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Zelaya Now in Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa
Former Honduran President Holds Forth to International Media
Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2009
By Danny Dyer

TEGUCIGALPA — There is tension in the air in Tegucigalpa as it enjoys a forced holiday delivered in the form of a twenty-four hour national curfew. This curfew is supposed to end at 6:00 PM but has just been extended to 6 AM Wednesday.

And what do we owe the curfew, the tear gas and the near panic conditions of yesterday? Nothing less than the return of the Messiah. No, I'm not referring to Obama. Honduras has its own messiah: Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales.

The rumors began yesterday around noon. Zelaya was in the United Nations building. Thousands were pouring into the streets. Caravans of supporters were coming from all over the country to show support. The rumors increased exponentially as each minute passed. Zelaya is in Nicaragua in his hotel suite. Zelaya is on his way to Washington. The United Nations finally confirmed that Zelaya was not there but that he had made contact to inform them that he was coming to Honduras. Finally Manuel's wife told a news agency that her husband was in the Brazilian embassy.

By 1:00 PM the supermarkets were filling with people buying whatever they buy when they have lost their minds, the gasoline stations full of cars, and parents pulling their children out of schools. At 3:30 PM President Micheletti informed the country that a nationwide curfew would be imposed starting at 4:00 PM. Given the fact that the government had strictly enforced previous curfews, detaining lawbreakers and confiscating vehicles, it would have been better to have given the people more time. Imagine roughly 750,000 people simultaneously clearing their desks, grabbing their car keys or climbing onto buses or taxis in the narrow inadequate streets of a major city. Total chaos. Throughout the night hundreds of “demonstrators” battled police, throwing rocks and vandalizing homes adjacent to the Brazilian embassy. Finally, at 4:30 AM the police removed them and the streets became deserted.

So how did we get here, who are the players, and what does Manuel Zelaya hope to gain? When the principle participants are lying, the media is chasing rabbit trails, and multiple agendas are being pursued, getting your mind around the true story, much less presenting it, can be a daunting task indeed.

Let's start with Zelaya. Mel is stating that he returned to Honduras by road; a fifteen hour trip that involved many risks. That's his story and he is sticking to it. Now that he is safely in the Brazilian embassy, he is declaring that his intent is to draw all of the principle parties of Honduras together in order to negotiate a harmonious democratic future for all Hondurans. If you believe that, I have some beach front property I would like to sell you in Olancho. It is impossible for Mel to negotiate this democratic future and, at the same time, uphold the constitution that he swears that he has no intention of changing. He simply has no time under the rules currently being played by. The Honduran Presidential Elections are less than 8 weeks from now. Zelaya says that no elections should be honored unless he is re-instated as president, and the constitution states that Zelaya cannot be re-elected and thus cannot be a candidate. Are we to believe that Jose Manuel Zelaya returned to Honduras, at great risk to himself, in order to be re-instated as president only to turn power over to the newly elected president less than eight weeks later? I've still got that beach front property available. Any takers?

No my friends. Mr. Zelaya has returned for one reason and one reason only: to attempt to regain the presidency and stay there until he is good and ready to leave. Given the record of the friends he has chosen to hang out with, that would be until he dies or is again forcefully removed.

The Honduran governments response to Zelaya's call for national reconciliation under his benevolent leadership, has been to petition the Brazilian embassy to turn over Mr. Zelaya to the proper Honduran authorities. There are multiple charges, some political but most criminal, that Mr. Zelaya is facing. That means that the Brazilian Embassy is harboring a Honduran fugitive from justice.

So how did Mr. Zelaya get back into Honduras anyway? And what do the Brazilians have to do with this? Everyone in the international community is acting so happily surprised at this whole affair and treating it as a wonderful opportunity for “reconciliation” and a “return to democratic rule”, as if Honduras was not under democratic rule (I feel like Winston in George Orwell's “1984”, battered under the onslaught of Newspeak: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength). Argentine President Kirchner, Insulza of the OAS, the E.U. and Hillary Clinton all expressed “surprise” at the “sudden developments” in Honduras while at the same time declaring that this was yet another opportunity for dialogue and conflict resolution.

And what would that resolution be, pray tell. The San Jose Accords? Zelaya is never going to go for that for the reason previously stated. It allows him to be in office for a whole two months. Wow. I came back to Honduras for two months in office and then I go to jail for 30 years. No Cuarta Urna. No Constituyente. Just two months to play President. Does anyone in their right mind believe that Zelaya came back for that? That means that the “dialogue” and “conflict resolution” that everyone in the international community is calling for and hoping for is just one thing: return Jose Manuel Zelaya to power. Period.

So how did Manuel Zelaya return to Honduras and who paved the way? I predicted about a month ago that the U.S. would lose interest in Zelaya and this whole nasty ordeal would blow over. I believed that economic and political relationships would slowly, but surely, be restored after the elections, and Honduras would begin to move forward. In fact, there was a time when Zelaya had truly lost momentum. Even Chavez expressed doubts as to Mel's ability to return to power. But, to my surprise, Zelaya continued to be received at the U.S. State Department, and have meetings with high level officials. He remained irritatingly successful at holding the attention of Hillary and company. This was warning sign number one. Warning sign number two was when the U.S. cut even more aid to Honduras.

Warning sign number three was about a week ago when the El Salvador Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hugo Martinez, spoke with U.S. Undersecretary of Political Affairs for the Western Hemisphere Bisa Williams about the need to adopt “specific measures in the diplomatic realm to cause the Honduran Government to accept the San Jose Accord.” These measures were to be “surgical” and not effect the Honduran people. It is also worthy to note that Bisa Williams is the head of the U.S. office of Cuban Affairs. Last time I checked, Cuba is not anywhere near El Salvador or Honduras.

