Refounding the Liberal Party

On July 14, Vos el Soberano published a brief note under the headline "When they expel the dictator then we can talk".

It reported the content of a message sent by ex-president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales to the Consejo Central Ejecutivo (Central Executive Committee) of the Liberal Party.

In it, Zelaya reportedly said he would talk with that group when it fulfills three requirements:

• when “the Central Committee announces against the Coup”

• when "They expel the dictator [Roberto Micheletti]”

• when “They demand justice for the intellectual and material authors of the 166 assassinations [by repressive organs of State on account of the Coup]. ”

Zelaya's communique was one response to a proposal by Elvin Santos Lozano, president of the Central Executive Committee (and father of the failed 2009 presidential candidate of the party), that Zelaya return to Honduras and rejoin the Liberal Party in order to unify it (and thus save it). Seems like a rough judgment on his own kid.

As an editorial by Radio Progreso, also available on Vos el Soberano, notes, Hondurans find themselves

with a situation unequalled in the political history of Honduras: a president who was overthrown by a coup d'Etat and sent into exile, and, after one year, is reclaimed by two antagonistic projects and political forces. The president that was proscribed, sent into exile and considered as the cause of the major division and polarization in the life of the country, now his return appears to be fundamental to the exit from the institutional stagnation in which we find ourselves and to make possible national reconciliation.

We have previously explained the outcome of the Tocoa Assembly of the Frente, in which Liberals in resistance were unable to seat additional delegates and withdrew from the provisional governance, explicitly without withdrawing from the Frente itself. This led to a curious sequence of actions by the Liberal Party itself.

Leadership of the Liberal Party came out shortly after the end of the Tocoa assembly of the Frente with an open invitation to the Liberals in resistance to reintegrate in the party. This explicitly included an invitation to Zelaya to return and organize a political "movement" within the party.

First, Marlon Lara, ex-campaign director for the party, currently second vice president of Congress, said the Tocoa meeting showed that the Liberals in Resistance should return to the party and contribute to its unification. Lara

exhorted them to collaborate with the initiative of the Consejo Central Ejecutivo to procure granitic unity of the party for which a commission will travel to the Dominican Republic to negotiate with the overthrown president Manuel Zelaya.

At about the same time, members of the Liberal Party held what was reported variously as a unity forum or a gathering of Zelaya supporters, the latter the way El Heraldo headlined their article. It was said to bring together "a part of the directorship of the Liberal resistance, ex-officials of the deposed president Zelaya, and presidential aspirants", implying that these are all categories of Liberal Party members with reasons to oppose the current governance of the party.

At this forum, Eduardo Maldonado, ex presidential contender, said that "the unity of his party passes by the return without conditions of ex president Manuel Zelaya." Esteban Handal Pérez, another "pre-candidate" for president, called for a special party convention to vote in new leadership.

Edmundo Orellana, who reportedly also participated,

insisted on the need for the authorities of his party to convene, as quickly as possible, internal elections (not primaries) to change all the authorities: central, departmental, and municipal.

As the article notes, the majority of those who would be removed from office belong to one of three major movements within the Liberal Party: those headed by Elvin Santos, Roberto Micheletti and Eduardo Maldonado. Maldonado volunteered to have the occupants of the two seats his movement controls on the Central Executive resign. No one from the Santos or Micheletti camp attended.

Also present and speaking at the forum: Jaime Rosenthal, perennial presidential aspirant and owner of El Tiempo.

According to La Tribuna, all the speakers called for the immediate and unconditional return of Zelaya, hoping he will take a place as a "standard-bearer" in the party, and most of the speakers at the forum endorsed a national constitutional assembly as a the only way to institute social and economic changes. The exceptions to the latter call: Jaime Rosenthal and Esteban Handal

As we write, the Central Executive Committee is reportedly writing a letter to ask whether Zelaya would receive a delegation to talk things over in the Dominican Republic. As reported by El Heraldo, "some political sectors" speculate that Zelaya will receive a delegation if the Central Executive Committee calls the "events of June 28" a coup:

The Central Executive [Committee] has not said if what occurred the 28th of June was or was not a coup d'Etat nor has it condemned nor applauded the situation of which Zelaya, member of the Liberal Party, was victim.

