Honduras Talks Stall

The Miami Herald reports on the real problem:

Zelaya is facing four charges: abuse of power, treason, usurping his duties and attempts against the form of government. Only treason and attempts against the form of government might be considered “political” charges, legal experts said.

Any legal woes for Zelaya stem from a single issue: his aggressive pursuit of a national referendum that he hoped would allow him to rewrite the constitution.

As congress and the courts legally blocked him each step of the way, Zelaya switched tactics, ignored rulings and fired those who got in the way. It came to a crisis point on June 25 when he rallied his supporters to break into a government building and seize the impounded referendum material, which was under guard. That was the last straw.

On June 26, the Supreme Court ordered his arrest, according to documents provided by the attorney general’s office. On the morning of June 28 — the day the referendum was to take place — masked soldiers escorted Zelaya at gunpoint onto an airplane in his pajamas and flew him to Costa Rica.

In addition, Zelaya’s chief of staff, Enrique Flores Lanza, is accused of abuse of power and misuse of public funds for withdrawing about $2.2 million in cash from the Central Bank on June 24.

Even in the US pulling a couple of million dollars in cash out of the bank would cause some questions. Another problem was the scheduled election in November. Among those Zelaya tried to fire was the Election Commission, and when that didn’t work, he stopped all their funding, so there was no one to run the November election. For his little referendum he was trying to get a government statistical agency to count the votes, but failing that, I guess the fish and wildlife service would have been called in.

Just because the US Congress refuses to deal with an out-of-control executive branch, there’s no reason everyone else has to tolerate their version of the Shrubbery.