Then, on Sunday night, September 20th at ten o'clock, a Venezuelan jet coming from Nicaragua made an unauthorized landing at the international airport in San Salvador. On that aircraft was Jose Manuel Zelaya. There, he held a meeting with Sigfrido Reyes, the head of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). The FMLN is a Salvadorean Socialist political party similar to the Sandinista Party of Nicaragua, headed by now Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega (both were communist guerrilla organizations that later morphed into political parties). After the meeting Zelaya boarded the jet and left El Salvador. Six hours later he appears in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

So, how did Zelaya get to the Brazilian Embassy? In addition to the obvious risks, the time-line simply doesn't work out for him to have traveled by car. The only way Mel could have entered Honduras was by airplane and there are only four (five if you count Roatan) airstrips in the country that the Venezuelan jet could land on: LaCeiba, San Pedro Sula, Tegucigalpa and Palmerola Air force Base in Comayagua. Although not outside the realm of possibility, it is highly unlikely that the plane landed at any of the International Airports. The only strip in the country that could handle that plane, is close to Tegucigalpa (1 hour driving time), AND provide the secrecy needed to make this late night insertion, is Palmerola. And guess who would have had to have knowledge of, and give permission, for that airplane to land? Well that would the people that both run and control the base of course: The United States of America.

I cant prove Zelaya landed at Palmerola but we do know he was in San Salvador at 10:00 PM and we do know he left in a Venezuelan jet. He landed somewhere and that somewhere was in Honduras. He simply couldn't get to Tegucigalpa any other way and have the time-line work out.

So we have Manuel Zelaya coming from Nicaragua, on a Venezuelan jet, for a late night visit to El Salvador (whose Foreign Affairs Minister is coordinating with a U.S. Undersecretary in charge of Cuban affairs), maybe landing at a U.S. Air force base in Honduras, and staying in a Brazilian Embassy to the amazement and delight of the entire international community. Who needs fiction when real life is this crazy.

So if this is how it happened, the question is why? Even if it didn't happen just this way the question is still why?

I must admit, I underestimated the importance that the U.S., ALBA, the OAS, and others placed on the events that took place in this tiny country. We really ticked off a lot of people when we had the audacity to correctly use the balance of powers in order to maintain a stable democracy and independent rule. I saw the clues but I didn't place them in proper context because I didn't appreciate the resolve and coordination of the international community in supporting socialism and destroying sovereignty and independent determination of individual nations. I knew that the agenda was part of a larger global attack on sovereignty but I thought we had won this round. I was wrong.

No matter how this turns out for Honduras, the will and coordination of the international community in this affair (with the U.S. as the principle coordinator) is beyond what I imagined. Chavez is being used as a powerful pawn in a high level game. In many respects Chavez is like an unruly older boy whose rich daddy has bought him a lot of cool toys. You hate the way he acts but you put up with him so that you can play with the toys. His agenda, to a certain extent, meshes with the plans of the international community but, unlike the other players, he wants to be the biggest leader in the sandbox, crudely wielding oil and rhetoric to achieve regional influence.

This is not where Obama and company are going. They desire a sandbox where all of the players are equal, there is no sovereignty, no self determination of country, and all beholden to the collective opinions and desires of the others. The unpardonable sin of Honduras was not the removal of Zelaya from office in his pajamas. The sin was respecting and enforcing the constitution of their country. The sin was placing the constitution and the sovereignty built thereon above the collective opinion and desires of the international community.

Obama, Hillary, Insulza, Chavez, and the rest of the OAS thought that Honduras would fold to threats of expulsion from this mini United Nations. They were wrong. They thought economic sanctions would work. They were wrong. They thought they would negotiate Zelaya back in. They were wrong. Now, with 8 weeks until the elections, they have surgically implanted their puppet into the country to force the issue before it is too late.


The U.S. Steers Left on Honduras

Why would Hugo Chavez expect Obama to help him?

By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

When Hugo Chávez makes a personal appeal to Washington for help, as he did 11 days ago, it raises serious questions about the signals that President Barack Obama is sending to the hemisphere's most dangerous dictator.

At issue is Mr. Chávez's determination to restore deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya to power through multilateral pressure. His phone call to a State Department official showed that his campaign was not going well and that he thought he could get U.S. help.

This is not good news for the region. The Venezuelan may feel that his aims have enough support from the U.S. and the Organization of American States (OAS) that he would be justified in forcing Mr. Zelaya on Honduras by supporting a violent overthrow of the current government. That he has reason to harbor such a view is yet another sign that the Obama administration is on the wrong side of history.

In the three weeks since the Honduran Congress moved to defend the country's constitution by relieving Mr. Zelaya of his presidential duties, it has become clear that his arrest was both lawful and a necessary precaution against violence.

The Americas in the News

Get the latest information in Spanish from The Wall Street Journal's Americas page.

Mr. Zelaya was trying to use mob rule to undermine Honduras's institutions in much the same way that Mr. Chávez has done in Venezuela. But as Washington lawyer Miguel Estrada pointed out in the Los Angeles Times on July 10, Mr. Zelaya's actions were expressly forbidden by the Honduran constitution.

"Article 239," Mr. Estrada noted, "specifically states that any president who so much as proposes the permissibility of reelection 'shall cease forthwith' in his duties, and Article 4 provides that any 'infraction' of the succession rules constitutes treason." Congress had little choice but to take its next step. It convened "immediately after Zelaya's arrest," Mr. Estrada wrote, "condemning his illegal conduct, and overwhelmingly voting (122-6) to remove him from office."

Mr. Zelaya was shipped out of the country because Honduras believed that jailing him would make him a lightning rod for violence. Interim President Roberto Micheletti promised that presidential elections scheduled for November would go forward.

That might have been the end of it if the U.S. had supported the Honduran rule of law, or simply refrained from meddling. Instead President Obama and the State Department joined Mr. Chávez and his allies in demanding that Mr. Zelaya be restored to power. This has emboldened Venezuela.

