Thank you for enlightening us about Honduran politicing I noticed the many similarities to what is happening in Nicaragua influenced by Chavez and his constitutional reforms with unlimited presidential terms.
I would be curious to know what other plans the Honduran president has since Ortega’s organization manipulated local mayoral elections through control of community groups. Most Nicaraguans were scandalized by the mayoral elections here but the poor continue to slave away with machetes and the politicians continue to fatten themselves on foreign chaff. Since the majority of the population: the youth and the rural uneducated poor, may not understand the power of their voices united because so often they are gagged due to political favoring in the newly strengthened Sandinista community groups.
An example of Chavez/ALBA affects on the poor in Nicaragua: Last year the fertilizer was too expensive for most farmers to apply to their plantain fields so this year there is a very reduced harvest. This is a staple in the diet of most Nicas and is also exported.
I believe there are many similarities happening in other Latin American countries who are feeling the pressure of Chavez and ALBA memberships. It will be interesting to see what the new El Salvador President chooses to do for his citizens.
Remember the Venezuelans who are suffering even with the petro based economy …there are food lines and never enough to meet the demands. Nicaragua’s government has installed in Managua’s barrios staples stores with discounted products which are just a bit cheaper than the local shops but there are always lines and never enough to meet the demands. The prices of basic grains, along with cooking oils, sugar, and salt etc…continue to climb and the local shops cannot compete with ¨state-run stores¨ so will be forced to close and the locals will be forced to buy from the government with longer lines in the future.
This is familiar experience in Venezuela. Look out Honduras if you are headed in the same direction.

As a citizen of Honduras (born and raised in Honduras), I would like to thank you for your analysis, and would like to say that your explanation of the current situation in Honduras is thorough and accurate.

The president of Honduras is not a truly democratic leader, and in order to fulfill his dreams of perpetuity, has managed to create chaos, uncertainty, and more poverty in the country. By increasing the minimum salary (without any timely warning to business owners so that they could adjust their finances and afford the increase), has managed to bankrupt most of the medium to small businesses, increasing the unemployment rate to record numbers. He has managed to stop large projects financed by foreign investors, cheating our citizens from secure jobs in various industries.

As a democracy loving country, Hondurans DO NOT want a referendum to the constitution, we DO NOT WANT A FORTH BALLOT, we want elections (paid with our tax money), and most importantly; we do not want to give Zelaya the opportunity to stay a minute longer past his term, WE WANT CHANGE!!

Karen Bush(Tegucigalpa, Honduras)

But I feel this criticism of president Zelaya does not hold water. Zelaya is a truely democratic leader and the first president of Honduras after the defeat of the military dicatorship who has fought vehemently to improve the living conditions of the poor majority.

Zelaya has shown at times to be a very honest critic of Honduran society (see for example the youtube-clip “En Honduras no se dicen la verdad”) and it is hard to deny that his criticism of the results of the democratic system in Honduras after the military dictatorship is correct.

I have visited Honduras three times in the years before Zelaya was elected and what I observed seemed to be a parody on democracy. In order to get listed so that you could get elected for congress you had to pay a bribe to your party (at lest the major ones) a journalist told me. Poltics seemed to be a continuation of business life where politicians mainly saw to their own personal interests rather than to the interests of the poor majority.

What Zelaya has done with the help of some other dedicated militants in the liberal party is to help the PL to regain its soul and to reach out to the popular organisations who according the Honduran newspaper Tiempo (www.tiempo.hn) have seen many of their leading members being murdered in recent years. I can agree with your analysis that there have been some worrying threats against journalists and that the Zelaya administration most likely has not been flawless in its treatment of jourmalists. But the overall impression of the administration is a very positive one, especially when comparing to his predecessors.

Zelaya’s suggestion about a fourth ballot box giving the Hondurans the opportunity to decide if they want a new constituent assembly writing a new constitution which will then of course later be decided on in another popular referendum is not a desperate attempt by Zelaya to extend his rule. If that had been the case Zelaya would have suggested the referendum much earlier and not scheduled it on the day for the presidential election. As it is the PL has already a new candidate for the upcoming presidential election and Zelaya could not possibly get the support from his own party if he indented to somehow shorten the term of the party’s own candidate (if the PL wins against the right-wing Nacionalista candidate).

There are many institutions who seem to feel threatened about the possiblity of a new constitution and they try to stop the fourth ballot box. The intrigues stemming from this fact should be described in an impartial way, not by portraying the conservatives as the good guys and Zelaya as an evil dictator imitator.

On Tiempo’s editorial page (www.tiempo.hn) there has been many intelligent analyses both in favor and against the fourth ballot box. One commentator compared the propaganda war now going on against the fourth ballot box with the propaganda war that tried to stop Zelaya from including Honduras as a full member of ALBA. The tactic then was to create fear among the population: Fear that Honduras would become a communist country, that trade with the USA would stop, that remittances from Hondurans living in the US would stop etc. Now that tactic is used once again trying to convince people that there might be a new dictatorship if they are permitted to vote on whether or not they want a new constitution to be drafted.

It seems foolish to complain in regards to the fourth ballot box is that Zelaya has not stated what the new constitution will contain. That the uncertainty should be another cause for fear among the population. But for Zelaya to publish a new constitution at this point would be exactly the kind of authoritarian behaviour that his adversaries are trying to blame him for (and if he had done that this is exactly what they would have done). The new constitution of Honduras should be written by a collective of people with representatives from both politics and popular organisations und must of course be ratified in a second referendum. It is not for one single person to decide what it should contain.

Björn Blomberg (Sweden)