email to Washington Post re Honduras Options

[Emersberger]

RE: Washington Post: Ideologues hijack a compromise; Nov 7, 2009

Mr. Schumacher-Matos

You rebuked the "international community" for not knowing the facts about Honduras but then you wrote

"Zelaya created the crisis by instigating mob rule in June to try to carry out an unconstitutional referendum designed to lift a limit on a president's time in office."

This is completely false, and should immediately be corrected.

Below is that exact question President Zelaya intended to put to voters in a non-binding poll:

¿Está usted de acuerdo que en las elecciones generales de noviembre de
2009 se instale una cuarta urna para decidir sobre la convocatoria a una
Asamblea Nacional Constituyente que apruebe una Constitución política?

Translation:

"Do you agree that in the general elections of November 2009 a fourth ballot box should be installed to decide whether to convene a National Constitutional Assembly that would approve a political Constitution?"

[see June 29 entry http://hondurascoup2009.blogspot.com/
see also IPS;"Honduras: Coup d'Etat - What's In a Name?" by Diana Cariboni]

Even if the poll had been binding it would only have resulted in another question being asked at the same time that Zelaya's successor was elected in November. However, the poll was not binding. It could only have produced a widely known and irrefutable public record of how Hondurans felt about initiating constitutional reform.

The Supreme Court ruled that asking Hondurans a question about their own constitution was a crime – an unbelievably odious and anti-democratic ruling which I have yet to see denounced by anyone in the corporate press. The facts about Honduras have barely ever been reported accurately and your article is disgracefully typical.

Joe Emersberger