Claim: Leftist leader assassinated in Honduras

The leader of Honduras’ only major left-leaning party has been killed by the country’s military, says a report in the NarcoNews blog.

Citing a report from Mexico’s Notimex news service, the blog reports that Cesar Ham, presidential candidate and leader of the Democratic Unification of Honduras party, was killed while resisting arrest in the early hours of Sunday morning, as the Honduran military fanned out to arrest leftist leaders throughout the country, including President Manuel Zelaya and the country’s chancellor, Patricia Rodas.

“Despite being from a different party, Ham was a close ally of ousted President Manuel Zelaya,” NarcoNews writes.

When Ham supported President Zelaya’s referendum on allowing the president to serve a second four-year term, right-wing news sources launched a campaign against him, accusing him of taking “millions of dollars” from Zelaya in exchange for supporting the referendum.

The accusation was never proven.

Honduras’ highest court declared the referendum illegal shortly before Sunday’s military coup, which ousted the president and created a rift between Honduras and most of the rest of the international community, which recognizes Zelaya as the legitimate leader of Honduras.

Although Zelaya had been a member of the right-leaning Liberal Party, he had moved to the left in recent years and garnered support among the country’s rural poor. But the move alienated Zelaya from his own party and the country’s ruling elite.

On Sunday, the Liberal Party-dominated Honduran Congress voted in Roberto Micheletti as Zelaya’s replacement. Micheletti immediately instituted a two-day curfew across the country.

“A curfew begins today and ends on Tuesday,” Micheletti said at his first press conference, as worldwide condemnation for the action, led by the United States, continued.

“We recognize Zelaya as the duly elected and constitutional president of Honduras. We see no other,” a top US State Department official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

Micheletti, a member of Zelaya’s own Liberal Party, maintained however after being sworn in by Congress that he “came to the presidency not by a coup d’etat but by a completely legal process as set out in our laws.”

Congress said it voted unanimously to remove him from office for his “apparent misconduct” and for “repeated violations of the constitution and the law and disregard of orders and judgments of the institutions.”

Micheletti was appointed to serve out the rest of the term, which ends in January. New general elections are planned for November 29.

The United Nations has scheduled an emergency session for Monday to discuss the military coup in Honduras, CNN reports.

– With AFP

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