Elvin Santos Lozano ducked the question, saying that the Truth Commission will decide what happened. Not too promising in terms of meeting Zelaya's stated condition. And of course, no reference to the requirement that Roberto Micheletti, honored senior Liberal Party member, be expelled.

Tiempo, in its reporting on the forum by dissident Liberal Party members, underlined that members of the present Central Executive Committee "do not enjoy the sympathy and backing of the majority of the Liberals".

That was inadvertently underlined when presidential hopeful Handal helpfully predicted that the proposed commission to Zelaya would be a fiasco.

Victor Sierra, a director of the Liberal Party movement M-Lider (Movimiento Liberal Democrático Revolucionario), probably had the single most evocative comment.

As reported in Tiempo, he proposed to "refundar el Partido Liberal": refound the Liberal Party.

Now, where have we heard something like that before?

Edmundo Orellana: Return

On July 12, La Tribuna published a commentary by Edmundo Orellana on the topic of the possibility José Manuel Zelaya Rosales could return to Honduras.

Since that has now been framed as the first goal of the Frente de Resistencia, it is worth reviewing what this legal scholar reminds us about: the difficulties that stand in the way of this return.

Contrary to assertions that it is just a matter of buying a plane ticket, the events of the coup and de facto regime are substantial obstacles to resolution: Orellana notes that the Public Prosecutor insists on maintaining a legal case open that should have been covered by the amnesty passed by the National Congress. He notes that the judicial branch and much of the Legislature is still filled with coup participants. He reviews the aggression that Zelaya was personally subjected to, and suggests that without guarantees of security from the government, returning is not feasible.

Return

Edmundo Orellana

The return of ex-President Zelaya Rosales is the news of the moment. But the return to the homeland will not be easy.

He was expelled from his country after his home had been outraged with a raid outside the hours that the Constitution permits, accompanied by machine gun bursts, while his young son listened, hidden in fear of being victim of the bestial action, everything they did to reduce his father to impotence. All this operation, worthy of an episode of a formal war, was designed against a single man that barely three and a half years before had been voted by the Honduran people as their new President.

Later it was made known that the Public Prosecutor had filed an action against the President and that a judge named by the Supreme Court of Justice from among its members, after declaring the secrecy of the process, had issued an order of capture against him and to put it into effect ordered, against the Constitution of the Republic, that the Armed Forces carry it out, alleging that the police could be inclined toward the President, so that they would not be trustworthy. Nonetheless, they, immediately, displayed a persecution against those who protested in favor of the President with a cruelty that the population understood had been in the 80s. The accusations against the police for the violation of human rights of those who protested against the coup d'Etat came from the organizations that make up the inter-American system of Human Rights and surely our country will be newly condemned to the payment of large amounts of money in compensation to the victims, and those truly responsible will enjoy impunity.

The tortures to which President Zelaya, his family and those accompanying him in the Brazilian Embassy were subjected, using high-end technology, putting at risk the life of all those encountered there, stripped before the world the hatred that the conspirators had for Zelaya and the savagery of which the dictatorship and its accomplices was capable.

The National Congress, the system of justice and the organizations responsible for the national defense and public security participated directly in what today is an undeniable fact: a Coup d'Etat. Even the same Chief of State Lobo Sosa has admitted this and more than one functionary of his government has asked pardon for this crime against democracy, the Republic, and history.

The bias of the system is placed in evidence when it leaked out that of the prosecutions launched against the President only one, apparently, is still pending, and, despite the fact that it treats evidently of an act that, in any case, will end up benefited by the amnesty, they insist stubbornly on maintaining it in effect.

Very little has changed institutionally in the country since the President was overthrown. Only the Executive Power and part of the Legislative has been renewed. So that his return in these conditions does not offer any guarantee for his personal security and the tranquility of his family.

Nonetheless, his return is essential to commence national reconciliation. The very political stability of the country depends on the return to the country of Zelaya. It is, then, a question of State. It should guarantee, in consequence, that he will enjoy the protection that his situation so special demands. How to accomplish this, is the responsibility and priority of the first order of the present government.

The Resistance Front presents its Executive Committee

[On the road, so without comment, extracts from the recent post announcing the outcome of the National Assembly in Tocoa; please see the official website www.resistenciahonduras.net for more]:

....

