Bricker: Honduras Votes Today on Opinion Poll

Bricker: Honduras Votes Today on Controversial Opinion Poll

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Dear Colleague,

On Thursday Narco News reporter Kristin Bricker outlined the fears of a coup attempt in Honduras. The catalyst for these events is a non-binding referendum that doesn’t ask anything more than whether voters want the chance to vote again in November’s election in a process toward a new constitution. These 35 words - "Do you think that the November 2009 general elections should include a fourth ballot box in order to make a decision about the creation of a National Constitutional Assembly that would approve a new Constitution?" – brought the Armed Forces into the streets last week and the ballots that contain them had to be liberated from a military base by a protest march.

Bricker reports,

“In an attempt to counter the Supreme Court's argument that the proposed consultation was illegal, Zelaya reclassified the legally binding ‘consultation’ as a non-legally binding ‘public opinion poll.’ ‘That poll has no binding character,’ argued Zelaya during a Friday press conference. ‘That is, its result--yes or no--does not obligate the state to do anything. It's a public opinion poll. It's a poll that does not create new rights, does not create a new law.’

“…With the ballot boxes now under Zelaya's control and the whole world pre-emptively condemning an attempted coup, anti-Zelaya forces are now doing everything they can to keep citizens away from the polls tomorrow.

“The Federal Prosecutor's Office has announced that people who set up polling stations or promote or vote in the poll will be breaking the law and could be subject to legal action.

“…The lie that Zelaya is pushing for a new Constitution so that he can be re-elected has been repeated so many times that even self-proclaimed western hemisphere experts are parroting it. The third sentence in the Council on Hemispheric Affairs' (COHA) analysis entitled ‘Political Reform in President Zelaya's Honduras’ states: ‘As a result of this referendum, the president hopes to eliminate the one-term limit placed on Honduran president.’… COHA obviously never checked the actual text of the ballot, because it writes that tomorrow's voting is to re-elect Zelaya -- a claim that even the conservative Honduran press hasn't been brazen enough to make.”

Read the full report on the events in Honduras online at Narco News:

http://www.narconews.com

From somewhere in a country called América,

David B. Briones
Webmaster

The Narco News Bulletin

http://www.narconews.com

webmaster@narconews.com

ENDS

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