EDITORIALS
Honduras poses a test
Obama must react carefully to Central American upheaval
President Obama is facing his toughest test yet in Central America, the June 28 coup against President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras. Whether he passes that test may depend upon how he responds to baiting by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
So far, Obama has taken the right steps in condemning the action and calling it illegal—a step short of officially labeling it a “coup,” which could result in the stoppage of hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to that country.
Hondurans ousted Zelaya in the first military coup in Central America since the end of the Cold War. In what is widely known as the “pajama coup,” the army rousted the president from bed in the early morning hours and put him on a plane to Costa Rica.
Zelaya, stubbornly determined to get back to his country, had his Venezuelan return flight turned back by the military. The ousted president headed instead to Washington for a planned meeting Tuesday with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and said he would try to re-enter Honduras at an unspecified land crossing.
With interim leader Roberto Micheletti in place, the new government of Honduras so far has rejected the possibility of Zelaya’s return. The country has had a civilian government since 1982, but its military continues to hold much power behind the scenes.
Zelaya, a wealthy rancher who moved to the left and allied himself with Chavez, has created his own problems. With only six months left in his term, he attempted a constitutional change that might allow him to run for another term. Doing so, he stirred up fear among his opponents that the referendum, scheduled hours before the coup, would allow him to remain in office and move the country toward socialism.
Zelaya now has pledged to abandon his hopes of remaining in power, but he now has powerful critics even within his own ruling Liberal Party, to which Micheletti also belongs.
What Zelaya planned was wrong and Obama has indicated his dissatisfaction on that front. But a military coup is even more troubling.
The Organization of American States has suspended Honduras from membership and the country now faces trade sanctions and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidized oil, aid and loans. Diplomats with the United Nations, the OAS, the United States and European countries continue to work to find common ground with the interim president, who has said he will not negotiate until “things return to normal.”
Chavez is perhaps the only winner in this awful mess, gaining some measure of political ground on his own turf, finding himself aligned with Washington as he tries to help Zelaya return but then also baiting Obama by charging that the CIA had a hand in the Honduran president’s removal. That charge resonates in the region, because of CIA use of Honduras in the 1980s as a base for operatives backing the contra rebels against the leftist Sandinista government in neighboring Nicaragua.
Against that backdrop of history, Obama must play an important but cautious role in the Honduras upheaval, and in Central American relations in general. This indeed will be a tough early test.
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