This Assembly was composed of 56 delegates, men and women, from all the national territory who were present in the heart of the Valle de Aguan to show the unconditional support to the campesino movements that are confronted with the violence of the army and the businessmen, and at the same time to achieve a historic date in the struggle of the Honduran people.

With this Assembly there was installed the Provisional National Coordination as a first step in the consolidation of the FNRP as a political platform toward the refounding of the country. This space of direction is made up of the representatives elected in the distinct Departmental Assemblies that have been carried out in the last weeks across Honduras, creating in this way a new Democracy that is born and is developed from the base.

The Provisional National Coordination named an Executive Committee that will direct the destinies of this struggle against golpismo, the military regime, barbarity and injustice. The first office selected in a unanimous manner was that of Manuel Zelaya Rosales as Coordinator, recognizing in this way his leadership and putting him at the head of this project that seeks to leave behind the old political practices in which small groups were set above the interests of the impoverished majority.

There will accompany Zelaya in this Executive Committee recognized figures of the popular struggle: Juan Barahona and Carlos H. Reyes (Tegucigalpa), Will Paz (Colón), Leonel Amaya (Olancho), Lucía Granados (San Pedro Sula), Lilí Aguilar (Lempira), María Antonia Martínez (of the movement Feministas en Resistencia), Porfirio Amador (Choluteca), Jaime Rodríguez and Edgardo Casaña (of the Federación de Organizaciones Magistrados de Honduras FOMH), Juan Chinchilla (Juventud Bajo Aguan), Víctor Petit (Comayagua), Teresa Reyes (Organización Fraternal Negra de Honduras Ofraneh), José Luis Baquedano (Confederación Unitaria de Trabajadores de Honduras CUTH). There only remains pending the man or woman representing the indigenous Lenca population.

...

The immediate objectives expressed by the Assembly are the return of Manuel Zelaya to the country together with all the persons obliged to go into exile, the development of the work of organization and political formation in all the country, the strengthening of our means of communication to defeat the lies elaborated by the golpistas and collaborators, and to initiate the collective construction of what will be the National Constituent Assembly that for the first time in our history will be Participatory, Popular, and truly Democratic.

Reactions to the National Assembly of the FNRP: From Mel on down

There are so many statements now reflecting, from different perspectives, on the Tocoa Assembly that it would be overwhelming to translate them all.

But one deserves a full translation:

From the desk of the Constitutional President (2006-2010) Jose Manuel Zelaya.

People and Comrades:

I am verifying the contents of the communique and of the first resolutions of the Assembly of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular, that was carried out in Colón this weekend. On first impression it seems good to me that the force to advance was encountered in its own decisions. I have asked Xiomara, my wife, that she present herself tomorrow to the Directorship of the FNRP to speak with Carlos H. Reyes, Juan Barahona, Rafael Alegría and the rest of the comrades, to know the scope of the proposal and so tomorrow itself it will be possible to communicate my acceptance as Liberal-Pro Socialista to integrate in the General Coordination of the Executive Committee of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular.

MEL Z RD 11 de julio de 2010.

In this brief note, Manuel Zelaya effectively supports the actions of the FNRP and the leadership of the sectors that resisted pressure to seat a larger than agreed on number of Liberal Party delegates.

Statements like that of Ollantay Itzamna reiterate that this was a critical achievement in the quest to change the fundamental system, that confirmed "the extreme unction of the moribund 'dedocrátic' system of bipartisanship in Honduras".

The first image is of the administration of the Last Rites of Roman Catholicism, given here to the hand-picking of delegates misrepresented as "democratic" (dedo= finger, which substitutes for hand in the Spanish equivalent to the English figure of speech; so "dedocratic" is approximately "handpickedocrat").

Ollantay Itzamna adds that the naming of Manuel Zelaya Rosales as National Coordinator of the Frente is

also another strategic ratification of popular sentiment. In the Honduran conjuncture, Zelaya is an undeniable national/popular leader. But, this nomination is a sociopolitical strategy. The FNRP needs to articulate to all the cells of the resistance dispersed across the country, and so to construct a sociopolitical hegemony on a national level. And this difficult task, against time, only can be done with a strong and evident national leader. Here we have the strategic reason for the nomination of Compañero Zelaya, but this is not to say that the FNRP is completed in Manuel Zelaya Rosales.