On July 5, Mr. Zelaya boarded a plane manned by a Venezuelan crew bound for Tegucigalpa, knowing full well that he would not be allowed to land. It didn't matter. His intention was to incite a mob on the ground and force a confrontation between his supporters and the military. It worked. One person was killed in clashes near the airport.

Yet the tragedy did not produce the desired condemnation of the Micheletti government. Rather, it empowered Honduran patriots. Perhaps this is because the airport violence reinforced the claim that Mr. Zelaya is a threat to the peace.

He was not the only one to lose credibility that day. OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza had encouraged the fly-over stunt despite its obvious risks. He even traveled in a separate plane behind Mr. Zelaya to show support. The incident destroyed any possibility that Mr. Insulza could be considered an honest broker. It also proved the charge that by insisting on Mr. Zelaya's return the U.S. was playing with fire.

The next day Costa Rican President Oscar Arias offered to act as a mediator between Mr. Zelaya and the new government. Mr. Arias would seem to be far from an impartial referee given that he is a supporter of Mr. Zelaya. Yet it is also true that Central America has the most to lose if Honduras descends into civil war. It follows that the San José venue offers better odds for the Honduran democracy than, say, the auspices of the OAS.

Other influential Central Americans have expressed support for Honduras. Last week the Honduran daily El Heraldo reported that Salvador's OAS ambassador said he hopes to see the resolution that suspended Honduras from the group revoked under the new permanent-council president. Catholic Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga has condemned Mr. Zelaya's violent tactics and says that Honduras does not want to emulate Venezuela.

Mr. Chávez understands that Mr. Zelaya's star is fading, which is why he called Tom Shannon, the State Department's assistant secretary for the Western Hemisphere at home at 11:15 p.m on July 9. Mr. Shannon told me that Mr. Chávez "again made the case for the unconditional return of Mr. Zelaya, though he did so in a less bombastic manner than he has in the past."

Mr. Shannon says that in response he "suggested to him that Venezuela and its [allies] address the fear factor by calling for free and fair elections and a peaceful transition to a new government." That, Mr. Shannon, says, "hasn't happened."

Nor is it likely to. Yet the U.S. continues exerting enormous pressure for the return of Mr. Zelaya. If it prevails, it is unlikely that Mr. Zelaya's mobs or Mr. Chávez will suddenly be tamed.

Copyright 2009 Wall Street Journal - Monday, July 20, 2009

Write to O'Grady@wsj.com


Obama Is in Russia, but Honduras Is Where the Action Is
by  Dennis Prager 
07/07/2009

The importance of the summit meeting in Moscow between President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pales in comparison to the events taking place in Honduras.

Whether or not the United States and Russia reduce their nuclear arsenals is ultimately meaningless. But whether Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro are victorious in Honduras or whether the movement toward left-wing authoritarianism is finally defeated in a Latin American country is extremely significant.

The courage of the pro-liberty forces in Honduras is almost miraculous. It is almost too good to be true, given Honduras' consequent isolation in the world. 

Even if you know little or nothing about the crisis in Honduras, nearly all you need to know in order to ascertain which side is morally right is this: Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, Cuba's Castro brothers, the United Nations, and the Organization of American States are all lined up against Honduras.

And what troubles these good people? They claim that there was a military coup in Honduras that renders the present government illegal.

Here, in brief, are the facts. You decide.

The president of Honduras, Jose Manuel Zelaya, a protege of Hugo Chavez, decided that he wanted to be able to be president for more than his one term that ends this coming January -- perhaps for life. However, because the histories of Honduras and Latin America are replete with authoritarians and dictators, Honduras's constitution absolutely forbids anyone from governing that country for more than one term.

So, Zelaya decided to follow Chavez's example and find a way to change his country's constitution. He decided to do this on his own through a referendum, without the congressional authorization demanded by Honduras's constitution. He even had the ballots printed in Venezuela.

As Mary Anastasia O'Grady, who writes The Americas column in the Wall Street Journal, explains: "A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress. But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chavez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela."

The Honduras Supreme Court ruled Zelaya's nonbinding referendum unconstitutional, and then instructed the military not to implement the vote as it normally does. When the head of the armed forces obeyed the legal authority, the Honduran Supreme Court, rather than President Zelaya, the president fired him and personally led a mob to storm the military base where the Venezuela-made ballots were being safeguarded.

As Jorge Hernandez Alcerro, former Honduran ambassador to the United States, wrote, "Mr. Zelaya and small segments of the population tried to write a new constitution, change the democratic system and seek his re-election, which is prohibited by the constitution."

In order to stop this attempt to subvert the Honduran constitution, while keeping Honduras under the rule of law and preventing a Chavez-like dictatorship from developing in its country, the Honduran Supreme Court ordered the military to arrest Zelaya. They did so and expelled him to neighboring Costa Rica to prevent certain violence.

Was this a "military coup" as we understand the term? Columnist Mona Charen answered this best: "There was an attempted coup in Honduras, but it was Zelaya who initiated it, not his opponents."

Or, to put in another way: When did a military coup ever take place that was ordered by that country's supreme court, that was supported by the political party of the president who was overthrown, in which not one person was injured, let alone killed, and which replaced the ousted the president with the president of the country's congress, a member of the same party as the ousted president?

But none of this matters to the United Nations, which never met a left-wing tyrant it didn't find appealing. That is why the president of the U.N. General Assembly, a former Sandinista foreign minister, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, accompanied Zelaya in the airplane on Zelaya's first attempt to return to Honduras on July 5. (Brockmann, among his other radical moral positions, is so virulently anti-Israel that the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations threatened not to attend the U.N. Holocaust Memorial Day event if Brockmann showed up.)

And none of this matters to the OAS, which just lifted its ban on Cuba's membership and which says nothing about Chavez's shutting down of Venezuela's opposition radio and television stations.

