Senator DeMint: The Only Person In Honduras Who Wants The Return Of Zelaya Is Obama’s Ambassador
Senator DeMint paints a poignant picture of just how misguided the Obama administration has been in their backing of ousted would-be tyrant Manuel Zelaya:
While in Honduras, I spoke to dozens of Hondurans, from nonpartisan members of civil society to former Zelaya political allies, from Supreme Court judges to presidential candidates and even personal friends of Mr. Zelaya. Each relayed stories of a man changed and corrupted by power. The evidence of Mr. Zelaya’s abuses of presidential power—and his illegal attempts to rewrite the Honduran Constitution, a la Hugo Chávez—is not only overwhelming but uncontroverted.
As all strong democracies do after cleansing themselves of usurpers, Honduras has moved on.
The presidential election is on schedule for Nov. 29. Under Honduras’s one-term-limit, Mr. Zelaya could not have sought re-election anyway. Current President Roberto Micheletti—who was installed after Mr. Zelaya’s removal, per the Honduran Constitution—is not on the ballot either. The presidential candidates were nominated in primary elections almost a year ago, and all of them—including Mr. Zelaya’s former vice president—expect the elections to be free, fair and transparent, as has every Honduran election for a generation.
Indeed, the desire to move beyond the Zelaya era was almost universal in our meetings. Almost.
In a day packed with meetings, we met only one person in Honduras who opposed Mr. Zelaya’s ouster, who wishes his return, and who mystifyingly rejects the legitimacy of the November elections: U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens.
Obama has turned what was a simple situation – Hondurans ousting a leader with pretensions toward dictatorship – and replacing him with an interim leader who is lawfully holding elections for a permanent leader that he will not even be participating in.
All of this, again, is being done per the nation’s laws. Laws Zelaya sought to bypass and undermine while he was still in power.
As I’ve pointed out before in other situations, the Bush doctrine required that we support the aspirations of all free people. The Obama doctrine seems to have it that we should support, or at least tolerate, the aspirations of tyrants.
