The Silence of the Loons: The Obama Administration's Quiet About Face on Honduras

 

Hillary Clinton	Manuel Zelaya and Hugo Chavez	Barack Obama

A Relatively Quiet Honduras

We have not heard much recently about events in Honduras, where the constitutional crisis provoked by the ouster of former President Manuel Zelaya last June dominated news on U.S.-Latin American relations for months. The recent negotiation of an agreement to resolve the conflict and continue with the presidential elections scheduled for last November 29 apparently brought an end to the worst fears that the country might slip into political chaos. The Obama administration has dropped its earlier hard-line stance against the interim government and has very quietly recognized the results of the elections, which gave the presidency to National Party candidate Porfirio Lobo in a contest thankfully free of violence and in which voter participation met the requisite international norms.

The international community's previously unified stance in opposition to Zelaya's removal, which typified the political climate of the past five months, is now unraveling in the wake of the Honduran presidential elections. In addition to the U.S. acknowledgement of Lobo's victory, at least four other countries in the hemisphere have recognized the legitimacy of the vote; including Colombia, Panama, Peru, and neighboring Costa Rica. Naturally, a contradictory view is held in Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Argentina; all of whom have announced their rejection of the election's results, though President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil has at least held out the possibility that his country would be open to some gesture which restores Zelaya in time to preside over the inaugural ceremonies, which are scheduled for January 27, when Lobo will assume the powers of his office under Honduran law.

The central problem the Hondurans now confront is deciding what to do with Zelaya, who remains holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, working his cell phone until the late evening hours trying to rally international support for his return and, in the opinion of the interim government and most Hondurans, trying to destabilize the impending presidential transition. The November accord negotiated to bring an end to the standoff Zelaya created when he sneaked back into the country last September required the Honduran Congress to vote on his reinstatement, which they did on December 2, rejecting him by a resounding vote of 111-14. Following this embarrassing defeat for the ex-President, which on his part suggests a serious lack of understanding of the wishes of the Honduran people, Mexico offered to take him out of the country and even sent a plane to pick him up. But the interim government refused to let Zelaya leave unless he agreed to travel only as a private citizen seeking asylum and not as a claimant to the presidency, an offer Zelaya rejected.

Honduran Congress Votes Overwhelmingly Against Reinstating Zelaya as President Source: European Pressphoto Agency

Zelaya's Future: Embassy Prisoner, Destabilizing Force, or Exile?

The interim government's refusal to permit Zelaya to depart the country under any status other than that of a private citizen leaves the former president's own future in doubt. Brazil says he can remain at their embassy in Tegucigalpa and that no limit will be set on his stay. But this almost disinterested public stance on the part of the Brazilians is belied by the fact that they are also pressing the U.S. to secure Zelaya's safe passage out of the country, a position the State Department has supported consistently as part of the settlement of the crisis. President-elect Lobo has offered to meet with Zelaya "anywhere" to negotiate an end to the matter, though there is no mention of the possibility of any impending action the incoming President might take once in office.

Honduran leaders continue to insist that so long as Zelaya refuses to recognize the results of the election, that he will continue to represent a genuine threat to their country's stability. These fears are not entirely unfounded. Just this past week Fidel Castro sent a letter to Hugo Chavez to be read before the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (Spanish acronym: ALBA) conference being held in Havana which accused the U.S. of continuing its historic tradition of "aggression" in Latin America and pointedly cited Honduras as the major focus of this renewed "offensive." Given that Chavez's fiery temperament does not lend itself to passive inaction, it should not be ruled out that he will be prepared to finance a campaign to destabilize the Central American country in retaliation for its rejection of his twenty-first century socialist agenda. President Micheletti has in fact warned of the possibility that Zelaya might try to attack Honduras from exile, which has been the interim government's primary motivation for refusing permission for the ousted leader to leave the country without a renunciation of his claims to power.

Why the Silence from Washington?