And none of this matters to the world's left-wing media. Thus, on July 1, a writer for the United Kingdom newspaper The Guardian penned this insight: "There is no excuse for this coup. … The battle between Zelaya and his opponents pits a reform president who is supported by labor unions and social organizations against a Mafia-like, drug-ridden, corrupt political elite." To the Guardian writer, Zelaya was a "reform president." Lenin's useful idiots never die out.

And the Los Angeles Times editorial page wrote: "Even though the Honduran Congress and military may believe they are defending the country against a would-be dictator, the ends don't justify the means."

Quite a great deal of foolishness in one sentence. That the Los Angeles Times does not believe that Zelaya is a would-be dictator is mind-numbing. As for the cliche that "the ends don't justify the means," in fact they quite often do. That is one of the ways in which we measure means. One assumes that while the Los Angeles Times believes that Americans should be law-abiding, it agrees with Rosa Parks having broken the law. The ends (fighting segregation) justified the means (breaking the law).

If Honduras is hung out to dry, if America suspends trade and economic aid, the forces arrayed against liberty in Latin America will have won a major victory. On the other hand, if Honduras is not abandoned now, those Iran-supporting, America-hating, liberty-loathing forces will have suffered a major defeat.

Even members of the Obama administration recognize this. As quoted in the WashingtonPost, Jeffrey Davidow, a retired U.S. ambassador who served as President Obama's special adviser for the recent Summit of the Americas, said:

"The threats against democracy in Latin America … are not those coming from military coups, but rather from governments which are ignoring checks and balances, overriding other elements of government." 

Let your representatives in Congress know that America needs to stand with liberty, not with Castro, Ortega, Zelaya, Chavez, the OAS, and the U.N. And buy Honduran goods. I am smoking a terrific Honduran cigar as I write these words: God bless Honduras. 

Mr. Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show based in Los Angeles. He is the author of four books, most recently "Happiness is a Serious Problem" (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com. 

Wall Street Journal • Opinion

Honduras at the Tipping Point

Why is the U.S. not supporting the rule of law?

Hundreds of emails from Hondurans flooded my in-box last week after I reported on the military's arrest of President Manuel Zelaya, as ordered by the Supreme Court, and his subsequent banishment from the country.

Mr. Zelaya's violations of the rule of law in recent months were numerous. But the tipping point came 10 days ago, when he led a violent mob that stormed a military base to seize and distribute Venezuelan-printed ballots for an illegal referendum.   All but a handful of my letters pleaded for international understanding of the threat to the constitutional democracy that Mr. Zelaya presented. One phrase occurred again and again: "Please pray for us."  

Hondurans have good cause for calling on divine intervention: Reason has gone AWOL in places like Turtle Bay and Foggy Bottom. Ruling the debate on Mr. Zelaya's behavior is Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, who is now the reigning international authority on "democracy."

Mr. Chávez is demanding that Mr. Zelaya be reinstated and is even threatening to overthrow the new Honduran president, Roberto Micheletti. He's leading the charge from the Organization of American States (OAS). The United Nations and the Obama administration are falling in line.

Is this insane? You bet. We have fallen through the looking glass and it's time to review how hemispheric relations came to such a sad state.

The story begins in 2004, when Mr. Chávez was still an aspiring despot and the U.S. pursued a policy of appeasement toward him. Not surprisingly, that only heightened his appetite for power.

Mr. Chávez had already rewritten the Venezuelan Constitution, taken over the judiciary and the national electoral council (CNE), militarized the government, and staked out an aggressive, anti-American foreign policy promising to spread his revolution around the hemisphere.

The Americas in the News

Get the latest information in Spanish from The Wall Street Journal's Americas page.

Many Venezuelans were alarmed, and the opposition had labored to collect signatures for a presidential recall referendum permitted under the constitution. As voting day drew near, Mr. Chávez behaved as if he knew his days were numbered. The European Union refused to send an observer team, citing lack of transparency. The OAS did send observers, and in the months and weeks ahead of the vote mission chief Fernando Jaramillo complained bitterly about the state's intimidation tactics against the population. Mr. Chávez gave OAS Secretary General César Gaviria an ultimatum: Either get Mr. Jaramillo out of the country or the referendum would be quashed. Mr. Chávez was appeased. Mr. Jaramillo was withdrawn.

The Carter Center was also invited to "observe," and former President Jimmy Carter was welcomed warmly by Mr. Chávez upon his arrival in Venezuela.

A key problem, beyond the corrupted voter rolls and government intimidation, was that Mr. Chávez did not allow an audit of his electronic voting machines. Exit polls showed him losing the vote decisively. But in the middle of the night, the minority members of the CNE were kicked out of the election command center. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Chávez claimed victory. There was never a credible audit of the paper ballots against the tallies in the voting machines.

Mr. Carter's approval notwithstanding, the proper U.S. and OAS response was obvious: The process had been shrouded in state secrets and therefore it was impossible to endorse or reject the results. Venezuelan patriots begged for help from the outside world. Instead, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, Roger Noriega, and the OAS blessed the charade.

There was never any explanation for the blind endorsement, but behind the scenes there were claims that Mr. Chávez threatened to call his militia to the streets and spill blood. The oil fields were to be burned. To this day, the opposition contends that the U.S. and Mr. Gaviria made a cold calculation that caving in to Mr. Chávez would avoid violence.

Predictably, Washington's endorsement of the flawed electoral process was a green light. Mr. Chávez grew more aggressive, emboldened by his "legitimate" status. He set about using his oil money to destabilize the Bolivian and Ecuadorean democracies and to help Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and Argentina's Cristina Kirchner get elected. Soviet-backed Fidel Castro was able to intimidate his neighbors in the 1960s and '70s, and Mr. Chávez has done the same thing in the new millennium. This has given him vast power at the OAS.

Hondurans had the courage to push back. Now Chávez-supported agitators are trying to stir up violence. Yesterday afternoon airline service was suspended in Tegucigalpa when Mr. Zelaya tried to return to the country and his plane was not permitted to land. There were reports of violence between his backers and troops.

