Honduras Just Wants an Election
The U.S. demand that Mr. Zelaya be returned to power before a vote is destructive.
At a luncheon reception for Brazilian President Lula da Silva earlier this year, a Brazilian official explained to me that the reason Brazil does not raise its voice for human rights in the dictatorship of Cuba is that it does not wish to intervene in the island's domestic affairs. Apparently the policy of nonintervention does not apply to democratic Honduras.
Last Monday former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who was arrested, deported and legally deposed from office on June 28, made a stealth return to Tegucigalpa and sought shelter at the Brazilian Embassy. Mr. Zelaya told a Honduran radio station that his plan to return was hatched in consultation with Mr. da Silva and Foreign Minister Celso Amorim. Brazil says it had nothing to do with smuggling Mr. Zelaya into the country, which is tantamount to calling the former Honduran president a liar. On that point, many Hondurans would agree.
Former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya inside the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa.
Mr. Zelaya has corruption charges pending against him in Honduras but "noninterventionist" Brazil refuses to hand him over to authorities. Instead it is allowing him to use the embassy as a command center from which he has been calling his violent supporters into the streets.
Mr. da Silva's sympathies with the extreme left and his friendship with Fidel Castro are legendary. At home he doesn't engage in the leftist militancy of the 1970s because Brazilians won't have it. He is constrained by institutions, economic reality and public pressure. His admiration for communism even waned a bit when Venezuela and Bolivia tried to nationalize Brazilian investments. Yet he has to feed crumbs to his notoriously left-wing foreign ministry and that's where Honduras comes in handy.
This practice of moderation at home and extremism abroad is not unique to Brazil. Many Latin American presidents do the same thing. What is frightening is that the U.S. seems to be adopting a similar policy.
Last week Tegucigalpa was under attack by zelayistas. They burned tires in the streets, vandalized property, looted businesses and blocked roads. But the U.S. repeated its support for Mr. Zelaya. Without producing any legal review, Washington decreed once again that a president who tried to trash the constitution must be reinstated or it will not recognize the November presidential election.
Why does the U.S. threaten to undermine a free election that would very likely restore peace and security? Venezuela's Hugo Chávez may have answered that in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last Thursday. Taking the podium, Mr. Chávez told his audience that he didn't smell "sulfur" the way he did last year. This was a reference to his last U.N. tirade, when he called George W. Bush a devil who had left behind a sulfuric odor. This year, Mr. Chávez said, there was a smell of "hope."
Mr. Obama clearly has won acceptance from the Latin American tyrant and the U.S.'s Honduras policy has been helpful. But will this great honor last longer than a hiccup and yield any return? Probably not. Beyond sparing Mr. Obama the verbal barbs he delivered to Mr. Bush, Mr. Chávez shows no inclination toward being a good neighbor. He's engaged in a massive military buildup and he's even talking about his own nuclear ambitions.
The Obama administration's position on the Honduran election is embarrassing. Can anyone imagine that if Fidel Castro declared tomorrow that he would hold free elections and invite the whole world to come as observers, the U.S. would reject the idea because Cuba is a military dictatorship? It would be absurd.
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Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli told me last week in New York that he believes that "the only way and the best way to get out of the Honduran problem is to allow the Honduran people to have a free, participative election where they select whoever they think is the best candidate to run their government." Mr. Martinelli notes that the candidates in this race were chosen while Mr. Zelaya was still president. Honduran President Micheletti ran in a primary but lost to Elvin Santos, who is now the candidate for Mr. Zelaya's party and who also wants the elections to go forward. Panama once had the problem of democracy interrupted, Mr. Martinelli says, and it was elections that restored it.
Mr. Martinelli says—as many in the Honduran government do—that it was wrong to deport Mr. Zelaya. He also says that he was hoping that negotiations in San José, Costa Rica, would produce an agreement to resolve the dispute. But he adds that what Mr. Zelaya is demanding "is not within the laws and regulations of Honduras." So now the election is the answer.
A transparent election is the path to political stability endorsed by the Free World. It is unseemly and churlish for the U.S. to threaten that process. Does Mr. Obama treasure kind words from Hugo Chávez that much? If so, we're all in trouble.
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