By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The deceptive trickery of the bourgeois governments sponsored by the United States has no limits. A few hours were enough for the candidate for presidential re-election in Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOA), to convert, a difference of 5% of the votes counted in favor of his opponent, Salvador Nasralla, into an advantage of for him that would proclaim him reelected President.
JOA had remained in an electoral campaign throughout his government. While locking up, banishing or burying his adversaries, he gave away balls, cardboard houses, bags of beans labeled with his photograph and the logo of his party and other sacramental gifts “blessed with the blood of Christ”. He distributed even 50 Lempiras (equivalent to 2.5 dollars) to all impoverished voters.
Depressing was the surprise for him and his cohort when, at the end of the November 26 vote, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) announced that the candidate of the Free Alliance-PINU, Salvador Nasralla, was ahead of him by 5 points.
A few minutes later, the TSE suspended the count due to “technical problems of the system” and shortly thereafter announced that, in a new calculation, JOA was ahead of Nasralla by 1 point.
Popular protests immediately broke out. Hondurans could not placidly accept the monstrous fraud, which came to fill the cup of humiliation that infringed the nation’s coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya in 2009.
Ollantay Itzamná, a Quechua nomad, son of Pachamama, activist and reflective defender of human rights and of Mother Earth, who also trained as a lawyer, anthropologist and theologian in Western science, has narrated, as a brilliant journalist, an understandable synthesis of the historical background of the phenomenon that is taking place in Honduras.
“The State of Honduras, in its almost 200 years, has been controlled and governed by an elite of landowners and self-designated conservative and liberal merchants. During the first 100 years, the leaders of Honduras were selected by means of bayonets and shotguns. At the beginning of the 20th century, the conservatives, to make the pantomime appear democratic, created the so-called Liberal party and, from that, Honduras lived a whole century under National-Liberal bipartisanship.
With the politico-military coup d’état of 2009, the rich in power accelerated their own political destabilization. In fact, the emergence of the social movement that became the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP), demanded the return to power of the deposed President Manuel Zelaya. It proposed profound structural changes in impoverished and alienated Honduras.
Beginning in 2012, the FNRP gave birth to the current political party Freedom and Free Refoundation, made up mostly of former liberal politicians, who, in its first participation in elections, took second place in the general elections of 2013, with 37 deputies from the 128 that make up the Congress of the Republic.
But the government of JOA, co-author of the coup d’état, which had control of the legislative and judicial powers, and made political life almost impossible. Not only did it exclude them from parliamentary committees, it systematically blocked their legislative initiatives.
After the 2009 coup, Honduras experienced a systematic “democratic” dictatorship, where illegality, corruption and the dissolution of rights were constantly promoted.
The illegality of the JOA dictatorship reached its maximum expression when, contrary to the provisions of the country’s Political Constitution, the presidential candidate announced he was seeking re-election, under the slogan: “The best life for Honduras can not stop”. Something unlikely in a country that has conquered the world record as “the country with the most violent war in the world,” and where the level of poverty worsened more than 10% after the 2009 coup.
Dissent or disseminating a critical thinking has been punished with harsh penalties and disrespect for human rights. It took on a murky look with massacres and selective killings, such as the murder of Berta Cáceres which was denounced worldwide.
“In these conditions, Honduras was forced to return to the ritual of the polls. The dictator, believing that his victims were defeated, tried to re-elect himself in the polls claiming to be ‘s anointed by God to continue governing Honduras for Christ. “
But, the resistance was not dead. It returned to him to ashes and defeated the dictatorship of fear, the dictatorship of the media and the divine dictatorship in which the oligarchy enrolled even the Cardinal, bishops, priests, pastors and apostles, says Itzamna.
At the end of this article, and without knowing the final pronouncement of the TSE, everything seemed to indicate a new confrontation between the oligarchy at the service of US imperialism and the mocked people. It could now be more violent and bloody than in 2009, if the poor don’t win electoral vengeance.
November 30, 2017.
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusivo para el diario POR ESTO! de Mérida, México.
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusivo para el diario POR ESTO! de Mérida, México.
La prestidigitación de los gobiernos burgueses patrocinados por Estados Unidos no tiene límites. Unas pocas horas bastaron para que el candidato a la reelección presidencial en Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández (JOA), convirtiera, una diferencia del 5% de los votos computados a favor de su contrario, Salvador Nasralla, en una ventaja suya que lo proclamaría Presidente reelecto.