This is a moment when the U.S. ought to be on the side of the rule of law, which the Honduran court and Congress upheld. If Washington does not reverse course, it will be one more act of appeasement toward an ambitious and increasingly dangerous dictator.

Write to O'Grady@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A11



The Washington Post

Preventing a Honduran Bloodbath

By CARLOS ALBERTO MONTANER   Madrid, Spain

POSTED BY CARLOS ALBERTO MONTANER ON JULY 2, 2009 12:37 PM

The United States Ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, an extremely competent diplomat, tried very hard to keep Honduras's Congress from ousting President Manuel Zelaya. After his arguments and pressures were exhausted, and faced with something that seemed inevitable, he did what he could: he sheltered the president's son at his residence to save him from any violent outcome.

Fortunately, Zelaya's expulsion from the presidency and from his country was bloodless. It wasn't exactly a military coup: the Army acted on orders from the Supreme Court after Zelaya's continued violations of the law. The ousted president seemed intent on getting reelected, even if it meant violating the Constitution, and on dragging the nation into Hugo Chávez's "21st century socialism" camp against the will of the Honduran people.

Nevertheless, if there is still something worse than the depressing spectacle of a freely elected president forced to leave his country at gunpoint, it is that same leader trying to force his way back in. If Zelaya returns, he will be arrested and charged with an array of crimes. His imprisonment will embarrass any who decide, irresponsibly, to accompany him on such a mad adventure.

This is most grave. Hugo Chávez and Daniel Ortega are already talking about invasions and resorting to force. That could unleash a bloodbath and would certainly destroy the weak political institutions that Honduras labored to achieve three decades ago, when the era of military dictatorships mercifully ended. Peter Hakim, president of Inter-American Dialogue, put it this way: "Zelaya is fighting with all the institutions in the country. He is in no condition really to govern."

And that's the truth. According to Mexican pollster Mitofsky's April survey, Zelaya was Latin America's least popular leader. Only 25 percent of the nation supported him. Another survey found that 67 percent of Hondurans would never vote for him again. Why? Because the Hondurans attributed to him a deep level of corruption; because they assumed he had links to drug trafficking, especially drugs originating in Venezuela, as former U.S. Ambassador to the O.A.S. Roger Noriega revealed in a well-documented article published in his blog; and because violence and poverty -- the nation's two worst scourges -- have increased dramatically during his three years in power.

Simply put, a huge majority of the country -- including the two major political parties (including Zelaya's), the Christian churches, the other branches of government and the armed forces -- do not want him as president. All agreed that he should finish his mandate and leave power in January 2010, but no one wanted him to break the law to keep himself in the presidency. Hugo Chávez has already done that, and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, Bolivia's Evo Morales and probably Ecuador's Rafael Correa are also trying to do the same. The Hondurans, without question, do not want to go down the path of Hugo Chavez's collectivist and anti-Western "caudillismo," allied to Iran, Cuba and North Korea.

What to do under these circumstances? The worst idea is to resort to force. The government of interim President Roberto Micheletti already is summoning reservists and the Army is preparing to defend the nation's sovereignty. The nationalist discourse is heating up with talk of "defense of the motherland" against foreign enemies. They worry about foreign aggression, shrewdly propelled by Chavez and his crew, in which -- inexplicably this time -- the Americans have sided with the enemies of democracy and the rule of law.

If a conflict explodes, one of the Western hemisphere's poorest countries will suffer the bloodletting that Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua experienced during the Cold War.

The solution is to move forward with the general elections planned for November. It's a solution within everyone's reach: the candidates are already there, freely elected in open primaries, and both enjoy much popularity. Why plunge this society irresponsibly into a maelstrom of violence? Once the new government is selected, a government that enjoys the legitimacy generated by a democratic process, the Honduran people can push this lamentable episode into the past.

That will be best for almost all parties in the conflict. Zelaya may lose the game, but Hondurans will not pay with their blood for the mistakes and misdemeanors of a maladroit ruler

Carlos Alberto Montaner is a Cuban-born writer, journalist, and former professor. He is one of the most influential and widely-read columnists in the Spanish-language media, syndicated in dozens of publications in Latin America, Spain and the United States. He is also vice president of the Liberal International, a London-based federation devoted to the defense of democratic values and the promotion of the market economy. He has written more than twenty books, including Journey to the Heart of Cuba; How and Why Communism Disappeared; Liberty, the Key to Prosperity; and the novels A Dog's World and 1898: The Plot. He is now based in Madrid, Spain.

ttp://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/carlos_alberto_montaner/2009/07/preventing_a_honduran_bloodbat.html?hpid=talkbox1

Senator DeMint Supports Honduras
“Americans should support the Honduran people and their legitimate leaders in their brave and heroic stand for freedom and the rule of law.”
 
July 2, 2009 - Greenville, SC - Today, influential U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, made the following statement about the ongoing situation in Honduras. 

"The people of Honduras have struggled too long to have their hard-won democracy stolen from them by a Chavez-style dictator. The Honduran Congress, the Honduran Supreme Court, and the Honduran military have acted in accordance to the Honduran constitution and the rule of law. 

“For weeks leading to his arrest, Zelaya flouted the constitutional authority of the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court, and claimed for himself extra-constitutional control of his nation’s military and political institutions. Every institution from the Electoral Tribunal to the Supreme Court ruled that his actions were unjustified and illegal. Zelaya’s open defiance of democratic norms has set Honduras on a path toward violence, instability, and tyranny. 

“I am hopeful that as President Obama grows in office, he will eventually turn away from despots like Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Castro, and Zelaya, and give the United States’ full-throated support to the people of any country who are fighting for the same values we cherish and defend in America. The people fighting for freedom around the world, in Iran and Honduras, should never have to wonder which side America will choose between freedom and tyranny. 

