US embassy cable - 05TEGUCIGALPA1213

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 TEGUCIGALPA 001213 
 
SIPDIS 
 
FOR IIP/G/WHA AND IIP/T/ES, 
FOR WHA/PDA, WHA/USOAS, AND WHA/CEN 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: OIIP, PREL, KPAO, PGOV, KDEM, HO 
SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION ON THE OAS, JUNE 07, 2005 
 
 
1. On 06/07, the Tegucigalpa-based liberal daily "La 
Tribuna" published an editorial entitled, "Abysses." 
"Nicaragua is facing a deep political crisis. Congress' 
refusal to ratify the State of Economic Emergency Decree 
that suspend several constitutional guarantees and the 
general discontent that obligated Enrique Bolanos to 
withdraw it, evidence a weak governance that lacked 
authority to impose his decisions." 
 
"The legal confrontation between both powers, Presidential 
and public services authorities, is not remote and will 
provoke an intervention by the Supreme Court of Justice 
which will not favor the presidential decisions and will put 
the army and the police in a odd position." 
 
"According to the `crazy lady of the people,' Enrique 
Bolanos is putting more gas on the fire by wanting to call 
the attention of the OAS at the moment when the U.S. had 
presented a project that would give the hemispheric 
institution the function to `watch over the democracies.' 
Eleven countries presented an alternative resolution to the 
U.S. proposal in the OAS in which it states that the 
assistance would be solicited by the individual countries." 
 
"Analysts believe that Bolanos' government is playing with 
the crisis to make OAS agreement easier. Nicaragua's 
Catholic Church has served as a mediator in other crises and 
rejects the OAS intervention." 
 
"All these conflicts have a lot to do with hatred generated 
between antagonist political parties that make countries 
ungovernable. Hatred that fires up ridiculous political 
confrontations, as we are witnessing in Honduran politics w. 
Instead of making proposals that would generate hope, we are 
going towards the same abyss that many others are in due to 
lack of vision." 
 
2. The San Pedro Sula-based liberal daily "Tiempo" carried 
an editorial entitled "Governable."  "In the OAS' General 
Assembly inauguration, the Secretary General Miguel Insulza 
stated the necessity for the continental institution to 
contribute to Latin America's democracy so the region can 
deal with the risk of democratic backsliding." 
 
"John Maisto, U.S. OAS ambassador, proposed a `constructive 
and preventive action, which immediately provoked a strong 
rejection in the South American countries because they 
consider it as an interventionist initiative." 
 
"No doubt that Latin America, after being through a complex 
period of revolutionary dynamism, `cold war' and the end of 
west-east confrontation, opened a path towards a higher 
democratic demand and citizenship participation through new 
pressure and interest groups with international support." 
 
"To understand this phenomenon with a schematic vision is 
not enough, it is necessary to deepen the analysis. It seems 
clear that it's easy to visualize in the institutional field 
and the political practice everything related with the 
presidential system and the ease to go forwards to a 
parliamentary system of major democratic and citizenship 
participation." 
 
"In the same order of ideas, the OAS initiative to give 
effective application to the Inter American Democratic 
Letter is very good but the importance is to find the source 
of our countries' political practice and the necessity for 
democracy and legitimacy in the electoral process and power 
distribution of internal parties and citizenship 
participation." 
 
 
3. The San Pedro Sula-based liberal daily "La Prensa" 
published an editorial entitled "Hybrid democracy."  "The 
OAS annual assembly has been in session since Sunday in Fort 
Lauderdale has reached a critical moment, shaken by the 
resignation of the former Secretary General and the 
hemispheres' stretch and shrink movement between countries 
with bilateral conflicts that block the continental vision." 
 
"The central theme, democracy, its strengthening and crisis 
prevention under the new concept of the `non-indifference 
principle' opens the path to one of the OAS' actions, the 
growth of the `non-intervention principle'." 
 
"The awful period of coup d'etats has disappeared from the 
continent; but some hybrid economies are winning terrain in 
the region. Each time democratically elected presidents are 
tempted by absolutism and assume power as a monarchy." 
 
"Insulza preferred to talk about deepening democracy towards 
the risk of backward movement. Celso Amorim, Brazil's 
foreign exchange minister, said: `we want to strengthen the 
region's democracy but we want to avoid interventionist 
mechanisms.'" 
 
"Venezuela sees this measure as unviable, giving strength to 
the non-intervention principle and leaving for other 
occasions the initiative that avoids hybrid democracies, an 
image which reflects the overnight absolutism that adversely 
affects power division." 
 
Palmer