[governance] Solidarity with RDS Honduras

[Jorge Amodio]

> This is true, and important. Isn't Honduras the one that is involved in a complicated dispute over the exile of the President? Once things get dragged into those kinds of internal disputes you really have to know what is going on before intervening

Yes you are right Honduras is still going through a political crisis.

Some background information.

On June 28, 2009, a group of military forces (supposedly following
orders from the
supreme court) "arrested" the democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya and
based on corruption and other charges removed him from the presidency and let
him leave the country, the air force transported him to the
neighboring country of
Costa Rica.

On the same day (6/28) general elections (not presidential) were planned in
Honduras and president Zelaya wanted to include a public consult about a
calling for a future constitutional referendum to modify the constitution of
Honduras and let the president be reelected, that by the current constitution
is not permitted.

Apparently the main goal of the constitutional referendum was to pave the
road for Zelaya to be able to be reelected for more terms as president
(sort of like Chavez of Venezuela).

The conflict started few days before, the congress prohibited president Zelaya
to move forward with the public consult on his own, but he ordered the
chief of the armed forces (which normally help with these tasks on election
days) to move forward and distribute the materials for the popular consult,
the General refused because there was a supreme court decision that
said that the popular consult done this way was unconstitutional.
President Zelaya fired the General, but the supreme court cancelled that order.

After removing Zelaya from the presidency the congress (according to their
constitution) named as provisional president the president of the national
congress Roberto Micheletti (who belongs to opposition party).

There has been and still are mixed reactions, particularly the international
community reacted in opposition to this move by the Honduran congress
since it was not a very transparent move and Zelaya, like it or not was
democratically elected.

I didn't follow all the events in detail, situation over there is not
very clear,
as far as I know the "current" government called for general elections
for this coming November.

The telecom act of 2002 (before Zelaya's govt) where CONATEL is named as
the government agency in charge of dealing with the HN ccTLD permits
via an agreement to delegate this function to another institution.

I know that RDS has been, like in many other countries, the ccTLD admin
from day one, they signed the AF with ICANN but I don't know if they ever
got the blessing of the HN govt or if there is or not any agreement or
understanding between the govt (that by their own law recognized its role
as ccTLD admin/sponsor) and them.

Hope this provides some help to understand the context, its a very
mushy mushy situation so any "official" statement IMHO will require
proper due diligence.

I think that it could be ok to recognize the work and accomplishments
of RDS as a civil society organization, but getting into the HN internal
conflict without knowing what's really going on will be premature.

My .02
Jorge