One almost has to dig a little to find any news out of Washington with respect to the Obama Administration's policy towards Honduras. Some of what they have released has been positive for its effect in dispelling misinformation. Immediately following the November 29 vote, the State Department acknowledged that turnout apparently had exceeded that of the previous presidential election, which conflicted with the propaganda emanating from the small minority who continue to support Zelaya within Honduras, doing much to dismiss it in the process. But the recurring refrain from Foggy Bottom has been constant on three points; Zelaya should be reinstated before the inauguration of the new President, a national unity government should be put in place to handle the transition to a new administration, and a "Truth Commission" should be formed to make clear to Hondurans, as well as the rest of the world, exactly what happened with respect to the ouster of Zelaya.

With the exception of the demand that Zelaya be returned to the presidency, it appears that the Hondurans are at least attempting to fulfill all other conditions Washington has set. The national unity government seemed to be in place until the Honduran Congress rejected Zelaya's reinstatement, and with less than six weeks remaining before Porfirio Lobo's inauguration, attention has shifted to the formation of his cabinet. The Truth Commission is still promised, but it will take Lobo's support to make it possible and he has pledged to move forward with the proposal. But one wonders just how much "truth" Washington will be able to take here. After all, it was the State Department which buried its own legal analysis of the events leading to Zelaya's overthrow, leaving the Congressional Research Service's study as the only publicly-released overview from within the U.S. government, and the CRS found that, with the exception of Zelaya's forced exile, practically everything that had been done in Honduras was in accordance with the country's constitution and laws.

Honduras is quite simply one topic the Obama Administration would prefer not to discuss. Wall Street Journal editorialist Mary Anastasia O'Grady revealed recently that she has learned of new evidence supporting the allegation that Zelaya intended to use the supposed "non-binding" referendum on constitutional reform to remain in power, after Honduran officials informed her of a planned celebration for the evening of the vote which several leftist Latin American presidents would attend, as well as Zelaya's refusal to authorize the transfer of state funds to enable the November elections to proceed. Yes; a Truth Commission may be a good idea indeed, but how much embarrassment will the Obama Administration face as a consequence if its policy of supporting Zelaya's return is shown to be flawed for upholding an attempted overthrow of Honduran constitutional democracy?

It may be that a larger problem the Obama Administration faces is that the 2008 presidential campaign is over and they are now learning that the sloganeering and public posturing that appealed to the left wing of their political base does not work in the real world. During the campaign, then-Senator Obama frequently mentioned--and genuinely overstated--the problems Colombia had with labor violence, pinning the "right wing bastards" label on the country and its government, a tactic that had broad appeal among the American left, especially when coupled with political rallies and campaign offices where Ché t-shirts and posters abounded. But now that the work of governing has begun, the administration has moved to expand the U.S. military presence in Colombia, an act directly at odds with Obama's earlier opposition to Plan Colombia while on the campaign trail. Pro-Chavez Obama supporters are not an unknown quantity--they are rather numerous in fact--and it cannot be easy for the new President to explain the Chavez threat to them, whose nature is now grasped at least in part within the administration, regardless of the rhetoric, which the expansion of Plan Colombia makes clear. This same analysis can be applied to Honduras.

Thus can we arrive at an explanation for the silence in Washington with respect to the Honduran crisis. Coming so soon after a major national election, Obama cannot expect forgetful minds to overlook the atmosphere of the recent campaign. Containing or deterring Chavez's threats to Colombia and Honduras have become necessary goals within his Latin American policy. And when compared against his campaign rhetoric and the posture of the American left that supports him, the distinctions have become recognizably broad.

One wonders if there are those in the new administration in Washington who are asking themselves just how looney the American left truly is for its failure to grasp the reality of Chavismo in action. Such questions do not return easy answers.

So perhaps the best thing for the Obama Administration to do is to stay silent and leave the loons to their delusions. Even if they did vote for you. And especially if you want them to think you're still one of them.

StJacques
 

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Is Alice Leaving Wonderland? Taking a Step Away from Chavez in Honduras

   

Deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya	U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

An Agreement to End the Honduran Crisis Reached?