In some ways, the statement by Zelaya negates a curious side comment in the report of the withdrawal of the Liberals in Resistance, when Carlos Reina said

before withdrawing, that in taking this decision he had the endorsement of the deposed Honduran president, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, who had been consulted by [the Liberals in Resistance] by telephone from the Dominican Republic, where he remains exiled since the past 27th of January.

In context, that seemed almost as a claim of patronage, a reclaiming of Mel from the Frente in general.

That some such claim was perceived is made explicit in the response to the assembly by Luis Mendez, described as a "poet in resistance". After rehearsing the details of the attempt to swell the ranks of the delegates with extra appointees recommended by Liberals in resistance, Mendez says that

It is lamentable but the thing is that Carlos Eduardo Reina and the rest that don't add up to ten have the economic resources to move bars, and money to bring a national commission of Liberals in Resistance to the Dominican Republic (as they proposed at the Assembly of Tocoa), and expound to our ex-president Manuel Zelaya Rosales the developments for which they withdrew from the national conduct of the FNRP... well, if they have the economic resources that would be very much their own affair, but we, we do not go to Santo Domingo, but, we go to the villages, to the hamlets, to form the collectives, to accompany to the town fronts, there is where the construction of popular power will be given.

And, without doubt, we expect comrade Manuel Zelaya will personally join the Executive Committee of the FNRP as one of the principal leaders of the movement and it is certain that we can invite the Apparition, there, to where Saint Thomas was the one to say to us: TODAY IS NOT AS BEFORE COMRADES, today we have new visions.

The religious nature of this imagery, again, is somewhat startling, but like the metaphor of extreme unction, it shifts the register from mere politics as usual to redemption, to revelation, and to fervor.

Zelaya, by accepting his appointed role in the FNRP, affirms the new movement as something more than the politics of the past.

The Frente and the Liberal Party

As the previous posts should indicate, there was considerable tension around the assembly of the FNRP that was held in Tocoa this weekend.

Under the headline Second Day of the National Assembly: the debates and the wager on the unity of the FNRP continue, Vos el Soberano provides a report that starts with the following quote:

"Before being a Liberal I am of the people and the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular, that is the future.”

Ubodoro Arriaga Izaguirre, Delegate from the Department of La Paz to the First National Assembly of the FNRP.

While that tells the whole story in a nutshell, the report goes on to specify what happened:

Liberal leaders withdrew from the National Assembly of the FNRP on not succeeding in impose their delegates named outside the Departmental Assemblies of the Resistance.

Specifically cited as speaking for the Liberal Party were Carlos Eduardo Reina, Orfilia de Mejía and Rasel Tome, who "took the floor to explain to the departmental delegates their reasons to self-exclude themselves". According to this report they clarified that they "do not renounce" the FNRP, just participating in the provisional National Coordination to be elected today.

On the one hand, this is not that different from what COPINH and the Feminists in Resistance did. But timing is everything. Making a principled statement in advance that you are not interested in being part of a formal structure you consider dubious, and withdrawing when things don't go your way, are as different as, well, making a principled stand and saving face.

Reporting describes an unsuccessful attempt to install 29 extra delegates representing Liberals in Resistance over and above those elected on a state by state basis:

Yesterday, in hours of the afternoon and night, the leaders of the sector called Liberals in Resistance tried by every means to impose and inscribe 29 delegates in addition to those elected in departmental assemblies of the Resistance...

The trigger for rejection by the departmental delegates was, according to this report, an attempt to appoint the ex mayor of Tocoa, Adán Fúnez. The latter participated in open resistance to the coup up until one week before the November election, when, Vos el Soberano (citing news reports in El Heraldo) says

with the intention of relecting himself in office, he appeared in a center of the golpista sector of the Liberal Party to ask, publicly and on bended knee, pardon for having participated in the activities of the Resistance.

One can see why he was an unwelcome person. It is almost unbelievable that experienced party politicians would have such a tin ear as to think this would go down without choking.

Rasel Tome is given the principal responsibility for the attempted to expand delegates:

Within hours of yesterday it was possible to confirm that Rasel Tome had unilaterally ordered his sympathizers to expand the departmental delegates from two incumbents and an alternate to four incumbents and an alternate (two additional hand-picked delegates) against the decision of the last Assembly of the Resistance celebrated in Siguatepeque that established the number of delegates at 56 for logistical and budgetary reasons.

