Ousted President 'Organizing' for His Return to Honduras

Washington Post ^ | September 3, 2009 | Mary Beth Sheridan

[La Lydia]

Two months after he was overthrown in a coup, Honduras's ousted president said Wednesday that he sees little progress in U.S.-backed negotiations aimed at restoring him to power and has started formulating plans to go back to the country and reclaim its highest office. Manuel Zelaya declined to say when he would return, except that it would be before December... "When diplomatic action runs out, when the United States indicates it can't do any more, I am not going to simply sit around with my arms crossed," Zelaya said in an interview. He said he was devising "fighting strategies" to go back to Honduras if the negotiations fail and would "seek actions on my return that kick the coup plotters out of power."

The June 28 coup has turned into an increasingly thorny problem for the Obama administration. Despite its wariness of Zelaya, a leftist firebrand, the administration joined the rest of the hemisphere in denouncing the coup as a violation of democratic order. But the de facto Honduran government has defied international pressure...

Meanwhile, a fight has broken out in the U.S. Congress over Honduras policy, with some Republicans backing the de facto government's argument that exiling Zelaya was legal because he had carried out a public survey on rewriting the constitution, in violation of a Supreme Court order... Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has held up two State Department appointments -- including that of the assistant secretary who oversees Latin America -- because of his concerns about Honduras policy, according to Senate aides...

[La Lydia]

Washington Post STILL thinks this was a coup! No pro-Chavez agenda there, no siree. "Wariness" of Zelaya?

[La Lydia]

One for you.

[WorkerbeeCitizen]

The real news is - if he goes to Honduras, he will be arrested and tried for treason.

[screaminsunshine]

Zeyala=Communist. No wonder Obama likes him.

[OldNavyVet]

How would Machiavelli handle this?

[Gay State Conservative]

The Honduran government...the one currently recognized by the country's Supreme Court...should be "organizing" a 21 gun salute for this Marxist scumbag if he crosses the border.

All 21 aimed at his head,of course.

[La Lydia]

He also says this: "Zelaya said he will press Clinton to take another step: declaring that the United States will not recognize the results of national elections scheduled for late November. The de facto president, Roberto Micheletti, told Hondurans Tuesday that "these elections are the only, final and definitive solution to the political crisis," according to the Associated Press. The candidates of the two biggest parties oppose Zelaya's policies.

"But it is not yet clear that the crisis will end with the elections. Zelaya said South American and Central American countries as well as Mexico had agreed not to recognize the government emerging from the elections if they are held under the de facto government."

[Ulysse]

OBAMAO is also organizing to leave soon to ....VENEZUELA or somewhere...

[Old Retired Army Guy]

He said he would return defore “December”. Hell, new elections are planned for November and his old tour of office will have expired in January. I think the clock is working against him. Once new elections have been held and an elected government takes office, everyone will be happy again and all relations restored.

[La Lydia]

Michelleti is doing what Machiavelli would have recommended: stalling until the November elections. All they have to do is run a clean election, install the winner in a peaceful change of government, and they are home free. The OAS can pound sand.

[Kakaze]

My fear,is that we send him back .............with troops.

I only hope obama is so low in the polls he backs away.

I do not want our boys there.

[OldNavyVet]

Come to think of it, Obama seems to run things the way Machiavelli recommends.

For instance ...

Do no harm to those that can’t hurt you.

[agere_contra]

That is eminently sensible and true.

But of course we will still have losers with “Free Honduras” stickers on their cars whining about ‘the coup’ until the heat-death of the universe.

[bgill]

Maybe Hussein and Zelaya will both leave our borders forever.

[inkfarmer]

Who is performing the care and feeding of this banished, forgotten loser? The guy has to have meals, clothing and a place to sleep. He doesn’t have a job, right?

[cripplecreek]

Sounds to me like Zelaya is planning a coup attempt.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Bam is not sending any troops down there. He has his hands full with his own pacifist moonbat base over Afghanistan. But he very well might wink and nod while Chavez and Castro do it. (Zelaya could set up shop in some little corner of Honduras, declare it “liberated” and ask his friends for military assistance)

[angkor]

Yes they continue to call a legal Constitutional measure "a coup", but at least the Post ran this little-reported story about Zelaya.

And in what must have been an editorial slip, the Post notes that "Zelaya tried to circumvent the nation's supreme court and pushed for a referendum on whether the constitution should be changed to allow him to serve a second term."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2292951/posts

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

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.

... 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.

[snip]

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 to allow him to serve a second term. He was ousted on June 28.

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."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/13/AR2009071303275.html

[Carley]

Wonder if stimulus money from the US is going to help this despot.