Bloggings by boz

You put your left foot in, you take your left foot out....

Honduran President Zelaya did the hokey pokey on the Nicaragua-Honduras border yesterday. Surrounded by supporters and media, he briefly stepped across the border made a few cell phone calls, touched a sign that said "Welcome to Honduras" and then crossed back to Nicaragua. He was inside the country, barely, for about 15 minutes. It made for dramatic television (I was watching). The move was called "reckless" by Secretary Clinton and others who felt he was putting on a show rather than working towards resolving the situation. Afterwards, Zelaya stepped back into Nicaragua and made some more phone calls. It's unclear what his next move will be, but he is scheduled to be back in Washington next week to meet with US officials.

Both Greg Weeks and Al Giordano question whether Zelaya's actions yesterday actually weaken him because he did not follow through on his return yet again. The interim government, however, was also weakened in that they did not or could not follow through on their threat to arrest Zelaya.

Elsewhere in the country, Zelaya supporters gathered near the border to try to greet the exiled president as he returned, but they were largely blocked by security forces. Clashes took place and there are reports of some casualties. There was a major pro-Micheletti march in San Pedro Sula. Strikes against the de facto government continued elsewhere in the country and there were reports that some police officers were striking over not being paid since the coup.

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Today's WSJ takes a longer term view of Zelaya through a conservative lens, recounting how the cowboy from an elite land-owning family became an ally of Chavez during his term in office. There seems to be a question of whether it was ideology or political/economic pragmatism.

Dueling op-eds in today's Washington Post, as OAS Secretary General Insulza defends his role as well as the organization's role in the Honduras crisis. Next to that article, Edward Schumacher-Matos calls for Insulza to be fired for his inability to manage the crisis in Honduras before it became a coup as well as work to defend the broader definitions of democracy in the hemisphere that go beyond reinstating Zelaya.

Insulza is correct in his op-ed that the role of the Secretary General is fairly limited by the institution and the desires of the member states. Those who are asking Insulza to go beyond his institutional role to do more to criticize presidents who are going beyond their institutional roles don't realize the problem in their arguments. The Democratic Charter probably needs to be revised, but it's not Insulza's job to do so unilaterally.