Politics is full of surprises. Roberto Micheletti, designated president of Honduras by that country's parliament, wanted former President Manuel Zelaya to remain in jail in Tegucigalpa while judges and prosecutors formalized the judicial process against him for violation of the Constitution, corruption and misappropriation of public funds. Curiously, Hugo Chavez, Lula da Silva and Daniel Ortega have made that detention possible.
True, Zelaya is not in a Honduran jail but in the Brazilian Embassy in the capital, but that's a lot more convenient for the government of Micheletti. It is unlikely that pro-Zelaya commandos will break into the Brazilian haven to try to rescue him, because he entered it of his own will and, in any case, the responsibility for Zelaya's physical integrity is now in the hands of Brazil. The Honduran police need only guard the building's exterior and control the comings and goings. At some point, Zelaya will decide to submit to his country's justice, or maybe he'll choose to spend a long time under asylum.
Meanwhile, President Micheletti, with remarkable firmness, says that he's going ahead with the elections planned for Nov. 29. Shortly before Zelaya's return, Panama declared that, if the upcoming Honduran elections are fair and transparent, it will recognize the new government. That's the sensible thing to do. Fortunately, President Ricardo Martinelli is a brave statesman who doesn't mind swimming against the current if it is morally justifiable to him.
In addition to being a mechanism for the legitimization of authority, the elections are a ceremony to bury the past and begin a different, more-hopeful stage. The pluralistic, free consultations in Spain, Portugal and Chile served to put those countries back on track after long dictatorships. The same happened in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. It would have been madness to deny recognition to the new democratic governments on the grounds that the elections had been conducted by illegitimate and transitory regimes.
The OAS fell into a trap laid by Chavez when it warned that it would not recognize the president elected in Honduras' next balloting. Does Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza want to plunge the country into a violent conflict to crown a victor soaked in blood?
The candidates in those future elections were freely and peacefully elected in open primaries before Zelaya was expelled from power. They were not imposed by anything or anyone and represent the country's entire political spectrum. Now that President Oscar Arias' healing efforts have failed, what better option than to propitiate an election that can return political normalcy to the nation?
The State Department hasn't acted reasonably, either. Who in that madhouse decided that it is good strategy to try to discredit a priori the democratic solution for the Honduran crisis? How could Zelaya's return be imposed against the will of the country's institutions, against the judgment of almost all political parties, the opposition of Christian churches and the rejection of the productive apparatus?
Is the United States willing to create a sort of protectorate in Honduras and assign 20,000 soldiers to hand the government back to Zelaya against the wish of a majority of Hondurans and the rulings of the Supreme Court but with Chavez's blessing? How can the United States today even consider destabilizing one of the continent's poorest nations and one of the few societies that genuinely sympathize with its powerful neighbor -- to the point that it sent troops to fight in Iraq -- in a hemisphere that is increasingly dominated by anti-Americanism?
Following Panama's announced recognition, probably other countries will do the same. To their leaders it is evident that what's best for the Americas is the existence in the continent of stable nations ruled by democratically elected governments that are not under the disastrous influence of Chavism. That will be the start of a gradual normalization of international relations with Honduras.
In any case, one of the first decisions the new government will have to make is what to do with Zelaya. Will it grant him amnesty, give him safe conduct or leave him permanently ensconced in the Brazilian Embassy?
Former Cuban President Manuel Urrutia -- the first chief executive designated by the revolution after the fall of Batista -- spent more than two years secluded in the embassies of Venezuela and Mexico in Havana until Castro granted him safe conduct. Peruvian President Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre spent five years in the Colombian Embassy in Lima. It's a question of firmness.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/26/2009 00:00 ||
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[Michael Ledeen - National Review Online] There are still other facilities, including one at Parchin, about which some things are known, and yet another near the Afghan border, about which I am told we know much less. I doubt we know the full details of the Iranians' secret nuclear-weapons program. Quite obviously, Obama, Brown, and Sarkozy think it's a weapons program, not the civilian one the Iranians claim.
Not because this is news as such -- the Parchin link has satellite photos from 2004 -- but a nice reminder of what we knew and when we knew it. I wonder how those clever CIA analysts now feel about their little triumph over President Bush in 2007...
If I were a Republican Senator, I'd be on the floor of the Senate Monday demanding that Dhimmicrats either disavow this NIE or the 2007 NIE that said that Iran wasn't working towards nuclear weapons. One of them has to be wrong, and the Dhimmicrats used the 2007 NIE to stop George Bush from dealing with Iran. I'd twist the knife good and hard. Maybe even the MSM would report my floor speech ... ... ... ... naaaaaaah!
#1
That illiterate judge's Koran must be a different version from the one that POS in the White House reads. This is what he said to the Egyptians just a few months ago:
"The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind. The enduring faith of over a billion people is so much bigger than the narrow hatred of a few. Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism it is an important part of promoting peace."
And...
"I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Politics is full of surprises. Roberto Micheletti, designated president of Honduras by that country's parliament, wanted former President Manuel Zelaya to remain in jail in Tegucigalpa while judges and prosecutors formalized the judicial process against him for violation of the Constitution, corruption and misappropriation of public funds. Curiously, Hugo Chavez, Lula da Silva and Daniel Ortega have made that detention possible.