The report emphasizes that with the departure of the Liberal leaders, debate continued, underlining that the FNRP is not about winning traditional elections:

the political wager of the FNRP will not be the electoral processes, so as not to continue accepting elections Honduras-style, and it was decided that the fundamental task of the moment is the installation of the National Constituent Assembly with the conditions that the popular movement proposes.

In addition, it was made clear that the guarantors of this political process unleashed by the coup d'Etat are not the political parties, but the popular and social movement.

Undoubtedly there will be political analysts willing to argue that the activists of the Frente are being unrealistic and should have trimmed their ambitious project to fit into the goals of the Liberal Party faction.

But the message the Frente is conveying is that politics in Honduras is completely broken: if the system is dysfunctional, taking it over will not help.

"How Democractic Should Democracy Be?": Oscar Estrada

Note: The original in Spanish was posted today on Quotha, with the first half translated there in a comment by Charles II and the second half in a comment by me. In the following translation, I make slight changes to the original translation of the first half.

For those of us who didn’t go to the national assembly of the FNRP in Tocoa because we weren’t elected as delegates by our organizations or simply because we weren’t active in any organization other than the Frente, the accomplishments of this week still seem unclear. In the afternoon, the assembly will have ended and we hope that everything will be more broadly known. Meanwhile, various ideas occurred to me which I think are important to explore to better understand the “conflict” which we live internally.

The Liberal Party, which historically had a moderately progressive origin, has been controlled by the right for at least the last 60 years. I previously wrote on the 17th of June, about the role which the Liberal Party played in the most key stages of Honduran history, such as the ‘54 strike, the coup d’état of ’63, the different military governments of the ‘70s, the dirty war of the ‘80s, the neoliberalism of the ‘90s, and about how always, with rare individual exceptions, it bent itself to the interests of the national oligarchy and transnational capital. And while the labor code, voluntary military service, and certain legal changes were given in Liberal administrations, it would be remote from history to try to say now, that the changes that have been achieved in social matters correspond to the political will of the Party alone, making invisible the social and popular movements which drove those changes. One should understand that in Honduras, nothing is ever done except through pressure.

The crisis which the Honduran people lives in actuality originates in essence in a struggle of classes [class war]. It is the product of the erosion of an economic and political model which favors the most wealthy, displacing from wealth a broad sector of the population which lacks representation within the power structures.

The Liberal Party as a an institution never, through its individual leaders, owners, and caudillos, will be able to understand the urgencies of the dispossessed classes of the country, simply because they belong to another class, and therefore to another Honduras. This is not to say that there aren’t Liberals who belong to the popular classes. It’s clear that there are such and that they understand very well what it is to be poor in Honduras. But those who take decisions, those who today urge the rescue of the party, because without it they are nothing politically, those are NOT of the same class which filled the streets in repudiation of the coup d’état.

This is the basic contradiction of the Liberal Party in Resistance. To form a part of the FNRP and to propose to “rescue” the Liberal Party which amounts to rescuing the bipartisanship reigning for more than 100 years. To rescue the Liberal Party, the same Liberal Party would have to seize the Party. [To rescue the Liberal Party they will have to seize the Party, the Liberal Party itself.]

It has not been clear up till now what would be the strategy for the Liberals in Resistance to rescue their party. At times they can be seen seated in the gringo embassy, then in the office of Rosenthal and their goal seems remarkably similar to that of Elvin Santos or Micheletti: to return to power in the next elections.

They, the Liberals in Resistance, now accuse a faction of the left of the Frente of not being “inclusive” on blocking them from “storming the assembly,” placing 29 delegates more than those which by agreement they had obtained in the previous assembly in Siguatepeque. This strategy reminds me a great deal of the assemblies of the 90s in the UNAH, when it was a common practice to bring 100 delegates from another campus, normally from the north of the country, to flip the results and to impose a directive according to the interests of the caudillo of the student front and it was naive to think, that with all those years of experience, we would not have learned.

