The offer was presented by a Honduran delegation to the Washington-based Organization of American States, Micheletti told reporters in Tegucigalpa. It was unclear if the OAS had received the proposal.
[...]
If Micheletti were to resign, under Honduran law the presidency would pass to Supreme Court President Jorge Rivera. The Supreme Court backed the coup.
One suspects that Zelaya won’t be too keen on that offer. Indeed, from his perspective, what would be the difference? Certainly in terms of rectifying the situation, Micheletti’s resignation would hardly reverse the coup.
And, as I noted yesterday, Zelaya’s comment about a right to insurrection has been picked up as a talking point by Micheletti:
However, he charged that some people were trying to foment a rebellion. “This morning we were informed that they were handing out some guns,” Micheletti said, without specifying who “they” were.
All of which means that the interim government can now blame any disturbance on Zelaya’a call to arms:
A few hours later, Micheletti’s administration announced in a broadcast statement that it was imposing a new midnight-5 a.m. curfew, calling it a response to “continuing and open threats by groups looking to provoke disturbances and disorder.” It had imposed a nightly curfew after Zelaya’s ouster, but lifted the order Sunday morning, saying it had succeeded in bringing calm to Honduras.
I would note, as I have before, that such behavior by the state does not help foster the notion that Zelaya’s removal was a legal “constitutional substitution.” I would note, for example, when Richard Nixon was forced to resign the White House, there was no martial law in the US, likewise when Bill Clinton was impeached. Other executives have been constitutionally removed from office sans military raids on opposition media and curfews.
The story also the following:
A Gallup survey in Honduras said Zelaya is more popular than Micheletti, but it also indicated a deeply divided nation.
The nationwide survey made after Zelaya was exiled said 46 percent of those polled had a favorable opinion of Zelaya, while 30 percent had a similar view of Micheletti. Yet Zelaya was opposed by about the same proportion as his support — 44 percent — a figure not much different from the 49 percent who had negative feelings about Micheletti.
This is striking for a number of reasons. The first is that opposition media was curtailed, if not shut down, after the coup, meaning a pro-coup, anti-Zelaya message has dominated the news, and yet Zelaya is more popular than Micheletti. You’d think that if the “they are saving the country from a tyrant” narrative was accurate, that Micheletti wouldhave higher numbers than that, yes?). Second, reports prior to the coup were that Zelaya’s popularity (which was never large to begin with, as he won the presidency sans an absolute majority) was waning and it would appear that the coup has buoyed his numbers a bit.
There was a poll last fall that put Zelaya at around 25% (Angus Reid).
So, with the caveat that these are different pollsters, it would seem that the coup has generated sympathy for a president who was pretty deeply unpopular while he was actually exercising authority.
Comment by MSS — Thursday, July 16, 2009 @ 10:38 am
Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has said his supporters have “the right to insurrection” in their bid to see him reinstated.
Mr Zelaya said Hondurans were within their rights to demonstrate, go on strike, or even rise up against the interim Honduran government.
He was addressing a news conference in Guatemala,
That is the kind of statement that will give his opponents in Honduras more fuel to use against him. It probably would have been smarter to have stopped at “go on strike.”((And btw, before anyone asserts that calling for revolt demonstrates Zelaya’s leftism, I would recommend a perusal of Locke and Jefferson. I am not saying that he is necessarily making an appeal based on any particular philosophical basis, just making an observation.))
Meanwhile, the “negotiations” may continue this weekend:
The chief mediator, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, earlier called the rival factions in Honduras to a new round of talks on Saturday to try to end the crisis.
Previous talks in Costa Rica have failed to produce a breakthrough.
But Mr Arias said on Tuesday: “It is not easy to get results in 24 hours.”
The Costan Rican leader, a Nobel peace prize laureate, said: “My experience tells me that one has to be a little patient.”
I use scare quotes around “negotiations,” because I am not sure that any actual negotiations are going on. Indeed, Greg Weeks (who also deploys ye olde scare quotes) points to a Bloomberg story this morning that reinforces that impression:
Micheletti’s representatives will push for Zelaya to abandon his bid to be restored in office and ask the former leader to persuade his allies to end protests in Honduras, Facusse said. A first round of talks in Costa Rica ended last week, with Zelaya insisting he is the rightful president and Micheletti vowing to arrest him if he returns to Honduras.
As Greg rightly notes:
Since the coup government has tried very hard never to allow a trial anyway, it is not much of a concession. They don’t want him on trial, which would force them to make their legal case, allow defense, and grant Zelaya a public forum to denounce the charges.
Indeed. As I have noted before, the anti-Zelaya elements of the Honduran government have gone to mighty steps to avoid giving Zelaya a trial, despite all the talk about the legality of their actions.
It’s about time…the country as a whole has been Bert and airlines have been Ernie for far too long. Maybe as a replacement they’ll come up with warning sirens that play the brown note, which would probably be a more appropriate terrorist warning anyway.
365.195. I had gone to an event not far from the White House and decided to walk by before heading back to the hotel and found a gathering of "Biggest Loser" contestants out front. It isn’t really much of a picture, but didn’t have many chances today and for that matter only had my small camera. Still, the title makes up for a lot.
The mysterious, unseen giant embassy underscores how Iran’s expansion into Latin America may be less substantive than some in Washington fear.
Gee, ya think?
Yes, the Iranians have made overtures to Chávez and Ortega, but the notion that they are poised to project serious and sustained influence into the Western Hemisphere strikes me as rather substantially unlikely (to put it mildly). Indeed, it may well be the stuff of fantastical paranoia:
“Iran recently established a huge embassy in Managua,” Nancy Menges of the Center for Security Policy told a House committee last year. “Iran’s embassy in Managua is now the largest diplomatic mission in the city,” wrote Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute.
And
“The Iranians are building a huge embassy in Managua,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned in May. “And you can only imagine what that’s for.”
The things is, no one can find it. Further
Iran’s proposed investments in Nicaragua — for a deep-water port, hydroelectric plants and a tractor factory — have also failed to materialize, Nicaraguan officials say. At a time when Iran’s oil revenue is falling, the same is true of many projects planned for Latin America, according to analysts.
This strikes me as an attempt to a) stay in the public eye (not that that has been a problem), b) try and assert expertise over an actual policy issue (one that is considered to a political strength for her), and c) to be relevant to a current political controversy.
All of which might make sense for her if she wasn’t sending bizarrely (and unnecessarily) confused signals in the midst of her strange resignation.
Still, I continue to think that she is running for 2012.
I find the tagline somewhat amusing, since we all know that it will soon be much shorter:
b) try and assert expertise over an actual policy issue (one that is considered to a political strength for her)
I’m not sure if the op-ed is going to do anything for her in this regard. Like her resignation speech, the op-ed was illogical, incoherent and feeds into the perception that she’s a policy lightweight who can’t really move beyond sloganeering.
Even Bush had moved beyond this simplistic understanding of energy policy by the end of his term!
Comment by Ratoe — Tuesday, July 14, 2009 @ 10:39 am
My first thought, upon reading that, was that she used a ghostwriter. Nothing in there sounds like Sarah Palin.
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There was a poll last fall that put Zelaya at around 25% (Angus Reid).
So, with the caveat that these are different pollsters, it would seem that the coup has generated sympathy for a president who was pretty deeply unpopular while he was actually exercising authority.
Comment by MSS — Thursday, July 16, 2009 @ 10:38 am