill.
Unfortunately, because of the John Wayne western-like sheer drama of it all, the importance of the incident at Hernan Acosta Mejia base was lost and quickly overshadowed by the arrest and exile of Mr. Zelaya on June 28. Mr. Zelaya's storming of the base with his mob was in fact the start of a "civil coup". The boxes of ballots at the warehouse had been ordered impounded by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court had ruled that both the poll set for June 28 and the proposed "cuarta urna" referendum for November 29 were constitutionally illegal, and so it had ordered the military to guard the warehouse and block access to the boxes which had been flown in from Venezuela aboard a Venezuelan jet. Mr. Zelaya used his position as commander in chief of the armed forces and his mob to intimidate Gen. Prince into allowing entry onto the base.
As the mission to the base unfolded, Mr. Zelaya explained to TV camera crews that what he was doing was simply carrying out the will of the people and that no mere magistrate from the Supreme Court was going to prevent him from completing his mission. At one point, Mr. Zelaya is filmed standing next to a stunned Gen. Prince, with the mob behind him. Mr. Zelaya is shown trying to convince Gen. Prince that he had done right to allow entry onto the base because he had obeyed the orders of his commander in chief. Mr. Zelaya tries to reassure Gen. Prince that everything will be fine and that beginning in 2010 Honduras would be governed by a National Constituent Assembly made up of Deputies who better represent the will of the people. It was clear that Mr. Zelaya already knew what the results of both the poll and the cuarta urna referendum would be, suggesting that both processes would be rigged.
By breaking into Hernan Acosta Mejia base and retrieving the boxes of ballots from the warehouse, Mr. Zelaya intentionally disobeyed the Supreme Court. But his action more than broke the law… It demonstrated Mr. Zelaya's blatant disregard for the authority of Judicial branch of government. It was as if he were saying that Judicial branch had no authority over him. It was at the point that Mr. Zelaya officially embarked on his journey to become a dictator. It was at that moment that Mr. Zelaya began his civil coup. The Judicial branch would be the first victim of the coup. With the Supreme Court pushed aside, Mr. Zelaya would then have moved to take on the Legislative branch by dissolving the Congress (as has been done in Venezuela and Bolivia) and setting up a National Constituent Assembly which he would control. Mr. Zelaya's comments on TV about the National Constituent Assembly in 2010 indicated that, at least in his mind, this new governing body that would replace the Congress was a done deal.
In hindsight, Mr. Zelaya should have been arrested and jailed on the evening of June 25, charged with deliberately disobeying the Supreme Court after his stunt at Hernan Acosta Mejia base. Mr. Zelaya stole materials that had been impounded. The reason that he was not arrested that day is that Mr. Zelaya had surrounded himself with a mob of hundreds of people... a strategy that in-and-of-itself can only be viewed as cowardly at best, and criminal at worst. Mr. Zelaya used his supporters as a human shield to prevent security forces from getting close to him. Honduras' military had to wait until a more opportune time to arrest Mr. Zelaya when his guard would be down and the risk of a violent confrontation with the mob would be low.
When Honduran soldiers arrested Mr. Zelaya in the early hours of June 28, it was in response to an ongoing three-day old civil coup perpetuated by Mr. Zelaya against the existing constitutional order. The coup was about to be refueled by an illegal poll later that day that would be used to consolidate Mr. Zelaya's control over the Judicial and Legislative branches. Few people in Honduras were fooled by Mr. Zelaya's intentions because everyone was closely monitoring the events that led up to Mr. Zelaya's arrest. Unfortunately, the international community tuned in late as the coup was ending and instead assumed that it was viewing the start of the show. This late arrival by world governments and media has led to a tragic misperception of the truth.
Recent Comments