“President Obama’s call for the reinstatement of Zelaya is a slap in the face to the people of Honduras. And the resolution written by the Organization of American States tramples over the hopes and dreams of a free and democratic people. 

“The rule of law is working in Honduras. President Obama should not undermine the democratic institutions that guarantee freedom by forcing an illegitimate President back into power. 

“This is not an ideal transition, but Hondurans are adhering to their constitution. The United States should support the Honduran people and their legitimate leaders in their brave and heroic stand for freedom and the rule of law.”  

Central American Business Leaders
Renounce Closing of Borders
By Daniel Dyer

TEGUCIGALPA — Central American business leaders have united to renounce the decision of Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua (also known as the CA-4) to close their borders to the movement of commerce to and from Honduras for 48 hours. The Central American commercial federation known as FEDEPRICAP wrote a strongly worded letter demanding the opening of all borders and stating that “political problems should not be resolved by economic sanctions”. This tactic is one more step in a series of decisions by the international community designed to pressure Honduras into reinstating ex-president Jose Manuel (Mel) Zelaya. This ploy in particular is not only illegal, due to the violation of several international and regional trade agreements between the participating countries, but is also not in the best interests of the countries imposing the sanctions. While their show of solidarity towards the Honduran ex-president and willingness to involve themselves in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation of which is absolutely none of their business is touching, it would have been helpful to Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua if someone has consulted a map before making this hasty decision.

Honduras, with Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico to the north and Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama to the south occupies the exact center of all commerce that flows through Central America by land. More than $6 million per day crosses the borders of Honduras in route to other countries and it is impossible for these products to travel north or south without traversing Honduras. In addition to that the Honduran port of Puerto Cortez is THE entrance port for Nicaragua and Guatemala on the Atlantic coast with most of their imports from the U.S. and Europe having to travel through Honduras by land after disembarkation.

This begs the question, who’s hurting who with these sanctions?  El Salvador has already stated that they are losing $2.4 million per day due to the border being closed. Other countries have not released firm numbers.

Honduras, understanding its strategic value in the flow of commerce through out the isthmus, could simply refuse to reopen its borders after the 48 hour period expires thus depriving their neighbors, of the much needed goods that are currently being held in Puerto Cortez and are stacking up in endless lines of eighteen wheelers that are stalled in the highways across Central America.

Luckily for its neighbors, this will not happen for the one thing we can all count on is that no one is willing to allow token political gestures to interrupt the flow of money of which all countries of the world are equally addicted. The good news is that none of the countries involved desire the borders closed and we can expect the flow of commerce to resume forthwith.
June 29, 2009
Honduras Fires Its Runaway President: 
Constitutional Order Is Preserved
by Ray Walser, Ph.D.
Heritage Foundation WebMemo #2511

Early on June 28, members of the Honduran military temporarily arrested President Manuel Zelaya. Within minutes he was on a plane bound for Costa Rica. In San Jose, Zelaya denounced the military's intervention as a "coup d'etat" and a "brutal kidnapping." The military's actions, while swift and arbitrary, came after President Zelaya defied virtually every Honduran political and legal institution and propelled his citizens to the verge of polarizing violence. Zelaya's swift removal from Honduras probably saved many lives.

In less than six hours, Honduras's congress removed Zelaya as president for repeated violations of Honduras's laws and constitution, as well as for his failure to observe resolutions of Honduran courts. In short, the congress fired the sitting President for multiple acts of institutional insubordination. The congress then named its speaker, Robert Micheletti, to serve as chief executive until after national elections in November. The military has begun a return back to the barracks.

The events of June 28 mark the culmination in a series of confrontations between Zelaya and virtually all of Honduras's political and judicial institutions, including the congress, the supreme court, the two major political parties (including his own), and the military. At issue was Zelaya's effort to convene a non-binding public referendum that, he believed, would open the doors for major constitutional revision. Given that the Honduran constitution does not grant its president the power to convene such referenda, there is no question that, while the response of the Honduran military may have been rash, President Zelaya was fired for a legitimate reason.

Zelaya's March to the Left

President Zelaya won election by the slenderest of margins in 2005. A series of corruption charges involving state contracts and manipulation of public services--particularly in telecommunications (Hondutel)--hounded the Zelaya government, which began its term with earnest promises of fiscal probity and transparency. In the 2008 Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index,[1] Honduras shares a place with Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Libya.

With regard to foreign policy, Zelaya in August 2008 signed on as a member of the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA), a political and economic bloc controlled by senior members Venezuela and Cuba. Zelaya sought and received assistance from Venezuela via the oil-financing facility Petrocaribe and moved for closer ties with Castro's communist-revolutionary regime.

A Quandary for the U.S.

Clearly the Obama Administration is highly uncomfortable with the course of events in Honduras. It is primarily concerned with avoiding a repeat of the April 2002 coup in Caracas, in which Hugo Chávez was temporarily toppled and the U.S. appeared to favor coup-makers. Therefore, late on June 28, the White House and State Department were demanding Zelaya's return, continuing to recognize him as the only legal president and adamant that his departure was an "illegal and illegitimate act that cannot stand."[2] On the other hand, U.S. officials are calling for the crisis to be "resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference."

The Obama Administration wants to reverse the events of June 28. It believes restoring political order and protecting the fundamentals of the Inter-American Democratic Charter via handing the problem off the Organization of American States (OAS) will work easily and promote the smooth, orderly return of President Zelaya. The facts on the ground, however, do not lend themselves to such a tidy and optimistic scenario. There is a grave danger that by acting against the new constitutional arrangement order established by the Honduran congress, supreme court, and military, bloodshed and political chaos are likely to follow.