JOA se había mantenido en campaña electoral durante todo su gobierno. Al tiempo que encerraba, desterraba o enterraba a sus adversarios, regalaba pelotas, casitas de cartón, bolsitas de frijoles rotulados con su fotografía y el logo de su partido y otros regalitos sacramentados y “bendecidos con la sangre de Cristo”. Distribuyó incluso 50 Lempiras (equivalente a 2.5 dólares) a todos los empobrecidos electores.
Deprimente fue la sorpresa para él y su cohorte cuando, al término de la votación del 26 de noviembre el Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) anunció que el candidato de la Alianza Libre-PINU, Salvador Nasralla, le aventajaba por 5 puntos.
Algunos minutos más tarde, el TSE suspendió el conteo por “problemas técnicos del sistema” y poco después dio a conocer que, en un nuevo cálculo, JOA iba delante de Nasralla por 1 punto.
Enseguida estallaron las protestas populares. Los hondureños no podían aceptar plácidamente el monstruoso fraude, que venía a colmar la copa de la humillación que infringió a la nación el golpe de estado que defenestró al Presidente Manuel Zelaya en 2009.
Ollantay Itzamná, nómada quechua, hijo de la Pachamama, activista y defensor reflexivo de los derechos humanos y de la Madre Tierra, formado también como abogado, antropólogo y teólogo en la ciencia occidental, ha narrado, como brillante periodista que es, una comprensible síntesis de los antecedentes históricos del fenómeno que está teniendo lugar en Honduras.
“El Estado de Honduras, en sus casi 200 años, estuvo controlado y gobernado por una élite de terratenientes y comerciantes auto titulados conservadores y liberales. urante los primeros 100 años, los dirigentes de Honduras eran colocados por medio de bayonetas y escopetas. A principios del siglo XX, los conservadores, para hacer aparecer democrática a la pantomima, crearon el denominado partido Liberal y, a partir de ello, Honduras vivió todo un siglo bajo el bipartidismo Nacional-Liberal.
Con el golpe de Estado político-militar de 2009, los ricos en el poder aceleraron su propia desestabilización política y, de hecho, el surgimiento del movimiento social que significó el Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (FNRP) que exigía la restitución en el poder del depuesto Presidente Manuel Zelaya y proponía cambios estructurales profundos en la Honduras empobrecida y enajenada.
A partir del 2012, el FNRP dio origen al actual partido político Libertad y Refundación Libre, conformado en su mayoría por políticos ex liberales, que en su primera participación en comicios, ocupó el segundo lugar en las elecciones generales del 2013, con 37 diputados de los 128 que integran el Congreso de la República.
Pero el gobierno de JOA, coautor del golpe de Estado, tenía el control de los poderes legislativo y judicial, y les hizo la vida política casi imposible. No sólo les excluyó de comisiones parlamentarias, sino que les impidió sistemáticamente sus iniciativas legislativas.
Después del golpe de 2009, Honduras vivió una sistemática dictadura “democrática”, donde la ilegalidad, la corrupción y disolución de los derechos fueron constantemente promovidas.
La ilegalidad de la dictadura de JOA alcanzó su máxima expresión cuando en contra de lo dispuesto por la Constitución Política del país, se autoproclamó candidato presidencial buscando su reelección, bajo el lema: “La vida mejor para Honduras no puede parar”. Algo inverisímil en un país que conquistó la marca mundial de “país sin guerra más violento del mundo”, y donde el nivel de pobreza empeoró más del 10% tras el golpe de Estado de 2009.
Disentir o difundir un pensamiento crítico se ha castigado con duras penas y el irrespeto a los derechos humanos cobró visos dantescos con las masacres y asesinatos selectivos, con el caso del homicidio de Berta Cáceres como el más repudiado mundialmente.
“En estas condiciones, la hondureñidad fue obligada a volver al ritual de las urnas. El dictador, creyendo que sus víctimas estaban vencidas, intentó reelegirse en las urnas alegando ser el ungido del Dios para seguir gobernando en Honduras para Cristo”.
Pero, la resistencia no estaba muerta. Volvió sobre sus cenizas y derrotó a la dictadura del miedo, la dictadura de los medios de prensa y la dictadura divina en la que la oligarquía enroló hasta al Cardenal, obispos, curas, pastores y apósteles, señala Itzamná.
Al cierre de este artículo sin conocer el pronunciamiento final del TSE, todo parecía indicar un nuevo enfrentamiento entre la oligarquía al servicio del imperialismo estadounidense y el pueblo burlado, que pudiera ser ahora más violento y cruento que en 2009, si se desconoce esta venganza electoral de los pobres.