The ideological separation within the Frente has been evidenced basically among what the Liberals call "los bloqueros", in reference to the bloque popular, but that is composed as well by the parties of the left (PSOCA, TR, MND, OPLN, CNRP, BP, unions, guilds and social movements) on one side and on the other the Liberals, who independently of the name that they use continue being a party of the right with all the practices and vices of traditional politics.

We have all always said that the FNRP is a diverse and pluralistic organization. And although pluralism as a concept can seem sound to us, what is certain is that this has pushed us to accept, on some occasions, actions contrary to the will of the base, both by political organizations as well as by individuals, that far from unifying in their political pragmatism have weakened us.

I would put as an example the decision of the UD to participate in the elections of last November, legitimating the same and their inflated results, and later to participate in the Government of National Unity of Lobo Sosa, permitting him to say internationally that his government is of Reconciliation since he counts among his ministers one that is "of the resistance". This action, accepted by that mistaken sense of plurality, has brought a great political cost for the Frente and will continue doing so.

On the other side, and as a prelude to the assembly, the COPINH launched a communique that has had a certain replication, both by the Feminists in Resistance, as well as by some independent authors. The basic propositions of the public communique of COPINH, far from representing differences in the objectives of FNRP, show a discussion that sooner or later it will be necessary to have.

What those communiques demand, more than representation in the leadership of the Frente, is a different vision of power. It is a call to attention to the traditional left that continues thinking about democratic centralism, the political bureau or the negotiations of realpolitik distant from the will of the base. It is a questioning about the concept of popular representation and democracy as an expression of the will of the majority (denying voice to minorities). It is a demand, to the entire FNRP, that it see power as something that is constructed from the base, from below, because the history of the peoples has demonstrated to us that in the end, a revolutionary government without popular power is nothing more than a reactionary government with a populist discourse.

While all this happens, the machinery of terror does not stop. Lobo journeyed to Miami on a lightning visit to meet with Insulza in relation to the return (in August, according to CODEH) of the expresident Manuel Zelaya, as a prior requisite for there to be total recognition of Lobo Sosa in the extraordinary Assembly of the OAS at the end of July.

"We are near a solution, but I don't believe that it is possible to speak of a solution still nor to be overly optimistic", said Insulza.

And that's something the un-government understands very well, because its master Colombia has demonstrated it, that international recognition is one thing and internal legitimacy is another very distinct thing.

In Tocoa, the same municipio where the Assembly was carried out, "various police and military commandoes advanced toward the land where more than 190 families in the Bajo Aguan are found" according to a report of COFADEH, violating in this form the accord signed by the president with MUCA the past month of April, throwing fire on the powder keg of the national agrarian conflict.

And the repression continues and while this week in Tegucigalpa we say goodbye to two known fighters of the Bloque Popular (dead of natural causes), Luis Morel and Oscar Padilla, on the north coast they assassinated in front of his house Julio Fúnez Benítez (57), union member of SANAA and member of the frente, and Jorge Alberto Castro Ramírez, of 41 years, horchata vendor in the numerous marches of 2009.

Oscar Estrada
11 de Julio de 2010

Not quite a reply from the FNRP

But the statement posted on Vos el Soberano today may show some effects of the public positioning of COPINH and the Feministas en Resistencia.

Titled In installation of its first National Assembly the FNRP recognizes its diversity and strengthens unity, the statement starts

Recognizing the diversity of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (FNRP) there was initiated this day in Tocoa, Department of Colón, the act of installation of the First National Assembly of the Honduran Resistance.

That "recognizing the diversity" is, obviously, critical to many constituent parts of the Frente.

Choosing Tocoa as the site of the Assembly is itself symbolic: Tocoa is in the region of the Bajo Aguan, where the confrontation of campesinos and landowners has not yet been concluded, and where tensions continue.

The statement goes on to say that

delegates, militants and sympathizers of the FNRP coming from all Honduras participated actively in the Forum of installation.

This wording raises the question, what constitutes a delegate, versus a sympathizer? The statement goes on to describe the assembly as including

men and women, youths and adults of all the political currents that have expression in the country and that have space in the FNRP.

Near the end of the statement tensions are finally openly acknowledged:

At the end of the act of installation and previous to the mobilization various doubts were clarified that have to do with the character of the Resistance, it was clarified that "the objective that the FNRP has is the National Assembly. What matters now, is not if we will be a political party, the important thing is that we are the principal social and political force of the country and that we have succeeded in reconfiguring the map of power in Honduras".