Chávez's Intervention Portends Bloodshed

There is little doubt that President Zelaya was emboldened to challenge the institutions of Honduras by the support of Hugo Chávez and other ALBA members. On June 25, ALBA members issued a public statement claiming that a coup was already underway, and they backed the June referendum, despite lack of institutional support. In short, they endorsed Zelaya's defiant and reckless strategy.[3]

On June 28, Chávez stepped up his interventions by directing calls to campesino leaders in Honduras to encourage resistance, putting his military on alert, calling on the Honduran soldiers to disobey their superiors, and vowing to topple the new government. "If they swear in Micheletti [or any other], we will overthrow them!" he proclaimed.[4]Chávez also threatened to give a lesson to the military "gorillas" who do not respect Honduras's constitution.[5]

The relentless intervention of Chávez will serve only to harden the Honduran opposition, demonstrate that Zelaya is heavily compromised and dependent on foreign backing, and support tactics that can easily lead to potentially dangerous provocations. Demonstrations and resistance encouraged by Chávez and others threaten to make a shamble of institutional order in Honduras.

Recommendations

  • Recognize the new Honduran government. Messy as it is, the Obama Administration should recognize the new interim government, as constitutional order has been preserved.
  • Restore public order. The Obama Administration should work with the OAS and other international missions to promote national reconciliation and an end to polarization.
  • Resist Chávez and ALBA intervention. The Chavistas consistently pushed Zelaya toward confrontational politics; now they threaten intervention. The Obama Administration must move to neutralize this negative and highly dangerous thrust.

Chávez Democracy

The events unfolding in Honduras remain confused. Yet it appears the primary institutions of the nation--congress, the supreme court, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, and the military as the guardian of public order--have spoken. While these institutions may have acted precipitously, the bottom line is that President Zelaya was fired for cause. The U.S. can ill afford to open the door to a counter-intervention by Hugo Chávez, one that would deliver Honduras into the Chávez brand of "democracy."

Ray Walser, Ph.D., is Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.

[1]Transparency International, "2008 Corruption Perceptions Index," athttp://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/cpi2008/cpi_2008_table(June 29, 2009).

[2]U.S Department of State, "Background Briefing on the Situation in Honduras," June 28, 2008, at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2009/06a/125453.htm (June 29, 2009).

[3]Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra America (ALBA), "Declaración de los Estados Miembros de la Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América Condenando el Golpe de Estado en Curso Contra el Presidente de la Republica de Honduras José Manuel Zelaya," June 25, 2009, athttp://www.granma.cu/espanol/2009/junio/vier26/declaracion.html (June 29, 2009).

[4]Tal Cual Digital, "Metiendose en Honduras," June 28, 2009, athttp://www.talcualdigital.com/Avances/Viewer.aspx?id=22339&secid=28 (June 29, 2009).

[5]Noticias 24, "Chavez Advierte a Honduras con la Guerra y Afirma que la FANB Ha Sido Puesta en Alerta," June 28, 2009, athttp://www.noticias24.com/actualidad/noticia/61391/Chávez-denuncia-que-globovision-y-cnn-tratan-de-justificar-el-golpe/ (June 30, 2009).

Honduras Defends Its Democracy

Fidel Castro and Hillary Clinton object

By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

Columnist's name
MORE IN OPINION »

Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Hugo Chávez's coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation's constitution.

It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.

But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya's abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.

That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.

Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court's order.

The attorney general had already made clear that the referendum was illegal, and he further announced that he would prosecute anyone involved in carrying it out. Yesterday, Mr. Zelaya was arrested by the military and is now in exile in Costa Rica.

It remains to be seen what Mr. Zelaya's next move will be. It's not surprising that chavistas throughout the region are claiming that he was victim of a military coup. They want to hide the fact that the military was acting on a court order to defend the rule of law and the constitution, and that the Congress asserted itself for that purpose, too.

Mrs. Clinton has piled on as well. Yesterday she accused Honduras of violating "the precepts of the Interamerican Democratic Charter" and said it "should be condemned by all." Fidel Castro did just that. Mr. Chávez pledged to overthrow the new government.

Honduras is fighting back by strictly following the constitution. The Honduran Congress met in emergency session yesterday and designated its president as the interim executive as stipulated in Honduran law. It also said that presidential elections set for November will go forward. The Supreme Court later said that the military acted on its orders. It also said that when Mr. Zelaya realized that he was going to be prosecuted for his illegal behavior, he agreed to an offer to resign in exchange for safe passage out of the country. Mr. Zelaya denies it.

Many Hondurans are going to be celebrating Mr. Zelaya's foreign excursion. Street protests against his heavy-handed tactics had already begun last week. On Friday a large number of military reservists took their turn. "We won't go backwards," one sign said. "We want to live in peace, freedom and development."

Besides opposition from the Congress, the Supreme Court, the electoral tribunal and the attorney general, the president had also become persona non grata with the Catholic Church and numerous evangelical church leaders. On Thursday evening his own party in Congress sponsored a resolution to investigate whether he is mentally unfit to remain in office.

For Hondurans who still remember military dictatorship, Mr. Zelaya also has another strike against him: He keeps rotten company. Earlier this month he hosted an OAS general assembly and led the effort, along side OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, to bring Cuba back into the supposedly democratic organization.

The OAS response is no surprise. Former Argentine Ambassador to the U.N. Emilio Cárdenas told me on Saturday that he was concerned that "the OAS under Insulza has not taken seriously the so-called 'democratic charter.' It seems to believe that only military 'coups' can challenge democracy. The truth is that democracy can be challenged from within, as the experiences of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and now Honduras, prove." A less-kind interpretation of Mr. Insulza's judgment is that he doesn't mind the Chávez-style coup.

The struggle against chavismo has never been about left-right politics. It is about defending the independence of institutions that keep presidents from becoming dictators. This crisis clearly delineates the problem. In failing to come to the aid of checks and balances, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Insulza expose their true colors.

Write to O'Grady@wsj.com


Zelaya Accused of Drug Ties

By Frank Bajak, Associated Press writer, Tuesday, June 30, 2009

BOGOTA – The regime that ousted Manuel Zelaya in Honduras claimed Tuesday that the deposed president allowed tons of cocaine to be flown into the Central American country on its way to the United States.

