Zelaya doubles down

Ousted Honduran dictator-wanna be Manuel Zelaya furtively re-entered the country and took refuge in the Brazilian embassy. It is still murky just how he got there. His previous attempts to return were foiled, and he obviously does not want to expose himself to the arrest that awaits him if he steps outside the embassy. Brazil claims that they had nothing to do with bringing him into the country.

But who did? Apparently, and not surprising, by his own confession, the troublemaking interloper is Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. President Obama has made common cause with Chavez and Nicaragua’s Sandinista government under Daniel Ortega to try to prop up Zelaya as the legitimate president of Honduras, despite the actions of the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court in kicking Zelaya out for violations of their constitution. Brazil’s government until recently has been less ostentatious in their support for Zelaya than the other regimes, including in addition the failing Argentine government under Mrs. Kirchner. What is also unsurprising is that Zelaya is claiming that he is being tortured by the CIA and that Israeli mercenaries are plotting to kill him. These seemto be standard delusions for leftists, so no doubt this will gain considerable traction with the Left around the world. For rational people, this confirms the impression one has got from Zelaya’s previous statements that he is a megalomaniacal fool. But he’s “our”, well, Obama’s, megalomaniacal fool. The U.S. is supporting him because the administration incompetently misread the political situation and saw an opportunity to ingratiate themselves with Chavez in the vain hope of leveraging American influence in some undetermined manner some time in the future.

It looks, indeed, as if Brazil may be tiring of Zelaya’s stay at their embassy if conditions are as dire as described here. Zelaya claims that they have been reduced to eating hard biscuits, a tale difficult to confirm. From the article it sounds as if his earlier bravado that the current government had better resign has been scaled down to pleas for discussions and appeals to the new president’s conscience. Unfortunately for him, time is on the side of the current government, which is moving forward with the scheduled election in November, in which the current president will not be a candidate. Even the Obama administration’s foolish and empty threat not to recognize a new government elected in that constitutionally-mandated election will not change the dynamics. All Zelaya’s return has done is trigger the violence that the new government’s actions so far had successfully avoided. That is hardly likely to strengthen Zelaya’s position with the civil authorities, the military, or the people, as it confirms the image of Zelaya as a Chavez-like danger.

Now comes the non-partisan Congressional Research Service and concludes that, lacking an impeachment process, the Hondurans acted in accordance with their constitution in removing Zelaya. For that, the Obama administration, the OAS, and the UN are trying to isolate and punish Honduras. The administration denies visas to Honduran officials, while granting them to military officers of the murderous Burmese regime. They cut off foreign aid, while making all kinds of economic aid promises to Iran and North Korea. The only problematic action by the Hondurans, according to the CRS was in having the military evict Zelaya from the country. Instead, they should have arrested him and tried him for treason or other crimes and stripped him of his citizenship, in accordance with Honduran law.

Maybe they should have. But they threw him out of the country to avoid exactly the violence and social turmoil that Zelaya is seeking to precipitate by his furtive re-entry into the country. Even now, the new government has said that they will grant an amnesty to Zelaya for his political crimes (though not for other ordinary crimes, such as for corruption of which he is suspected), but Zelaya insists on a return to power that the new president, Roberto Micheletti, has rejected as non-negotiable. And they are investigating the propriety of their decision to expel him from Honduras. That is far more respect for democratic rule of law than one sees in Chavez and others of his ilk, such as in Zelaya’s attempt to circumvent the Honduran constitution’s penalties for trying to avoid presidential term limits. It is clear, and was to the Honduran civil authorities when they deposed Zelaya, who is the threat to the stability and democracy of the country. Once again, the U.S. has backed the wrong (politically and morally) horse in Latin America.