Democra-Phobia: Fear of Citizen Power in Honduras

(United Students Against Sweatshops hung this banner today on the building across the street from coup regime lobbyist Lanny Davis' office in Washington.)



Citizen Power – “Poder Ciudadano,” in Spanish, which was the credo on the posters and ads of Manuel Zelaya’s victorious 2005 presidential campaign – manifested itself this year in popular demands for a referendum on whether to write a new Honduran Constitution via democratically elected representatives to a constitutional convention.

It’s that simple, and the coup regime’s fear of authentic democracy is exactly why the failed “talks” in Costa Rica between the two sides have now ended without agreement on anything at all, as foreseen here and elsewhere.

That’s why the violent kidnapping of the president - accompanied by the military occupation of TV, radio and other independent media - took place on the dawn of an election day, Sunday, June 28, when the people of Honduras were going to vote in a nonbinding referendum on whether to have a vote in November over said constitutional convention, known as a constituent assembly in Honduras.

The hasty timing of the coup was intended to prevent the people from voting, and it speaks volumes of what the coupmongers believed the results of that referendum would have been, had the vote been allowed to happen. Their informed belief was that the referendum would have been approved and, even though it would be non-binding, that would have put to rest, once and for all, their claims to somehow speak for a majority of Honduran citizens.

After all, a much less risky strategy would have been to go out, the democratic way, and defeat the referendum at the polls. Lord knows they had the money to mount such a campaign. That the coup plotters did not even attempt to defeat it at the polls reveals the weak hand they are playing.

The question that was to be poised to voters – it bears repeating - was this one: