Battle for Honduras Echoes Loudly in Media
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — “The lies of Manuel Zelaya” intones a stern voice as a picture of Mr. Zelaya, the deposed president of Honduras, flashes on the screen. Then to the ring of a cash register, images flash by of Mr. Zelaya’s cowboy hat, horses, a private plane, Times Square.
While he was president, Mr. Zelaya bought jewels, paid for trips and maintained his horses with money he stole from the Central Bank and the Treasury, according to the television advertisement produced by the de facto government. Headlines from Honduran newspapers pop up onscreen as if to demonstrate the truth of the accusations.
The spot, and others like it, are regular fare on Honduran television and radio, where the fierce political battle dividing Honduras plays out amid assertions of all kinds, no matter whether they are rooted in fact. Mr. Zelaya’s return to the country on Monday has turned up the volume on the media war — one in which the government’s voice is the loudest, but in which Mr. Zelaya is a skilled and equally slippery combatant.
“Mr. Zelaya has a terrorist plan,” another government ad asserts, accusing the deposed president of using the Brazilian Embassy, where he has taken refuge, as his general command. That followed an ominous warning that “foreign groups and military planes” had managed to enter Honduran territory.
The government spots are the most extreme example of the allegations that have become the diet of the Honduran airwaves.
Even before Mr. Zelaya was ousted in a coup on June 28, television and newspapers, controlled by a handful of wealthy businessmen, were opposed to him. Along with a state television station, the government of Roberto Micheletti, the de facto president, has many vehicles with which to discredit, if not smear, Mr. Zelaya.
On Wednesday night, for example, government television reported, without attribution, that Brazil had promised to reinstate Mr. Zelaya in return for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
But Mr. Zelaya has his own media allies, notably the Radio Globo radio station, which broadcasts around the clock, opening its microphones to callers and repeating its own set of rumors and misrepresentations. Mr. Zelaya is a frequent caller to the station and to others around the world, where he makes his own outrageous claims: Israeli commandos have been hired to kill him; he is being secretly poisoned by gas and radiation; Mr. Micheletti is preparing to storm the Brazilian Embassy.
“Nobody in Honduras gives the truth 100 percent,” said Alejandro Villatoro, the owner of Radio Globo and a legislator allied with Mr. Zelaya. He said that the reports of repression by the police and soldiers that had become a staple of his station were not broadcast on government-allied media.
The government clearly has the advantage, he said, noting that he and his reporters were briefly arrested the day of the coup. That experience has made him determined to keep the station on the air, even though the government frequently blocks his programming (most recently with children’s bedtime stories).
Advertisers have pulled their spots since the coup, and so he is financing the station’s $15,000 to $20,000 monthly budget.
Each side argues that it is countering the other side’s lies. “Our goal is to tell people the truth,” said a government media adviser who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak for the government. “They are running a disinformation campaign.”
The competing accusations continue when the two sides discuss what led to the crisis. According to a recent analysis of the legal issues of the case prepared by the Law Library of Congress in Washington, both Mr. Zelaya and those who ousted him appear to have broken the law.
In Mr. Zelaya’s case, he flouted court rulings ordering him not to conduct a survey on whether to convene a citizens assembly to change the Constitution. Eventually, the chief prosecutor filed a complaint with the Supreme Court accusing Mr. Zelaya of treason and abuse of authority, among other charges. That led to an arrest warrant that was carried out on June 28.
But Mr. Zelaya was not formally arrested when soldiers raided his home. Instead, the army detained him, took him to the airport and put him on a plane to Costa Rica, even though the Honduran Constitution says no citizen may be handed over to foreign authorities.
The military has said it decided to remove Mr. Zelaya from the country to reduce the likelihood that his detention would cause unrest. After initially defending the decision, members of the de facto government have come to see it as a mistake.
Norma C. Gutierrez, an international law specialist who prepared a legal analysis for American lawmakers last month, criticized both sides. Her bottom line: the case against Mr. Zelaya was rooted in constitutional and statutory law. His removal from the country was not.