The Honduran National Popular Resistance Front is a massive and mobilized movement. It has representatives from almost every village, town and neighborhood in Honduras and has sustained massive protests, at times of around 500,000 people, since the June 28, 2009 coup. Their demand is a truly representative Constitutional Convention.
The proposal for the drafting of a new constitution in Honduras was not new, it had appeared in previous administrations. Zelaya had no intention of extending his presidency.
The proposal was to hold a national survey in the form of a balloting process asking if Hondurans wanted a chance to vote, in a non-binding poll during the November 27, 2009 presidential elections, voicing their opinion on whether it would be a good idea to host a constitutional convention. Then, if the new congress decided to call a constitutional convention, Zelaya would already have turned over the presidency to the newly elected president.
What scared the established power structures in Honduras, and the Washington pundits who represent their interests, was not changes to term limits, it was the fact that the call for the new constitution was coming from a massive, broad alliance of the social movement, and that their demands were centered around the need for a constitution that would protect Honduran national assets, natural resources, telephone and electric systems, against privatization, and possibly even facilitate nationalization of concessions already granted, for instance mining concessions that are destroying the lives of communities surrounding mines.
But it appears that not even a military coup, and not even massive violent repression that has claimed anywhere from a couple dozen victims to a couple hundred victims, depending on the source, is able to stop the Honduran people from demanding a new Constitution, a new charter for their nation.
The proposal was to hold a national survey in the form of a balloting process asking if Hondurans wanted a chance to vote, in a non-binding poll during the November 27, 2009 presidential elections, voicing their opinion on whether it would be a good idea to host a constitutional convention. Then, if the new congress decided to call a constitutional convention, Zelaya would already have turned over the presidency to the newly elected president.
What scared the established power structures in Honduras, and the Washington pundits who represent their interests, was not changes to term limits, it was the fact that the call for the new constitution was coming from a massive, broad alliance of the social movement, and that their demands were centered around the need for a constitution that would protect Honduran national assets, natural resources, telephone and electric systems, against privatization, and possibly even facilitate nationalization of concessions already granted, for instance mining concessions that are destroying the lives of communities surrounding mines.
But it appears that not even a military coup, and not even massive violent repression that has claimed anywhere from a couple dozen victims to a couple hundred victims, depending on the source, is able to stop the Honduran people from demanding a new Constitution, a new charter for their nation.
March 12 through 15, hundreds of representatives of organizations of indigenous peoples, campesinos, academics, unionists, feminists, artists, lawyers, gatheried in La Esperanza, Honduras, bringing their own blankets and food, to create proposals for a Constitutional Convention that will take into account the demands of the population.
This proposal is not a communist or Islamic ploy. It does not come from hatred of the United States. It is the natural, logical fruit of decades of work to build up real forces for democracy, organizations of people who are interested in defending their own fundamental human rights.
The Honduran people have seen that the Constitutional framework that was put in place by a U.S. backed, military dominated government in 1981 is not sufficient to guarantee those rights.
Fuente: elquinceavopaso.blogspot.com
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