Noviembre 30 de 2017.
By David Brooks, US correspondent for Mexico’s LA JORNADA daily
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Faced with the increasingly obscene and dangerous political landscape in this country, we hear responses that are moving from the simple no to Trump and his agenda, to something that could generate a progressive change in this country.
The most recent state and local elections in various parts of the country held on November 7 were what some expected, wished, prayed for … that is, a first warning of what could be a wave of repudiation and even progressive change through the the polls in the intermediate elections (federal legislative and several governorships) in 2018 and through new, or renewed, decentralized but allied social movements.
Not only did the Democrats sweep away Republicans in states like Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and others, but many of the electoral winners were not only Democrats but progressives, and in many cases these victories had a tinge of divine vengeance.
For example, Lee Carter, a marine veteran of the Iraq war, who identified himself as a democratic socialist, defeated a Republican to take his place in the lower house of Virginia, and celebrated that night by inviting everyone to sing Solidarity Forever, the hymn of trade union movement.
Also winning a seat in that same chamber wasa Danica Roem, defeating a Republican who had promoted anti-transgender measures and who had declared himself the main anti-homosexual in the state; She is now the first transgender state legislator in the country. Elizabeth Guzman and Hala Ayala became the first Latinas to become state legislators in Virginia’s history.
In Hoboken, New Jersey, the new mayor is Ravinder Bhalla, a Sikh lawyer, who declared: I am everything Trump hates: a dark man in a turban, and a proud American with the knowledge to stop his assault on the values of our country. . In Helena, Montana, the progressive Wilmot Collins is not only the first African-American to be mayor in the history of the state, but is a refugee from Liberia who won against the Republican mayor who opposed to the entry of refugees to this country.
In Philadelphia, perhaps the most radical district attorney in the country, Larry Krasner, civil rights lawyer, fierce critic of the massive incarceration in this country and who has represented Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street activists was elected. In the Atlantic County commissioner race in New Jersey, Ashley Bennett defeated the Republican in that position; She decided to challenge him at the polls after he via Facebook if they would return home in time to cook their. dinners.
Braxton Winston, who won a seat in the city council of Charlotte, North Carolina, is an activist whose image went viral: his fist held high in front of a battalion of riot police before being arrested in a demonstration against the death of an African-American at the hands of police. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, the next mayor will be progressive Tim Keller, who replaces the outgoing conservative Republican.
The progressive triumphs were remarkable, as they offered more evidence of a growing sector within the Democratic Party outside the centrist leadership. Electoral organizations such as the Working Families Party and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) together with the growing diaspora of the support movement for the democratic socialist Bernie Sanders (still the most popular national politician in the polls), Our Revolution and new networks as Indivisible, they were key to generating these triumphs.
But it was also the result of new alliances between social groups, especially immigrant organizations that promoted candidates who directly faced the xenophobic policies of pro-Trump Republicans and other civil rights defense organizations such as Black Lives Matter, along with organizations defending the rights of women and environmentalists.
What happened in the November elections with hundreds of progressive local and state candidates is the beginning of a wave (…) a massive repudiation of Donald Trump, said Joe Dinkin of the Working Families Party. Independent experts, such as the influential Cook Political Report, indicate that the polls, for now, indicate that a political wave in favor of the Democrats is being glimpsed in 2018, implying that they could retake control of one, and even both houses of Congress.
The wide range of active resistance against Trump is showing its potential to go beyond being just opposition to the populist and at the same time plutocratic right-wing agenda and pushing forward a progressive agenda both at the polls and in the social sphere, where some claim it is growing a movement of many movements, varied and decentralized, as described by LA Kaufman in The Guardian. He argues that, in addition to established progressive organizations that have seen their membership grow (as in the case of Working Families and DSA), an impressive number of local grassroots groups have flourished -but at the same time, adding to national networks as Indivisible- that as a whole are six times bigger than the Tea Party (the most influential rightwing current within the Republican Party).
And not everything is manifested or has an end in the electoral field, with these movements -inmigrants, indigenous people, anti-war military veterans, defenders of freedoms and civil rights, environmentalists, professional athletes, artists, students, workers’ organizations and trade unions- fighting in several fronts, but with more and more solidarity among them, which makes them very dangerous for the guardians of power.
The “no” that defined the initial resistance to the seizure of power by Trump and his allies is now seeking to invent, to invite, to a yes.
(Taken from La Jornada )
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