TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – Politically isolated Honduras braced yesterday for months of austerity under the weight of economic sanctions imposed after a June coup and ousted President Manuel Zelaya vowed actions to support his reinstatement.
With the textiles and coffee exporting economy seen contracting this year amid a global economic crisis, the interim government that replaced Zelaya estimates it already has been denied about $200 million in suspended credits.
The United States has cut $16.5 million in military assistance and warned a further $180 million in other aid is at risk; and any repeat of a brief boycott by neighbouring trade partners would choke one of Latin America’s poorest countries. “We have to think in terms of austerity and we want to ask the people to do the same,” interim president Roberto Micheletti said on Friday. He had asked his finance minister to find ways to cut state spending to ride out the coming months.
The interim government, installed by Congress after widely unpopular Zelaya was booted out of the country in his pajamas last month by soldiers, has resisted international pressure and says Zelaya’s reinstatement is not negotiable.
It accuses Zelaya, who ran afoul of his political base and ruling elites in the conservative country by allying himself with Venezuela’s firebrand leftist President Hugo Chavez, of contravening the constitution and seeking to illegally extend his rule. That has left little wriggle room for talks brokered by Costa Rica aimed at defusing one of the worst crises in Central America since the Cold War. The talks have resulted in little apparent progress, aside from an agreement to keep talking.
“Here we are, with irreconcilable positions, but I believe that these positions will ease as we advance in the dialogue,” Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who is acting as mediator in the Honduras crisis talks, told CNN Espanol in an interview. Arias, who won the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in ending Central American conflicts, said talks held so far between the rival delegations had been frank but respectful.
Zelaya’s term was due to end in January and local commentators suspect the interim government is seeking to buy time to make his reinstatement obsolete.
The United States, facing a major test of President Barack Obama’s promise of a fresh start in relations with Latin America, has joined many regional governments in strongly condemning Zelaya’s ouster but has urged him against trying to return unilaterally to avoid stoking tensions and violence.
At least one pro-Zelaya protester was killed in clashes at Tegucigalpa’s airport last Sunday when Honduran troops blocked an attempt by Zelaya to return in a plane provided by Chavez.
Around 1,000 protesters marched to the airport yesterday for a ceremony to remember the clashes and victims, complete with music and theatre and attended by Zelaya’s wife, Xiomara. Speaking at the end of a visit to the Dominican Republic, Zelaya said yesterday the talks in Costa Rica had opened a “window” for a deal. He vowed unspecified actions to back his case for restoration both at home in Honduras and in the international arena.
“Honduras is isolated, as a demonstration that a mistake has been made,” Zelaya said in Santo Domingo after a farewell breakfast hosted by the Dominican Republic government.
“Possibly next week, we’ll have some actions inside the country… we’ll have others on the international front,” he said.
Former Cuban President Fidel Castro, whose country backs Zelaya, wrote in a column late on Friday he feared a wave of copy-cat coups in Latin America unless Zelaya is reinstated.
Vowing not to back down, interim President Roberto Micheletti is expecting a tough five or six months. So are ordinary Hondurans.
Boiling corn over a wood fire to make tortillas to sell in her poor neighbourhood of Santa Cecilia in the gang-plagued hills on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, 52-year-old Fidelina Zepeda says her costs have risen 30 per cent since the ouster.
