Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was deposed in a coup on 28 June. Pedro Landa is director of Caritas Tegucigalpa. Here is his statement on the coup in
Honduras.
Pedro Landa said: "The forced dismissal of [Honduran President Manuel] Zelaya on Sunday 28 June signifies a backwards step in Honduras' democratic process and does not resolve
the central problem of the democratic crisis and the exhaustion of the two-party rule in Honduras.
"But Zelaya's restitution is not the real solution to the problem.
"The
employment of a coup as a result of the political crisis in Honduras seems to have been unavoidable. It looks as though the decision to oust Zelaya was taken because he himself was planning to take
the dramatic step of dissolving the National Congress and immediately convening a constitutional convention. So the disintegration of democratic rule was inevitable from either side.
"It is not possible to accept or agree with the violent dismissal of a government. But there are no winners here - the only thing that is certain is that democracy and the Honduran people have lost
out. Now we are left with the challenge to reconstruct a new democracy and fight to avoid these events happening again.
"Calls from different social sectors to settle the crisis through
dialogue have fallen on deaf ears. Rather than debating about whether or not the events have been legal, discussion should be around driving a process of national dialogue and transforming Honduras'
exhausted political structures."
For more information, please contact Patrick Nicholson on 0039 334 359 0700 or nicholson@caritas.va
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya (L) gestures during a joint news conference with Jorge Taiana, president of the Organization of American States (OAS) and Argentina's foreign minister, at the end of ...
