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.”
