Honduras Round-Up

Soldiers moving in to the presidential palace to arrest Zelaya

The NYTimes has the big picture on the big news out of Latin America today: the first coup d’etat in 16 years. Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was forced out of the country this morning at gunpoint and in his pajamas.

It was the rare issue that united leaders in the Western hemisphere from always-combative Hugo Chavez to Obama. “We thought that the long night of military dictatorships in Central America was over,” said Costa Rica’s president.

In Twitterland , though, opinions split between those who wanted Zelaya out by any means and those who thought today’s arrest? coup? makes Honduras look like it’s backpedaling from democracy. Here’s a perspective from the out-by-any-means camp. The writer says he voted for Zelaya but has come to regret it:

He was elected on a narrow margin, mostly due to the ruling party’s candidate desire to push for the death penalty in our country, which is not allowed in our law. We are a peaceful and tame people, and do not like such drastic penalties.

Mr. Zelaya was elected because he opposed death penalty, and he promised to continue his party’s work on improving the situation on our country’s education, health and social situation, while promoting democracy and swearing to protect our Constitution. He also promoted a so called “Citizen’s power”, which was supposed to be a channel for the people to express their thoughts to the government.

In the first 2 years of his term, he seemed to be trying to fulfill his promises, but then we see him starting to engage in relations with Venezuela’s leftist president Hugo Chavez, which per se is not a bad thing, but he starts to support his ideologies. This is where Mr. Zelaya stabbed the Honduran people in the back…

Meanwhile, Honduras’s Congress installed Roberto Micheletti, who hails from the same party as Zelaya, as acting president.

Honduras News reported that Zelaya appears to have lost even his supporters in government inside Honduras. It looks like all the support is coming from outside.

Last word Zelaya was on a plane to Nicaragua for an emergency meeting of the Organization of American States, which roundly condemned the whole thing.

For now Micheletti has called a two-day curfew. Despite some action-packed wire photography, noticeably, fortunately, there’s been no violence.