HONDURAS: MICHELETTI CONTINUES OFFENSIVE BY GOING THROUGH MEDIA

Time to contrast how, as the Constitutional crisis in Honduras continues, ousted president Manuel Zelaya is acting with what sitting president Roberto Micheletti has decided to do. One (Zelaya) decides to play games by camping out on the Nicaraguan side of its border with Honduras while screaming he's a victim through a megaphone with seemingly complete disregard to the possiblity of such antics causing bloodshed.

Micheletti, on the other hand, has taken a more civil tack by using the printed word to make his case to individuals, nations, multi-national groups like the UN and the OAS. In an op-ed appearing in the Wall Street Journal, Micheletti enumerates facts as he sees them.

•The Supreme Court, by a 15-0 vote, found that Mr. Zelaya had acted illegally by proceeding with an unconstitutional “referendum,” and it ordered the Armed Forces to arrest him. The military executed the arrest order of the Supreme Court because it was the appropriate agency to do so under Honduran law.

•Eight of the 15 votes on the Supreme Court were cast by members of Mr. Zelaya’s own Liberal Party. Strange that the pro-Zelaya propagandists who talk about the rule of law forget to mention the unanimous Supreme Court decision with a majority from Mr. Zelaya’s own party. Thus, Mr. Zelaya’s arrest was at the instigation of Honduran’s constitutional and civilian authorities—not the military.

•The Honduran Congress voted overwhelmingly in support of removing Mr. Zelaya. The vote included a majority of members of Mr. Zelaya’s Liberal Party.

•Independent government and religious leaders and institutions—including the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the Administrative Law Tribunal, the independent Human Rights Ombudsman, four-out-of-five political parties, the two major presidential candidates of the Liberal and National Parties, and Honduras’s Catholic Cardinal—all agreed that Mr. Zelaya had acted illegally.

•The constitution expressly states in Article 239 that any president who seeks to amend the constitution and extend his term is automatically disqualified and is no longer president. There is no express provision for an impeachment process in the Honduran constitution. But the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision affirmed that Mr. Zelaya was attempting to extend his term with his illegal referendum. Thus, at the time of his arrest he was no longer—as a matter of law, as far as the Supreme Court was concerned—president of Honduras.

•Days before his arrest, Mr. Zelaya had his chief of staff illegally withdraw millions of dollars in cash from the Central Bank of Honduras.

•A day or so before his arrest, Mr. Zelaya led a violent mob to overrun an Air Force base to seize referendum ballots that had been shipped into Honduras by Hugo Chávez’s Venezuelan government.

•I succeeded Mr. Zelaya under the Honduran constitution’s order of succession (our vice president had resigned before all of this began so that he could run for president). This is and has always been an entirely civilian government. The military was ordered by an entirely civilian Supreme Court to arrest Mr. Zelaya. His removal was ordered by an entirely civilian and elected Congress. To suggest that Mr. Zelaya was ousted by means of a military coup is demonstrably false.

Has anyone noticed that Barack Obama isn't speaking out on the Honduras situation as much as he used to? His stance, and by extension, the stance of the United States is that Zelaya should be reinstated as president of Honduras. That position is becoming more and more untenable and when Barack Obama finds himself on the losing end of an argument, it's time for RULE #10 in Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, which is:

Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”

Obama encapsulated his understanding of this topic when pressed by Wolf Blitzer during a debate in November, 2007 when he said this in response to a question he found uncomfortable:

"If we keep on getting distracted by this problem, then we are not solving it."

It is becoming ever more clear that the rule of law is on the side of Roberto Micheletti and Honduras' current government. Perhaps so much so that Zelaya is acting out in desperation instead of showing deference to the overwhelming majority of world leaders who have been in his corner.

I guess it's time to turn up that megaphone, Mr. Zelaya. It doesn't matter what you say in response to Micheletti. What matters is that you say it so loudly you drown out the facts.

h/t to Hot Air for the link to the WSJ piece.