The USA State Department sends the absolute wrong message
This is a political fuck-up of epic proportions.
From
Reuters News Service:
U.S. moves toward formal cut off of aid to Honduras
U.S. State Department staff have recommended that the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya be declared a "military coup," a U.S. official said on Thursday, a step that could cut off as much as $150 million in U.S. funding to the impoverished Central American nation.
The official, who spoke on condition he not be named, said State Department staff had made such a recommendation to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has yet to make a decision on the matter although one was likely soon.
Washington has already suspended about $18 million aid to Honduras following the June 28 coup and this would be formally cut if the determination is made because of a U.S. law barring aid "to the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree."
The official said that $215 million in grant funding from the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation to Honduras would also have to end should Clinton make the determination that a military coup took place.
About $76 million of that money has already been disbursed and a second U.S. official said this implied that the remaining roughly $139 million could not be given to Honduras should the determination be made.
Diplomats said that the United States had held off making the formal determination to give diplomacy a chance to yield a negotiated compromise that might allow for Zelaya's return to power.
It is bad enough that elements of this government are trampling our own Constitution, that we should export this and allow the Hondurans to trample their Constitution into the mud is heinous.
The Honduran Constitution allows for two terms of office. Zelaya had served those two terms and was trying to get a voter referendum to change the Constitution to allow him to become President for Life.
No Honduran printer would print the ballots but Chavez provided them to him. Good buddy there!
Before the election happened, Zelaya was escorted out of Honduras, in accordance with Honduran law.
Zelaya's offices were then raided and vote tallying computers were found with the votes already tallied showing a victory for Zelaya from an election that never happened.
The above Reuters article is interesting as well:
The official, who spoke on condition he not be named
Some of Obama's transparency operating here? This is political brinkmanship of the worst order. We are meddling in another nations Democratic process and this kind of cultural imperialism has to stop...
Posted by DaveH at August 28, 2009 9:33 AM