• TWO months after the insidious civilian/military coup to oust President José Manuel Zelaya and democracy in Honduras, it would seem that all paths taken in an attempt to make the de facto government see reason have failed and its grip on power is inevitable. At least, that is the idea being projected by those who are celebrating having removed one of the pro-ALBA presidents from the regional political scene.

To date, despite the strong international opposition and resolutions of condemnation passed by important international bodies such as the United Nations, the Organization of American States (OAS) and other regional groups, more than a few have allowed themselves to be convinced by the mediation that Washington placed in the hands of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, an action that was never accepted by the Honduran "gorilla" administration, despite the fact that it involved returning Zelaya to Honduras in as hobbled a form as was his enforced exile to neighboring San José.

And it couldn’t be in any other way, because the ringleader of the de facto government, Roberto Micheletti, knows — as do the generals accompanying him in this illegal adventure — that Zelaya’s return is not convenient for the U.S. State Department or the right-wing forces within Barack Obama’s Democratic administration.

It was against that backdrop that an OAS delegation arrived in Honduras with the goal of convincing the de facto government to accept the Costa Rica Accord.

The delegation was comprised of Peter Kent, Canadian secretary of state for foreign affairs in the Americas, and the foreign ministers of Argentina, Jorge Taiana; Costa Rica, Bruno Stagno; Jamaica, Kenneth Baugh; Mexico, Patricia Espinosa and Panama, Juan Carlos Varela. They were accompanied by José Miguel Insulza, who traveled as a simple member and not as secretary general of that inter-American organization because the coup government refused to receive him as such. According to the coup leaders, Insulza is biased in favor of Zelaya.

Everything that has happened since that mediation was anticipated and predicted by political observers: the coup organizers have dug in their heels and now time is on their side. As long as the universal opposition to the June 28 events does not translate into more decisive action, the situation will remain the same.

It is good to document in the media that the mission to Tegucigalpa by the foreign ministers — despite the good intentions of the governments they represented — was simply in compliance with the OAS General Assembly mandate. They arrived, as the coup regime’s deputy foreign minister Marta Alvarado stated, "to nothing," because according to her and the de facto government, "there has not been a coup d’état in Honduras, just a constitutional replacement."

And if that was not enough, 48 hours earlier, the country’s Supreme Court — the same one that backed the military action exiling President Zelaya on that terrible morning of June 28 —rejected 11 of the 12 points in the San José Accord, and backed the decision of the coup’s ringleader, Roberto Micheletti, and his whole illegal administration, to prevent at all costs the return of Zelaya to complete his mandate.

We already know the outcome. The OAS mission failed to convince the coup regime, it returned home, and it left documented somewhere that it complied with the mandate given it by the General Assembly.

The most important aspect of this anticipated failure is that in order not to endorse this dangerous and disastrous precedent of attacking sovereignty and constitutionality, from now on the international community and today’s political leaders will have to take effective action that makes it impossible for coup perpetrators to remain in power.

If not, it will be a waterwheel of illegalities. The government that emerges from the upcoming presidential elections in Honduras will also be unconstitutional, and cannot be recognized, given that it is an accomplice to and fruit of the coup d’état perpetrated against President Manuel Zelaya.

One factor that we cannot leave out of the analysis is the tremendous popular movement that has grown in Honduras. Although it has been and continues to be the victim of the most brutal repression, it is still willing to keep up the struggle to defend a democracy that was beginning to be built, and which was promoting the right of the majority to decide on and defend the way chosen.