The "big tent" rhetoric, especially given the specification that it concerns "all the political currents", hints at the tensions between traditional political parties and the more revolutionary groups in the Frente.

So who did attendees hear from to represent the diversity of the Frente?

The three speakers mentioned by name in the article are Marcelino Borjas, Pavel Núñez, and Gloria Oquelí.

Borjas is described in the statement by the Frente as a retired teacher with a Master's degree in sociology and a doctorate in economics. His remarks at the Assembly reaffirmed the anti-imperialist posture of the Frente, and argued that the coup "would not have been possible without the participation and the help of officials of the highest level of the North American government".

Pavel Núñez, a member of the musical group Café Guancasco "spoke in the name of Honduran youth".

But the really interesting choice here is to give a great deal of print to Gloria Oquelí, described as "recognized leader of the Liberal Party, member for Honduras of the Parlamento Centroamericano (PARLACEN), and until recently President of that regional organization".

In March, Oquelí was listed as part of a group called the "encounter of progressive Liberals", one of seven factions within the Liberal Party that El Heraldo claimed would "promote the overthrow of the Liberal Party and even ask for the disappearance of that party". In May, El Heraldo augmented its count of factions of Liberals in Resistance to include what it called three "zelayist" factions, for a total of ten separate movements within the Liberal Party organizing against the dominance of Roberto Micheletti and Elvin Santos.

So, whatever other role she has, when Oquelí speaks, one of the tensions she voices is that between Liberals in the Resistance and those suspicious of the party system itself.

Oquelí is quoted as saying that

the rules of democracy are simple: one of those affirms that the majority rules and a second reaffirms that the majority can change any rule that might be established in a democratic system, except for the first.

Sounds uncontroversial, right? Majority rule = democracy.

But in fact, COPINH and the Feminists in Resistance each have articulated different rules of democracy, which stem from a minority position that understands that majority rule may actually end up being majority command. COPINH builds on a tradition of indigenous organizing in which consensus is the goal. A consensus is a majority; but it is a majority without significant dissent. To arrive at consensus, you have to take time to thrash things out, and you may well need to abandon some things that are objectionable to a determined minority.

Feminist organizations often strive for consensus as well. They also may advocate, as the Feministas en Resistencia did in their statement, for parity between men and women in governance.

Minority groups, including traditional parties that have strong agendas but are not popular enough to win a majority (such as the Liberal Democrats in the recent UK elections), often advocate an alternative to majority rule: proportional representation. Unlike the more familiar winner-takes-all approach, in proportional representation, minority positions can emerge with representation equal to that of their supporters. In pluralistic societies, proportional representation is probably more truly democratic.

So, the rules of democracy are not so simple after all.

But back to Gloria Oquelí. The report on the Assembly says she argued that "it is important to consolidate the political project known as Resistance". Again, not all participating segments of the Frente would agree that the Resistance is a "political project", and if they did, they would disagree on what kind of "political project" it is; and they may well continue to politely disagree with the claim that it has to be "consolidated".

Oquelí is a good politician, a progressive one, and she clearly feels the Resistance has a once in a lifetime opportunity. According to the report,

Recognizing the wide character of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular and the traps of empire she declared that "if they push us, if they corner us, so that we will be an institution of a homogeneous ideology, we could fall into error. In the FNRP we all fit, therefore it is not true what Hugo Llorens says, that we are a small group of the extreme left and of the extreme right facing off. It is the ideas, the ideals and all our dreams, not the ideologies that mark our way".

While it isn't entirely clear here who "they" are who want to corner the Frente into a homogeneous ideology, the juxtaposition with US Ambassador Llorens' regrettable dismissal of the Frente as an "extreme left" group tends to suggest Oquelí is concerned about the Frente being pushed to remain ideologically pure by the left. While it is hard to reduce feminist or indigenous activism to right/left terms, if you have to choose one position, it would indeed be left.

So, perhaps "they" who are trying to corner the Frente into an "ideology" in place of simply "ideas" and "ideals" includes those who recently expressed their uncertainties about the goals of this weekend's assembly. Since no one from indigenous or feminist networks is quoted in this first report, it is hard to say what they thought of how the event was opened.