Over the past few weeks the eyes of Latin America watchers around the world have fixated upon Honduras, where U.S.-backed negotiations between representatives of deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and the interim government which came to office after his ouster strove to achieve a resolution to the constitutional crisis in the small Central American nation. The talks proceeded slowly, with fits and turns which frequently made their outcome uncertain, but negotiators finally produced an agreement the U.S. State Department hailed last Friday as paving the way for international recognition of the results of Honduras' pending presidential elections scheduled for the 29th of this month.

The Honduran Congress first must approve the negotiated settlement, a point Zelaya insisted upon rather than permitting the question to be put to the country's Supreme Court, which he blames for legitimizing his ouster in the eyes of his fellow countrymen. Once the congress ratifies Zelaya's return he then would reassume his office with only limited authority. A national unity government would be created containing both Zelaya supporters and others who have backed the interim regime of President Roberto Micheletti. And finally, a special committee to guarantee the fairness and transparency of the upcoming elections also would be formed; all of which would secure the international community's recognition of the legitimacy of the Honduran electoral process and a return to normal governance early next year, when the newly-elected president will assume the duties of his office.

Continued Honduran Resistance to U.S. Pressure

However; events over the past few days suggest that the Hondurans will attempt to delay Zelaya's reinstatement long enough to make the event an inconsequential footnote to obtaining international recognition of the validity of their presidential elections, which has been the common goal of all major parties and presidential candidates in the country from the onset of the crisis last summer, a fact largely unreported in the American news media. But even if Honduras should put the terms of the accord into effect quickly, other unforeseen problems could yet arise.

Wall Street Journal editorialist Mary Anastasia O'Grady has argued that there is more than one possible scenario under which the fulfillment of the negotiated agreement could be carried out which could create an altogether different kind of constitutional crisis for Honduras. Up until now, and contrary to the reporting developed in most of the international press, Hondurans have largely accepted Micheletti's interim government as legitimate. Only Zelaya's firmest supporters have opposed it, but their numbers are so small that they really constitute only a fringe element in Honduran politics. Micheletti himself is a member of the same Liberal Party as Zelaya, another fact not often made clear to Americans, who have been inundated with the interpretation that Zelaya's ouster was a "military coup" that overthrew civilian rule--it did not--and was therefore blatantly unconstitutional. According to O'Grady it is possible that various institutions of the Honduran state could find themselves at odds with each other over the legality of the accord and the procedural steps required for its implementation. This could create something which has not existed in Honduras since Zelaya's removal--real divisions beyond the leftist fringe as to the legitimacy of the government in power in Tegucigalpa.

Last Tuesday, November 3, the Honduran legislative committee empowered to call the Congress into special session to act upon the accord voted to wait until the country's Supreme Court, Attorney General, and others weigh in with their own legal opinions on the agreement, and without setting a deadline. The American response has been muddled, to say the least. U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis has been dispatched to the country to help the Hondurans in the formation of a unity government, a move some interpreted as indicating increased U.S. pressure on the interim leadership to move quickly. But Secretary Solis has stated since her arrival that she is more involved with working on the formation of a new cabinet, saying that she knows things move slowly in Honduras but she is at the moment "focused on bringing different groups together to create a new cabinet," a comment that does not place Zelaya's reinstatement at the top of the agenda for the U.S.

Has the Obama Administration Policy Changed?

Apparently, the U.S. now believes that the negotiated agreement binds both parties to its terms; however they may be carried out. Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon told CNN en Español that both Zelaya and Micheletti "took a risk and put their trust in [the Honduran] Congress, but at the end of the day the accord requires that both leaders accept its decision." Zelaya has requested Secretary of State Clinton to clarify the State Department's position, pointedly asking whether its earlier stance that his ouster was a coup still holds true. But Shannon's statement makes clear the U.S. intention to get past the Honduran elections later this month, sacrificing Zelaya if necessary. To quote Blas Padrino of the Orlando Republican Examiner "the Obama Administration has now thrown Mr. Zelaya under the bus." The evidence is mounting daily to support Padrino's analysis. So perhaps it may be worthwhile to ask why the change has occurred.

