Mel Zelaya's left turn

What caused Zelaya to share neither the ideas of his party nor most of his opponents might not be as important as what becomes of those ideas. Here in the capital, Tegucigalpa, there have been a dozen or so large-scale death threats on Zelaya just in the last 60 days. These are not the work of a lone goofball calling a radio station - though you do have to take things with a grain of salt given the quality of the Honduran media (most big Honduran media is pro-business and by default usually pro-U.S., etc. - but they cannot control everything as radio and local tv news more than make up for daily incompetence in the papers).

On four separate occasions in the month of May the threat was serious enough that most government employees working at night were sent home from work early or for the night. I have friends who work in emergency rooms in Tegus, and even they were sent home from work (pretty bad when emergency medical care is rendered non-essential service in a police lockdown, etc.); in the last 20 years no one could recall this having happened before. They are not simply told “go home”, but given an explanation as to why and told to call family members informing them the time they are leaving and the time they expect to arrive, etc.

Additionally, there have been official and unofficial lockdowns on parts of the city. There have been instances, some as long as 72 hours, of restricted travel and barricades in sections of the city, and in nearby Comayaguela. As of recently, there is a curfew is large sections of the city, and even with this several people were murdered within these regions just in the last week. Twice in early June there were very low-flying military helicopters near my apartment (Zona Alambra, circa La Leona Park, overlooking downtown Tegus). It is not clear what legitimate purpose they served and no newspaper story followed. On one night it coincided with nighttime travel for Zelaya. This may sound supportive, extra protection for the President, but the President doesn’t really control the military so the last thing he likely wants to see or hear are military copters anywhere near his residence when he didn’t call or ask for them. Much of this isn’t reported or is loosely covered in the newspapers.

This is not comparable to something that might happen in China or another country with a strong government that is essentially inseparable from the military and police. The problem in Honduras right now is that Zelaya does not have the support of his party, nor opposing political parties, nor most of the military hierarchy, nor most of the police (and even he might be wondering about some of them in his 999-man private defense force). He has been on a massive termination campaign for a long time, essentially firing every government employee (many of whom voted for him when they thought he was a liberal) not currently supporting him and replacing them with anyone loyal - regardless of whether or not they can read, write, do their job, etc. This has often crushed the ability to do business, which is a second blow atop his other anti-business escapades.

Zelaya's big problem is that he hasn't accomplished much of anything, not really. If he had upset so many people while building real bridges with lower class people his position would be vastly different right now. Much of his current support comes from people who are paid to support him and that should worry a lot of people, including him. He is quickly making what little hard-earned transparency there was in Honduras, harder to find and more dangerous to "use". This came with, and it likely tied to, the ALBA monies.

Even Zelaya’s successes are often so only on paper or in news blurbs. Consider his work on the minimum wage, which was a good idea in principle but handled badly and backfired massively (see this entry on Nicaliving: http://www.nicaliving.com/node/14362). His newly placed people in registries are more corrupt than their predecessors, and that is saying something. I don’t know of a single person of the 40+ we know here who lost their jobs following this pay increase plan who were able to collect: their final paycheck, their 13th-month bonus, pension payout, or anything else (business owners just bribe the government investigators, etc.). In additional, many of these people were not being paid the old pathetic minimum wage. So, legally, they were owed massive backpay, penalties, final pay, all in addition to their pension-payment based on years of service. None of the 22 or so people I know in this situation ever got a single Lempira and never will. Again, Zelaya’s new people are simply bribed by the business owner and the problem and paperwork is changed or disappears. So, in these cases, you have poor people who are terminated due to the massive, immediate hike in minimum wage, then not even assisted by their government in recovering money for past work - and both acts are derived from Zelaya‘s plan and people. These poor people, and every one of their relatives, are not likely going to be Zelaya supporters any time soon. And, this is a massive country-wide problem. As for fighting literacy, Zelaya isn’t even finding schools at the levels his predecessors managed. The pro-Zelaya machine (not all of it is propaganda, per se) is in full force. He now has his own weekly newspaper, radio and television barrages. But, he has so few successes that the stories are quite repetitive and often misleading.

It is not clear what prompted Zelaya to do much of what he has done recently (simple greed an ignorance are possible explanations though). Zelaya is a rather childlike figure, ill-suited to the national, let alone international stage. He is also a man who has repeatedly admitted he is an idiot so it is that much harder to tell what is really going on. He might actually believe in what he is doing but, if so, those beliefs are going hand in hand with the massive disappearance of funds, though in his defense, he would not be the first suddenly idealistic person to surround himself with an array of people, only some of whom are true believers.

Way back when Zelaya may have had 9 people killed and his paid killers might have thrown 7 of them down into his well. Might have played out that way; might even be a good alibi (after all, who would be stupid enough to put the people they kill in their own well for the public to find?). This story, even if true, isn’t a primary topic in Honduras. In fact, let isn’t much dialogue going on. Often, you get the feeling it is too late for that. Right now the capital is awash in graffiti unlike that seen before. Graffiti, in itself, isn't always bad. In general, it is a better day anytime someone paints some slang on a building instead of painting it and those inside with gunfire. There has always been a "stop the corruption" element in Honduras, much like there is in any country. Many of the people were left-leaning, but by no means all of them, and they even had a great deal in common with many small businessmen, teachers, even government employees. Now, much of the anti-Zelaya graffiti comes from people who, on paper, have little in common. Zelaya doesn‘t have a lot of friends and serious or not an awful lot of people want him gone. Hondurans are rather proud of the fact that they have a long streak of not having the military solve their political problems. While the running joke has always been that they were so poor they couldn’t afford a dictator, even if they were to have one it wouldn’t be Zelaya. It is easy to get the feeling that there are just too many Hondurans who want him gone. They would settle for gone from the Presidential Palace, which they seem to have assumed would be the result of a waiting game. But, that was before this new constitutional game surfaced. It only takes a handful of the right people to decide they aren’t going to wait and they aren’t going to let him change the rules of the game - not like this. Not saying it will happen, but it would not come as a surprise to me if it did.