Zelaya's Return to Honduras: Another Media Stunt?

September 21, 2009

Fame, even political fame, seems to depend more and more on your ability to grab the public fascination—even if it’s lack of respect—than any real attributes.  Just the mere aura of media attention confers importance, talent and relevance now-a-days.  Just ask the vacuous Paris Hilton, or the duly-elected president of Honduras, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, whose latest tactics indicate that more than resolving the constitutional crisis in a serious manner, he’d prefer to just be in the news. For whatever.   Just today (Monday, September 21) Zelaya appeared suddenly in the Brazilian embassy claiming he had crossed mountains, rivers and the military-manned border to re-appear in Honduras to defy the government’s arrest order.  And then he gave a friendly wave to supporters from the Brazilian embassy. 

This isn’t helpful. 

Sure the man was deposed in a coup.  (Just a quick side note: as Mary O’Grady wrote in today’s Wall Street Journal, the Honduran constitution does allow for the Supreme Court to try a president and issue a warrant. What it clearly does not say is that it gives them the power to bundle him up and take him out of the country.  It also implies that the trial would be transparent and under due process—neither of which was true in the rushed, closed-door “hearing” that was held preceding President Zelaya’s jammy-clad plane trip into exile.  The U.S. constitution allows for an impeachment process; but once it has been completed and a president found guilty, it doesn’t allow for him to be sent into exile—most would agree that to be beyond the constitutional order.) 

But his antics: first circling over the airport in a Venezuelan government plane, then the hokey pokey at the Nicaraguan/Honduras border, and now this demonstrate a craven need to keep himself in the public eye and to remind the world of his martyrdom, and, in some twisted way, even present himself as a credible politician.

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Honduras: Sides Harden, Logic Breaks Down, and Tragic Silliness Begins

July 26, 2009

Although President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya prefers to wear a white hat, there are no men in white hats in the escalating situation in Honduras. Unfortunately, now with the military’s statement supporting Costa Rican President Óscar Arias’ seven-point plan to resolve the impasse between the ousted President and the de facto government that replaced him, the implication is that again the men in the barracks will save the day.  But by announcing its support and, in effect, contradicting the position of de facto President Micheletti, the military is again insinuating itself in politics and serving as a political broker.  It was dangerous and wrong when it did it on June 28th, and it’s dangerous now.

As I wrote here earlier, de facto President Micheletti’s refusal to accept President Arias' San José Accord was a serious mistake. The stumbling block was the provision to allow President Zelaya to return to Honduras to a shorter mandate and with severely curtailed powers in a coalition government.  Micheletti stated that he would not allow Zelaya to return to Honduras and then never budged.

The intransigence led to the breakdown in the talks and drove Zelaya—never a cool head to begin with—out of a sensible, moderate process and back into the arms of Presidents Chávez of Venezuela and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. Zelaya swore he’d return to Honduras and on Friday led a caravan and a television crew briefly over the Nicaraguan border into Honduras then flitted back across the border to set up a camp on the Nicaraguan side.  To anyone (myself included) who supported the idea that the events of June 28th were a coup and that Zelaya should be returned in a limited capacity, the clownishness of his actions made his stunt Friday and Saturday tough to watch.

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Arias Led Mediation for Honduras, Close but No Cigar…Yet

July 21, 2009

In a logical world, President Oscar Arias’ seven-point plan for resolving the Honduran impasse is the best—and perhaps only—way forward after the Honduran coup. In many ways it reflects the things that we have promoted on this website: move up the date of the elections (in Arias’ plan to October), allow President Zelaya to return with a significantly curtailed role in a coalition government, an amnesty for the charges against him pre-June 28, and a commitment by the ousted president not to press for re-election. Pretty straightforward.

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Honduras' Holding Pattern

July 6, 2009

Things aren’t going well in Honduras. Lines have been drawn on both sides now, pitting the ousted president Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya Rosales (backed by the international community, including the U.S.) against the de facto government, led by Roberto Micheletti (backed by the Honduran Congress—where he came from—a majority of the Honduran people and a handful of conservatives.) The question is, now that the Organization of American States (with the support of the U.S.) has declared the June 28th removal of Zelaya an “unconstitutional alteration of the constitutional regime," denounced the military’s actions of June 28th, and called for his return, what’s going to happen?

The international community is squarely in favor of declaring this a coup and having Zelaya returned to power. The Honduran Congress, armed forces, Supreme Court, and many of its people refuse to allow it. Just yesterday when Zelaya (unwisely) chose to try to return on (again, unwisely) a Venezuelan jet, he was turned back by the military blocking the airport.

Meanwhile, the OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza is engaging in shuttle diplomacy, going between the different actors in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, and trying to foster some compromise.

Before laying out my position on this, to avoid any confusion at a time (and in a region) where people like to ideologically pigeonhole others and claim that one or the other is not on the “side of freedom,” let me say the following in as direct a fashion as possible:

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The Honduran Coup is Still a Coup: But Where Was Everybody Before?

June 29, 2009

Let me say upfront, unequivocally: what occurred on June 28, 2009, in Honduras was a coup and should be condemned for the violation of constitutional, democratic rule that it is.  And unlike the street coups that removed Presidents Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (Bolivia) or Lucio Gutiérrez (Ecuador), this one was positively 1970s-style retrograde: the marching of military officers into President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales’ residence, his forced removal (or kidnapping as he called it) at gun point, his being placed by military brass on a plane to be flown out of the country, and the swearing in of a new president, Roberto Micheletti—the speaker of the Honduran Congress. But let’s be clear. This event has been brewing for some time and regional governments and multilateral institutions have sat on the sidelines. Their reaction now—while correct—underscores their passiveness earlier, and turns a President who had been bent on steamrolling the checks and balances of power to secure re-election into an unnecessary victim. 

Despite the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court’s superficial efforts to give this a constitutional fig leaf, the sacking of President Zelaya represents a genuine threat to the shared democratic vision and system of governance that most of the region has enjoyed for over two decades and violates the body of regional law and precedent defending democratic governments from the “interruption of the constitutional order.” In short order, as they should have done, the governments of the region have denounced President Zelaya’s removal and called for the restoration of democratic government.

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