TEGUCIGALPA – The National Resistance Front that arose after the June 28 ouster of President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras has abandoned hope for the restoration of ousted the former president and is focused now on convening an assembly to overhaul the country’s constitution, one of the group’s leaders said Thursday.

“We have closed this chapter on the restoration of President Zelaya, which didn’t take place,” Juan Barahona told Efe the day after Honduran lawmakers rejected reinstatement of the deposed head of state.


The Honduran Congress decisively rejected the restitution of deposed President Mel Zelaya in a vote of 62 to 8, after six hours of debate on Wednesday.

Only 70 of the 128 legislators cast ballots in the evening vote.

The Congress began on Wednesday to debate whether or not to reinstate Zelaya but the powerful National Party announced its support for the June 28 decree whereby he was removed from the presidency, thereby virtually quashing any chance of his return to power.

“We declare ourselves in favor of the ratification of Decree 141/2009 approved on June 28,” said party chief Rodolfo Irias before the full Congress, and the statement essentially closed the door on any reinstatement of Zelaya because the votes of the 55 National Party lawmakers were necessary to return him to power.

“This position is unanimous, removed from any opportunism,” added Irias, the head of the party of Porfirio Lobo, who won the presidential election last Sunday, a balloting result that was rejected by the majority of the international community with the argument that it came about amid a rupture of the country’s constitutional order.

In the days preceding the start of the congressional debate, the possibility had been held out by some that Zelaya might be reinstated if the National Party’s 55 members were to join with around 20 of the 62 members of the Liberal Party – the deposed president’s party and that of the country’s current president, Roberto Micheletti – and the 5 members of the leftist Democratic Unification party.

In any case, Zelaya had said Monday – and Irias noted this fact in his own remarks to Congress – that he would not accept reinstatement even if lawmakers vote this week to restore him to office for the less than two months left in his term.

Meanwhile, after the National Party’s announcement, the Democratic Unification Party reiterated its position Wednesday that Zelaya must be returned to power in accord with the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Agreement.

Zelaya, who has been holed up at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa since slipping back into Honduras September 21, commented a day after Lobo won a presidential election rejected in advance by much of the international community with the conspicuous exception of Washington.

“Restitution under the conditions of legalizing this electoral fraud cannot be accepted by someone such as your servant, who fights for principles,” Zelaya told Radio Globo, vowing to go on “risking everything so the transformations in Honduras do not stop.”

In a telephone interview later Monday with the Quito-based Ecuadorinmediato Web site, he accused the U.S. government of legitimizing the Honduran coup.

President Barack Obama’s administration issued a statement Monday formally recognizing Lobo’s victory and urging Zelaya to engage in dialogue with the president-elect.

Washington had already signaled its intention to recognize the election result and hailed Hondurans for going to the polls.


It is not clear why Zelaya decided to agree to let Congress decide on his reinstatement, as the deposed former president enjoys the support of only about a fifth of the legislators, and Congress had before his ouster already opened an investigation into whether he was mentally fit to govern, voted to disapprove his violations of the Constitution and even members of his own political party voted to replace him with Micheletti after he was ousted.


While not unexpected, Congress’ decision was disheartening, Barahona acknowledged, adding that the outcome of the vote prompted the resistance to cancel a street march planned for Thursday.

Barahona spoke to Efe after an assembly in Tegucigalpa where members of the front agreed to meet again over the weekend to decide on a new strategy.

“There are barely two months left” in the four-year term of Zelaya, who will be succeeded Jan. 27 by Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo, winner of last Sunday’s controversial presidential election.

Coup opponents, backed by human rights organizations and most foreign governments, said a free and fair vote was impossible given the repression imposed by Roberto Micheletti’s “interim” regime, which has killed more than a dozen people, imprisoned hundreds and repeatedly shut down independent media.

“The struggle now is for the (constitutional) convention,” Barahona said.

Beyond that, he added, the Resistance Front will look toward a future election “with the objective of taking power.”

Zelaya was dragged from the presidential palace and sent into exile in June just hours before he planned to hold a plebiscite on revising the constitution. The Constitution prohibits a sitting official from making such proposals and requires his immediate dis-empowerment and the Supreme Court had ruled that such an action was illegal and unconstitutional and ordered Zelaya to desist, but Zelaya went ahead anyway.

While the Resistance Front pondered its next move, President-elect Lobo urged Micheletti and Zelaya to agree on the formation of a national unity government in fulfillment of the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord.

That pact, signed in late October by representatives of Zelaya and Micheletti, mandated the creation of a unity government and a congressional vote on reinstating the deposed president.

But the pact fell apart within days, as Zelaya refused to nominate his slate for the unity government at the deadline provided and Micheletti was forced to form a “national unity” government himself. Zelaya insisted that Congress vote on his reinstatement first, but the accord did not provide a timetable for such an action.

“I refer to the government of reconciliation that should have been formed Nov. 5, that is pending and that has to be formed, the same as the Truth Commission,” Lobo told reporters Thursday.

He said officials from various countries who congratulated him on his electoral victory had also given him “a very clear message” that compliance with the Tegucigalpa-San Jose agreement was a prerequisite both for international recognition of his government and for a restoration of aid to Honduras.

The U.S. government, which broke with most of the Organization of American States to announce in advance that it would recognize the elections, expressed disappointment Thursday with the failure of Honduras’s Congress to restore Zelaya.

“We’re disappointed by this decision since the United States had hoped the Congress would have approved his return,” Arturo Valenzuela, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, said in a teleconference with reporters.

“And our policy since June 28 has been consistently principled, and we’ve condemned the coup d’état and have continued to accept President Zelaya as the democratically elected and legitimate leader of Honduras throughout this political crisis,” Valenzuela said.

At the same time, he stressed that the Honduran Congress reached its decision in an “open and transparent manner ... in accordance with its mandate in Article 5 of the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord.”

“Important work remains to reestablish a democratic and constitutional order in Honduras and promote national reconciliation in the wake of the June 28 coup d’etat, as the status quo remains unacceptable,” Valenzuela said.

Valenzuela’s predecessor, Thomas Shannon, said in early November that Washington would recognize the election winner regardless of whether the elected president was restored -- which the accord negotiated between the two sides agreed.

Panama, Colombia and Costa Rica have joined the United States in recognizing Sunday’s elections, but Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Mexico, Uruguay and Venezuela have all rejected the process as illegitimate.

But Brazil, which has been steadfast in opposing the ouster and is giving refuge to Zelaya at their embassy in Tegucigalpa, seemed to soften its stance this week by saying that it will consider recognizing Lobo depending on his actions between now and his inauguration in late January.

Importantly, Nobel laureate Costa Rica President Oscar Arias -- who knew the situtation better than anyone, having brokered the accord between the two sides on behalf of the US and OAS -- announced that he and Costa Rica were supporting the election. "Why do we want to make Honduras into the Burma of Central America? Why do we want a second Hurricane Mitch?" he told CNN en Espanol.