Update 14: Honduras Share This /

Elections in Honduras will be held in 11 days, and very little progress has been made on advancing the Tegucigalpa-San José Accord. The Accord was signed by ousted President Manuel Zelaya and de facto President Roberto Micheletti on October 29th and declared "dead" by Zelaya on November 5th. Since the apparent crumbling of the Accord, very little has advanced, despite the United States' attempts to keep the process moving by sending deputy assistant secretary of state Craig Kelly to Honduras twice to meet with both Zelaya and Micheletti. Zelaya has dug in his heels, calling for a boycott of the November 29th elections by his supporters and sending President Obama a letter stating that he will not accept any deal to restore him to office that legitimizes the coup. Yesterday, the Honduran Congress announced that it will not convene to vote on Zelaya's restitution, a step required by the Tegucigalpa-San José Accord, until December 2nd - 3 days after the presidential elections are to be held. Here are more details about the most recent events in Honduras' political crisis:

• For two days, from November 10 - 11, deputy assistant secretary of state Craig Kelly traveled to Honduras to meet with both ousted President Manuel Zelaya and de facto President Roberto Micheletti in an attempt to get both sides to abide by the terms of the Tegucigalpa-San José Accord. He left the next day without any apparent advancement in the Accord, but appeared positive, telling the press "There is still a lot of work to be done along the way ... but I believe it is important for both sides to keep talking." According to the State Department's twitter feed, @dipnote, deputy assistant secretary Kelly returned to Honduras yesterday to continue to advance dialogue between the two parties and attempt to move the Accord forward.
• Much criticism has emerged against the United States' role in the collapse of the accord it helped negotiate. Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), said, through his spokesman, that the "State Department's 'abrupt change' of policy toward Honduras 'caused the collapse of an accord it helped negotiate.'" One group, the Alliance for Global Justice, sent out an urgent action alert earlier this week, calling for people to call their senators and tell them to vote 'no' on Thomas Shannon' confirmation as U.S. Ambassador to Brazil. The alert argues that Shannon is "not fit to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Brazil" because "Either Shannon defied President Obama’s instructions and plotted with the coup regime to keep it in power, or he was fooled by thuggish coup leader Roberto Micheletti into supporting a hoax that the coup regime had no intention of honoring."
• Last Tuesday, the secretary general of the Organization of American States, José Miguel Insulza, said he would not send observers to monitor the November 29th elections, while many of the OAS's member countries said they would not recognize the election winner unless Zelaya was reinstated. In response, the U.S. Ambassador to the OAS, Lewis Amselem, said: "I've heard many in this room say that they will not recognize the elections in Honduras. I'm not trying to be a wiseguy, but what does that mean? What does that mean in the real world, not in the world of magical realism?" This prompted us to ask, in an earlier blog, where is the Obama administration's nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the OAS?
• Zelaya has been calling for a boycott of the elections by his supporters, and in protest of the coup d'etat, 110 mayoral candidates and 55 deputies have pulled out of the elections. However, despite the continued controversy surrounding the legitimacy of the upcoming elections, Honduras' Supreme Electoral Court announced that already has confirmed over 250 international observers for the November 29th elections. While a detailed list of the observers has not been provided, the Honduran National Party announced that it invited around 100 observers, among them ex presidents Jorge Quiroga (Bolivia), Armando Calderón and Alfredo Critiani (El Salvador); Vinicio Cerezo (Guatemala), Vicente Fox (Mexico) and Alejandro Toledo (Peru). According to the National Party, "the majority of the invited have confirmed their attendance and in some cases will send a representative."
• Over the weekend, Zelaya sent President Obama a letter, in which he said he will not accept any deal to restore him to office if it legitimizes the coup government. In the letter, Zelaya also stated that he will not accept the legitimacy of the upcoming elections and accused the Obama administration of reversing its stance on whether the elections would be legitimate if he was not in office. In the letter, Zelaya writes: "The future that you show us today by changing your position in the case of Honduras, and thus favoring the abusive intervention of the military castes ... is nothing more than the downfall of freedom and contempt for human dignity. ... It is a new war against the processes of social and democratic reforms so necessary in Honduras."
• The president of the Honduran Congress, José Alvedro Saavedra, announced that Congress would not convene until after the elections to vote on Zelaya's restitution - setting the vote date as December 2nd. According to Reuters, this move by the Congress was most likely made in an effort to win more international support for the elections. "The delay could leave a door open to negotiators to continue looking for a way to end the deadlock. A 'No' vote before the election might have increased international rejection of the result of the presidential election."