Rich Man, Poor Plan (Venal hippie millionaire manipulated 2005 Honduras election)

Washington Post ^ | Tuesday, July 14, 2009 | Manuel Roig-Franzia

[angkor]

Rich Man, Poor Plan: Allen Andersson Made a Bundle, Then Made Things Happen -- for a While -- in Honduras

By Manuel Roig-Franzia Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Allen Andersson made a fortune. Three times.

Richer each time, and ever less interested in being rich.

[snip]

And then, there's one of his all-time favorite multimillion-dollar gambits, the time he played presidential kingmaker in Honduras . . . and won. Barely noticed outside Tegucigalpa, Andersson assumed a key -- many say decisive -- offstage role in the 2005 election of Manuel "Mel" Zelaya, the recently deposed president of Honduras.

As Honduras convulsed this month over Zelaya's ouster -- in his pajamas -- in a military coup, Andersson spoke for the first time about what he proudly describes as the "shenanigans" he orchestrated in the final days of the 2005 upset. It is a saga sprinkled with heaps of cash, private detectives, sting operations, attack ads, internecine squabbles and Andersson's epic grudge against Zelaya's wealthy, dashing opponent, Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo, whose last name means "wolf" in Spanish.

[snip]

By the time the ballots were counted, Andersson estimates he had spent $2 million trying to influence the outcome.

Zelaya, once a long-shot, squeaked into office.

But, more importantly for Andersson, Lobo lost.

Then came the hard part. Zelaya struggled as president, alienating his base by cultivating leftist allies, such as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia. With Honduras ever mired in poverty and crime, Zelaya tried to circumvent the nation's supreme court and pushed for a referendum on whether the constitution should be changed...

His American sponsor offered no sympathy. "The guy who won," Andersson says of Zelaya, "has been such a lazy, ineffective and clownish jerk that I almost regret it sometimes."

[angkor]

Utterly amazing story (from the ComPost no less!) about the zonked-out and venal American hippie millionaire who used his money to brazenly manipulate the 2005 Honduras election and to bring Zelaya to office.

The guy obviously has a pathological mean streak and has no shame whatsoever even to this day about interfering with the 2005 election. Even though he doesn't much like Zelaya (and didn't seem to know anything about him in 2005), he had an axe to grind with Zelaya's election opponent whom he **thought** and **suspected** might have some shadowy involvement in illegal logging, which of course is a hippie ecoNazi hot button.

As this story plainly shows, a zonked out hippie with ecoNazi psychological issues and too much money can become a ruthless, savage, and brazenly destructive interloper anywhere in the world when his pet eco-cause comes into play.

[AmericaUnite]

Wow. Think we will hear about this on the lame-stream news?

[xcamel]

And we think it can’t/won’t happen here.

[GeronL]

mini-soros

[angkor]

Nah, we won’t ever have an election manipulated by a single obsessive kook with too much money because this is America, while Honduras is a Third World banana republic.

/sarc

[angkor]

mini-soros

Exactly. An idealist with kooky ideas and a mean streak and too much money. I guess it's silly to ask whether our State Department, CIA, and White House knew that this American yoyo manipulated the 2005 Honduras election to satiate his superinflated eco-ego.

[Woebama]

I think it’s against the law for private citizens to conduct a foreign policy.

[Piranha]

The Washington Post is as mainstream as you can get. I don’t understand the premise for your comment that “the lame-stream media” will not report this story.

[Dixie Yooper]

a zonked out hippie with ecoNazi psychological issues and too much money can become a ruthless, savage, and brazenly destructive interloper anywhere in the world when his pet eco-cause comes into play.

[angkor]

>>>> I think it’s against the law for private citizens to conduct a foreign policy. <<<<

I think our State Department staffers in Honduras must still be researching that question.

In any case NGOs do this all the time and with no restraint of any kind whatsoever.

[angkor]

>>>> I don’t understand the premise for your comment that “the lame-stream media” will not report this story. <<<<

I was wondering that as well.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see whether any mention of liberal high-tech rich hippie Allen Andersson and his brazen manipulation of the 2005 Honduras election will get ink anywhere else.

Even the guy who played THE central role in manipulating Zelaya into office acknowledges that Zelaya is basically a punk.

And in this story The Post actually acknowledges that Zelaya fell (even more) out of general favor in Honduras the moment he started buddying with Chavez and Morales.

The larger issue is that this is pretty much what many thought and suspected on Day 1, and completely the opposite of the picture painted by President Zer0, who we must now assume gets his marching orders directly from Chavez.

[livius]

In any case NGOs do this all the time and with no restraint of any kind whatsoever.

That is very true. NGOs are extremely influential in Latin America - and report to no one.

[kindred]

[Zelaya struggled as president, alienating his base by cultivating leftist allies, such as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia.]

The American democrat and rino communists and state controlled big media support the deposed communist and Obamanation is their cheerleader along with the communist leader of both Cuba and Brazil.
Godless communists are all alike and stick together.

[kindred]

[And we think it can’t/won’t happen here.]

I think it can be safely stated it did happen here already. Think on George Soros and the other corporate clowns who support the left wing communists and rinos of America.

[kindred]

And now we face the final curtain.

[SamuraiScot]

That this story appeared in the WP is not good for either Zelaya or Obummer.

As tea-leaves go, this is a pretty clear indicator that Zelaya isn't coming back. He's lost his electoral base, which was in D.C. As for Obama, his coat-tails are up around his shoulder blades.

[q_an_a]

This story shows another fact - the ecoFreaks and the left will spend money on elections all around the world. We can't get good business people to run advertising and promote good goevernment in America.

When was the last time the Small Business groups ran an ad asking for lower tasxes and less regulation?? When do you hear stories about the right helping to move the less government agenda? Business lets the trust fund left educate the sheeple until they think government IS the solution and they rarely hear another message.

[HonCitizen]

well i didn’t knew this guy was the responsible for Zelaya, people here thought that was the US government by Frank Almaguer. Zelaya has been seen with Soros and His son with a drug lord.

[Piranha]

Another large issue is, where are the Republicans in all this? Some representative of the legal government of Honduras met with a few representatives, and then...nothing. Why is there no one in the House or Senate calling Zelaya a dictator and castigating our President and his administration for being on the side of Marxists and opposed to democracy?

[angkor]

>>>> As tea-leaves go, this is a pretty clear indicator that Zelaya isn’t coming back. <<<<

Agreed. Absolutely.

I will be shocked if the MSM reports even a single element of Andersson’s brazen and shameless manipulation of the election which brought Zelaya to power. Or that having done so, even Andersson now sees Zelaya as incompetent.

But the Post has done it, and now Zelaya is hosed.