Honduras' PR Coup
Submitted by Brendan Fischer on December 20, 2010 - 8:03pm
Wikileaks has recently published documents suggesting that PR spin helped determine the final outcome of the June 2009 Honduran coup. At the same time that a July 2009 diplomatic cable from the U.S. Ambassador in Honduras to top government officials confirmed that the Honduran president’s removal was illegal, professional lobbyists and political communicators were beginning a PR blitz, eventually managing to manipulate America into believing the coup was a constitutional act.
On June 28, 2009, the Honduran military deposed Manual Zelaya, their country’s elected president since 2006, taking him at gunpoint from his home and sending him to Costa Rica. The international community quickly condemned the act as a coup, and the Organization of American States (OAS) issued an immediate and unanimous call for Zelaya’s return to office. President Obama stated that “we believe the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the President of Honduras, but he and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton stopped short of formally declaring the actions of the military to be a “military coup.”
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In the end, the power of spin helped coup supporters achieve victory. Zelaya was never fully returned to office, and despite protests by most of the international community, the November 2009 elections went forward and the U.S. recognized the right-wing candidate Porfirio Lobo Sosa as president. Despite the elections’ questionable legitimacy-- Zelaya supporters boycotted the vote, and the vote took place in what was called a “political environment contaminated by repression, violence, and fear,” with groups such as Amnesty International and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights deploring human rights violations—American support for the electoral outcome was decisive.
American acquiescence to the coup regime lent implicit support to the de facto government’s violent suppression of political opponents and opposition media. The outcome of the November 2009 vote was greatly influenced by the conduct and statements of American officials in the months leading up to the election. And that conduct and those statements were largely determined by a small group of talented PR practitioners and lobbyists. As the next article in this series will show, Honduras 2009 is not the first time that PR spin helped topple a Latin American regime.
More:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/9806