"Every night, three or four Venezuelan-registered planes land without the permission of appropriate authorities and bring thousands of pounds ... and packages of money that are the fruit of drug trafficking," its foreign minister, Enrique Ortez, told CNN en Espanol.

  "We have proof of all of this. Neighboring governments have it. The DEA has it," he added.

  U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Rusty Payne in Washington said he could     neither confirm nor deny a DEA investigation.

  Zelaya was traveling from New York to Washington and could not immediately be reached to respond to the allegations.

Honduras and other Central American nations have become major transshipment points in recent years for Colombian cocaine, particularly as Mexico's government cracks down on cartels.

The drugs arrive in Honduras on non-commercial aircraft fromVenezuela and increasingly in speedboats from Colombia, according to the Key West, Florida-based Joint Interagency Task Force-South, which coordinates drug interdiction in region.

In its most recent report on the illicit narcotics trade, the U.S. State Department said in February of Honduras that "official corruption continues to be an impediment to effective law enforcement and there are press reports of drug trafficking and associated criminal activity among current and former government and military officials."

The report did not name names.

Drug-related violence appears to be up in Honduras.

Homicides surged 25 percent from some 4,400 in 2007 to more than 7,000 in 2008 while more than 1,600 people were killed execution-style, suggesting drug gang involvement, according to the Central American Violence Observatory.

In October, Zelaya proposed legalizing drug use as a way of reducing the violence, and doubling the country's police force, which reached 13,500 last year, up from 7,000 in 2005, according to the State Department report.


The Wages of Chavismo

The Honduran coup is a reaction to Chávez's rule by the mob.

MORE IN OPINION »

As military "coups" go, the one this weekend in Honduras was strangely, well, democratic. The military didn't oust President Manuel Zelaya on its own but instead followed an order of the Supreme Court. It also quickly turned power over to the president of the Honduran Congress, a man from the same party as Mr. Zelaya. The legislature and legal authorities all remain intact.

We mention these not so small details because they are being overlooked as the world, including the U.S. President, denounces tiny Honduras in a way that it never has, say, Iran. President Obama is joining the U.N., Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and other model democrats in demanding that Mr. Zelaya be allowed to return from exile and restored to power. Maybe it's time to sort the real from the phony Latin American democrats.

The situation is messy, and we think the Hondurans would have been smarter -- and better off -- not sending Mr. Zelaya into exile at dawn. Mr. Zelaya was pressing ahead with a nonbinding referendum to demand a constitutional rewrite to let him seek a second four-year term. The attorney general and Honduran courts declared the vote illegal and warned he'd be prosecuted if he followed through. Mr. Zelaya persisted, even leading a violent mob last week to seize and distribute ballots imported from Venezuela. However, the proper constitutional route was to impeach Mr. Zelaya and then arrest him for violating the law.

Yet the events in Honduras also need to be understood in the context of Latin America's decade of chavismo. Venezuela's Hugo Chávez was democratically elected in 1998, but he has since used every lever of power, legal and extralegal, to subvert democracy. He first ordered a rewrite of the constitution that allowed his simple majority in the national assembly grant him the power to rule by decree for one year and to control the judiciary.

In 2004 he packed the Supreme Court with 32 justices from 20. Any judge who rules against his interests can be fired. He made the electoral tribunal that oversees elections his own political tool, denying opposition requests to inspect voter rolls and oversee vote counts. The once politically independent oil company now hires only Chávez allies, and independent television stations have had their licenses revoked.

Mr. Chávez has also exported this brand of one-man-one-vote-once democracy throughout the region. He's succeeded to varying degrees in Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina and Nicaragua, where his allies have stretched the law and tried to dominate the media and the courts. Mexico escaped in 2006 when Felipe Calderón linked his leftwing opponent to chavismo and barely won the presidency.

In Honduras Mr. Chávez funneled Veneuzelan oil money to help Mr. Zelaya win in 2005, and Mr. Zelaya has veered increasingly left in his four-year term. The Honduran constitution limits presidents to a single term, which is scheduled to end in January. Mr. Zelaya was using the extralegal referendum as an act of political intimidation to force the Congress to allow a rewrite of the constitution so he could retain power. The opposition had pledged to boycott the vote, which meant that Mr. Zelaya would have won by a landslide.

Such populist intimidation has worked elsewhere in the region, and Hondurans are understandably afraid that, backed by Chávez agents and money, it could lead to similar antidemocratic subversion there. In Tegucigalpa yesterday, thousands demonstrated against Mr. Zelaya, and new deputy foreign minister Marta Lorena Casco told the crowd that "Chávez consumed Venezuela, then Bolivia, after that Ecuador and Nicaragua, but in Honduras that didn't happen."

It's no accident that Mr. Chávez is now leading the charge to have Mr. Zelaya reinstated, and on Monday the Honduran traveled to a leftwing summit in Managua in one of Mr. Chávez's planes. The U.N. and Organization of American States are also threatening the tiny nation with ostracism and other punishment if it doesn't readmit him. Meanwhile, the new Honduran government is saying it will arrest Mr. Zelaya if he returns. This may be the best legal outcome, but it also runs the risk of destabilizing the country. We recall when the Clinton Administration restored Bertrand Aristide to Haiti, only to have the country descend into anarchy.

As for the Obama Administration, it seems eager to "meddle" in Honduras in a way Mr. Obama claimed was counterproductive in Iran. Yet the stolen election in Iran was a far clearer subversion of democracy than the coup in Honduras. As a candidate, Mr. Obama often scored George W. Bush's foreign policy by saying democracy requires more than an election -- a free press, for example, civil society and the rule of law rather than rule by the mob. It's a point worth recalling before Mr. Obama hands a political victory to the forces of chavismo in Latin America.



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