Friday 4 December 2009

Honduras 09: "An election that met international standards of fairness and transparency"

"This shows that given the opportunity to express themselves, the Honduran people have viewed the election as an important part of the solution to the political crisis in their country."


"We see this election as a very important step forward for Honduras, and I would like to commend the Honduran people for an election that met international standards of fairness and transparency despite some incidents that were reported here and there."


"[The Honduran people] clearly signaled their desire to move forward with new leadership through their robust participation in Sunday’s elections."





* During the briefing on the Honduran election Valenzuela recognised the coup as a 'coup' rather than using weasel words, such as 'not legal'.  This is not significant.

Valenzuela was asked, "Will the United States recognize the new government if the Honduran congress fails to vote to reinstate Zelaya on December 2nd?"

To which he responded, "I would prefer not to deal with hypotheticals on this." Which of course meant 'No'.

Valenzuela was asked, "Is there any chance that the U.S. will not recognize the results of this election?"

To which he responded, "I don’t want to get into hypotheticals." Which also meant 'No'.

Valenzuela was also asked, "So is it not a legitimate concern that by recognizing the election, you could be encouraging further coups?"

To which he responded, "No"
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2 comments:

  1. reddebrek21 December 2009 at 03:44

    This news has saddened me , though it has not surprised me. Lets face it we all knew that the US was just looking for anything that would let them off the hook before this coup became more of an embarassment to them. Now to be honest i never expected much from Obama but for a few weeks their with the news that the US was suspending some aid (though not the military budget) that the US had finally given up un this backyard pruning of theirs.

    Instead we have an election so shambolic that even there own voting monitors couldn't properly whitewash it.

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  2. Kit21 December 2009 at 16:32

    "an election so shambolic that even there own voting monitors couldn't properly whitewash it."

    A great assessment.

    The sad thing is that now they are even more confident. I don't like the way things are looking in Colombia at the moment. I fear that hostilities between Colombia and Venezuela might well escalate.

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