“Lawfare is a weapon against the people”: Manuel Zelaya Rosales

The use of the judicial system for political persecution

Last week, a meeting of personalities was held at the European Parliament headquarters in Brussels to present on the subject of LAWFARE (use of the judicial system for political persecution). This issue has become very effective in recent years as a result of the legal persecution undertaken against progressive leaders, especially in our continent. In this meeting, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, former president of Honduras, was overthrown by the Military Coup of June 28, 2009.
“Lawfare is a weapon against the people”: Manuel Zelaya Rosales

The event could go unnoticed, but the extreme Spanish right, entrenched in the Holy Inquisition, demonized the event, motivated by the presence of Carles Puidgemont, a Catalan politician, exiled in Belgium. The positions of Manuel Zelaya, both in his brief presentation, and in subsequent interviews, bring much clarity to the discussion on the issue of judicial persecution, used by the right as a weapon to dismantle the progress of progressivism in the world, especially in America Latin

It is imperative to have a clear and totalizing vision of this matter, and that Zelaya has proposed. First, because Lawfare as a weapon has always existed, and is used against the people who seek their liberation. It is thanks to the legal apparatus of the bourgeois state, that they incarcerate peasants, students and workers without merit. That repressive structure uses elites to justify repression against those who demand land, or free education. The laws in our countries are devoted to private property, to the (theoretical) preservation of the free market, and relegate human beings to a second or third level.
"Operation Condor Criminal Pact" 

Hence, Zelaya's other statement: "Lawfare has always existed, and will continue to exist as long as the capitalist system exists." Specifically, the legal bodies that regulate our societies are deeply conservative (as they are supposed to be), and we cannot expect them to play in favor of popular interests, for many changes that we propose. These are coercive devices that complement the monopoly of force held by elites and their transnational partners.

Nothing will change if the correlation of forces does not change. And changing that implies understanding that we must adopt another path in the economic field. Every day it is clearer in the world that the right loses its masks one by one. And it is logical, because it is extremely complicated to convince people that aspiring to free quality education, free health, housing and work is bad for the whole society. This makes the logic of the elections lose value, and there are increasingly frequent social shocks.

Of course, Zelaya puts his finger on the sore when he says that Lawfare is applied to former presidents for "being Bolivarian, for being friends with Cuba and Fidel ...", that claim of a sovereignty that is alien to the right, but that in the imaginary of its spokesmen it constitutes an affront to its power, and that must be punished without reservations, with all the possible rigor. It is clear that Lawfare does not seek justice, but to strike hard blows to progressivism, and to those peoples who join it. It is easy to anticipate that it would have magnified effects in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, if the triumphant Trump agenda and the hawks were fulfilled for these three countries.

But Lawfare also has another face, that of impunity. Corruption, drug trafficking, organized crime, are blessed by Washington, provided that the regimes that the perpetrator regimes are unconditional. It is not surprising that all those who overthrew Dilma Roussef are involved in major crimes, or that they imprison Lula for the term necessary to get him out of the presidential race. More recently, the Coup d'etat in Bolivia, where an unknown by force is imposed, and is pursued without charge to the constitutional president, under the protective shadow of the United States, demonstrates that the "rule of law" is transformed in the "empire of violence" whenever the system so decides.

 Zelaya knows Lawfare firsthand. Since its return to Honduras, under the Cartagena Agreement, the coup regime, now led by Juan Orlando Hernández, has been engaged in a witch hunt, against his and close collaborators his government, who have not been able to culminate at the stake for lack of rational indications that their accusations have any basis. Even so, the former Honduran president, lives every day, a systematic lynching in the media, of which both the regime, as well as overlapping groups, with a left-wing façade participate, under the auspices of NGOs, which reach George Soros .

The former president has been sentenced only to pay the State of Honduras (of the coup plotters) the reimbursement of the amount paid for compensation to an employee (then Minister of Micheletti) that Zelaya dismissed during his administration, for his alignment with the IMF, against The interests of the Honduran people. For that reason, his residence is under precautionary embargo. Meanwhile, the harassment has been extended to several of its officials, who have been investigated to the source of personal items.

In Honduras, the Lawfare became a thousand-headed monster, which produced, in the name of the rule of law, two separate electoral frauds, and the death of dozens of people for expressing their political disagreements in protests against the regime. No one is tried for this, although the young student Rommel Valdemar Herrera is facing a sentence of more than 15 years in prison, requested by the United States, for his alleged participation in the burning of tires at the entrance of the American Embassy in Tegucigalpa, the previous year.

Actually, the issue of prevailing laws raises a fundamental issue. The bourgeois state apparatus has a fundamentally repressive character, and is aimed at submitting the majorities. It is in itself a body of quasi-religious characteristics, which have nothing to do with the rights or freedoms of people. Any liberal theory about it has been overwhelmed by the reality of elites as a reactionary class, which punishes what does not favor it.

And since the class interests that define the reactionary position of the Latin American ruling classes have an essentially economic nature, it is necessary to understand that, although the electoral processes serve us to reach the governmental direction, it is necessary to change the system, as well as the laws that sustain; It is imperative to rescue the preeminence of the human being as a fundamental objective of all social activity.

Zelaya's intervention in Brussels has been very timely, where he has raised a problem that requires collective attention. It is perhaps necessary to think that the peoples of our America must seek a minimum consensus on the structural changes that today press everyone.

To see Manuel Zelaya's participation, go to the following link:

https://www.facebook.com/PartidoLibreHn/videos/273911026923285/