It's been 89 days since Manuel Zelaya was booted from power. He's sleeping on chairs, and he claims his throat is sore from toxic gases and "Israeli mercenaries'' are torturing him with high-frequency radiation."We are being threatened with death,'' he said in an interview with The Miami Herald, adding that mercenaries were likely to storm the embassy where he has been holed up since Monday and assassinate him.
"I prefer to march on my feet than to live on my knees before a military dictatorship,'' Zelaya said in a series of back-to-back interviews.
Israeli mercenaries? Probably Joooooos! Dammit, they'll getcha every time! I consulted my Spanish dictionary and found out that Zelaya is the Spanish word for meshuga.
Just a reminder: this is the man that President Obama wants to lead Honduras.
8 comments:
Mark,
that is an incredibly disingenuous take on what Obama wants. Obama, along with every other elected leader in the Americas, wants Zelaya to finish his term and have his successor picked in a clean election in a few months.
Rich
That might be what Obama wants, Rich. But it's not what Zelaya wants. And I think you know that a few "elected" leaders (e.g., Chavez, Morales, Ortega) aren't so keen on seeing Zelaya out of power any time soon. And I'm not so sure about Lula, either.
Mark,
de Silva has been an amazingly centrist ruler. Especially given his background as a labor leader. In fact, he has been taking a lot of heat from the left for being so business friendly and fiscally conservative.
Also, it is not fair to lump Morales and Ortega in with Chavez as dubiously 'elected' leaders. You know that Ortega stepped down peaceably when Violetta Chimora beat him after his first term, almost twenty years ago. And that he won his current term in a free and fair election, in a country that had experienced several peaceful transitions of power. A precedent that he had set by stepping down in the first election under Nicaragua's current constitution.
And Evo was elected in a clean election as well. When the indigenous people of Bolivia recently realized the power of the ballot and started to register and vote en masse, Bolivian politics shifted over night.
Rich
The test will be what happens when Morales and Ortega lose elections. Ortega stepped down in 1990 because the entire world was watching. No one is paying attention this time.
Mark,
I agree that time will tell with Ortega and Morales. But the only people who have worked against the constitution in Bolivia so far are the wealthy right-wing landowners in the low-lands, where the indigenous populations are small and lack political organization.
Rich
Mark,
not sure if you are following the news in Honduras the last few days, but Michiletti, the self-appointed Protector of the Constitution in Honduras, has been raiding and shutting down media outlets that don't agree with him. Kinda like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
Imagine that.
Rich
I did see that. I also saw where Zelaya had called for insurrection. And I also saw where, for the first time since this whole thing started, the State Department started criticizing Zelaya, almost immediately after Micheletti started cracking down. If I didn't know better, I'd assume that the State Department started liking Micheletti better once he started acting like Chavez. :)
In case you missed that, the link is here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090928/ts_nm/us_honduras_usa
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