Wall Street Journal's O'Grady does it again

Hondurans: Just say no!

Mary Anastasia O'Grady of the Wall Street Journal does it again by reporting on past activities of former President Mel Zelaya which have gone unreported by other major news organizations. Kudos to Ms. O'Grady!

In "Why Honduras Sent Zelaya Away", she reports that the former president threatened to use force against the Congress and other institutions. O'Grady writes, "The decision to pack him off immediately was taken in the interest of protecting both constitutional order and human life."

While first world governments and citizens decry the use of force to remove the president, I ask you to consider that you do not know all the facts. You do not know that the referendum is not the only issue in which Zelaya has tried to trample the constitution or that legal means of stopping him had been thwarted by Zelaya for months prior to his ouster.

Has your congress has ever been threatened by the military in order to force a presidential Supreme Court nominee? (In the Honduras constitution, the president is not given the right to name Supreme Court candidates.) Has your attorney general has ever been threatened by 100 machete-waving agitators in his office?! Has your president ever publicly thumbed his nose at the Supreme Court, not only in his actions but by declaring on public television that they don't know what they are talking about and "no one can stop me except God!"?

It puts a different light on the situation, I think. Honduras is not the US, nor Canada, nor the UK. To judge what happened here based on those standards is unfair. To do so without any knowledge of past events is even worse. But because Honduras has in the past been of so little interest to the rest of the world, these events were probably not covered anywhere in the international media.


Other related articles by Mary Anastasia O'Grady:

Honduras at the tipping point (July 6)

Honduras defends its democracy (June 28)

Also at the Wall Street Journal:

The cult of the caudillo helps to explain Latin America's strong aversion to power hungry leaders.