Analysis:  The Absurdities of Aligning U.S. Latin American Policy with Chavismo

There are complexities to the Honduran constitutional crisis, which the Obama Administration does not feel comfortable explaining when asked for clarification. The U.S. State Department has arrogantly refused to produce its own legal analysis of the perplexing problems surrounding the ouster of former President Manuel Zelaya last June 28, yet the assessment of the Congressional Research Service has been available for several weeks. Senior Foreign Law Specialist Norma C. Gutierrez prepared and submitted the CRS report last August and its findings reveal much about the facts of Zelaya's ouster as judged under Honduran constitutional law.

Ms. Gutierrez gives a thorough examination of the intricacies of the Honduran Constitution, the facts of the case against Zelaya, and the manner in which the country's two main institutions, the Congress and the Supreme Court, interpreted and handled the matter. Her conclusions are strikingly at odds with the public policy stance the Obama administration has pursued from the outset:

   V. Was the removal of Honduran President Zelaya legal, in accordance with Honduran constitutional and statutory law?

      Available sources indicate that the judicial and legislative branches applied constitutional and statutory law in the case against President Zelaya in a manner that was judged by the Honduran authorities from both branches of the government to be in accordance with the Honduran legal system.

      However, removal of President Zelaya from the country by the military is in direct violation of the Article 102 of the Constitution, and apparently this action is currently under investigation by the Honduran authorities.


Norma C. Gutierrez
Senior Foreign Law Specialist
Congressional Research Service


The above analysis presents the problem we have confronted with Honduras in a nutshell. Honduran institutions acted properly under their own laws right up to the point when they sent Zelaya into exile, which they were forbidden from doing by their constitution's prohibition against extraditing or expatriating Honduran citizens. Their removal of Zelaya was legal, but sending him out of the country was not, a mistake Micheletti admitted this past August.

Norma Gutierrez's clear thinking has not been part of the Obama Administration's approach towards the handling of the crisis however, and it may be that some of the responsibility for this lies with lower level diplomats, including Ambassador Hugo Llorens in Tegucigalpa and others in Washington, who set the tone for U.S. policy almost immediately. But the tact of treating Zelaya's ouster as a military coup, while simultaneously refusing to permit any discussion of the facts on the ground in Honduras, has aligned the Obama Administration with some of the worst players in Latin America--Chavez and his leftist allies in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, and Ecuador. And the dangers inherent in this realignment were not lost on Hondurans, who only fortified themselves further to preserve a democratic way of life they have come to treasure since 1982, when they adopted their new constitution. The widespread support from all major factions within the country for preventing Zelaya from returning to power speaks volumes, but until very recently the words have not been heard in Washington.

Rather than pursuing a calming of the situation through an open diplomatic dialogue, which would involve not only all parties in Honduras but also inform the American people of the progress of events and the formulation their foreign policy, the Obama administration instead adopted the very worst tactics of the Latin American Left to force Honduras to bend its knee to power. The administration has controlled public debate over the controversy through its manipulation of the press, silenced any discussion of Honduran constitutional law and the facts which led to Zelaya's removal, misrepresented the political situation within the country after the installation of an interim government, and worst of all threatened the Honduran people with their own immiseration and internal political disintegration so long as they continued to insist upon ... wait for it America! ... the rule of law fairly interpreted in an open hearing and a resolution of the crisis through free and fair elections.

By the time the final step of denying international recognition of the validity of regularly-scheduled elections approached, the Obama administration's policy was defeated by its own absurdity. America, the rule of constitutional law, and free elections remain inseparable. That maxim was greeted with jeers when afternoon mate de coca was served at Mad Hatter Hugo Chavez's party with los nuevos invitados Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in attendance. But the jeering will stop soon. The Hondurans have put the lie to the taunts.

The Hondurans have spoken truth to power.

StJacques

   
  

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