Honduras: Zelaya back? And does it matter?

Telesur, as well as Mexican and Venezuelan news sources are reporting that Manuel Zelaya is back in Tegucigalpa, while the Associated Press, quoting the “de facto government” spokesperson René Zepeda says “you lie!” (AFP via Jornada, W Radio).

AFP quotes Brazilian diplomats in Honduras confirming the story (but I haven’t seen the article myself, and only got it second-hand).  BoRev, who is live-blogging the Return of Melvis, adds what the press has been reporting, that Zelaya is in the Brazilian Embassy, speaking to supporters.

With only 68 days until the Presidential elections, and with candidates selected under the coup regime, it’s somewhat disappointing (although not unexpected) to hear Barack Obama again claiming that the “compromise” worked out by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias could — if implemented — legitimize these elections. Obama was interviewed on Univision’s Sunday news program, Al Punto.  That’s a bit of a stretch, but the United States is finally starting to react towards the coup, closing the Honduran Consulate in Los Angeles over the weekend.

As it is, Zeleya is, at this point, probably irrelevant except as a symbolic figure.  The predictable Mary Anastasia O’Grady of the Wall Street Journal spins a Congressional Research Service report on Honduras to repeat the line that a coup is not a coup when there is a legalistic interpretation of one law that would legitimately allowed for Zelaya’s removal from office, conveniently ignoring the fact that forcing his removal by military force was a coup.   But, the point is that the candidates allowed to stand for office are not candidates for “change”… which is what the opposition is hoping for.

Real News interviews film-maker Oscar Estrada, who reports that Zeleya’s political future isn’t all that important, but that, as a result of overthrowing the theoretical chance of reform in Honduras, the coup leaders have created a coalition of campesinos, the urban poor, the Garifuna minority (Afro-Indigenous Hondurans), urban intellectuals, leftists, gays, students and clerics which are increasingly demanding genuine structural changes in the country.

Al Giordino (The Field) has also been live-blogging, but took the time to add some context to his post:

The return of Zelaya has all the markings of a very well coordinated operation by the Honduran civil resistance and the member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS). The choice of Brazil’s embassy – the Latin American country with the largest Air Force – pretty much guarantees that the coup regime can’t possibly think it can violate the sovereignty of that space. That the US State Department confirmed, this morning, that Zelaya is in Honduras while the coup regime denied it strongly suggests it had advance knowledge that this would happen today (if not active participation).

This is a textbook example of what we’ve referred to before as “dilemma actions.” It puts the coup regime on the horns of a dilemma, in which it has no good options. It can leave Zelaya to put together his government again from the Brazilian embassy with the active support of so many sectors of Honduran civil society, or it can try to arrest the President, provoking a nonviolent insurrection from the people of the kind that has toppled many a regime throughout history. Minute by minute, hour by hour, and, soon, day by day, the coup regime is losing its grip. At some point it will have to choose either to unleash a terrible violent wave of state terrorism upon the country’s own people – which will provoke all out insurrection in response (guaranteed by Article 3 of the Honduran Constitution) – or Micheletti and his Simian Council can start packing their bags and seeking asylum someplace like Panama. Meanwhile, the people are coming down from the hills to meet their elected president. This, kind readers, is immediate history.