Ousted Honduran President Puts Brazil in Unexpected Bind
By Theresa Bradley | September 27, 2009 | Brazil
Grafitti outside Mackenzie University in Sao Paulo this month reads \"Down with the coup in Honduras.\"
Latin America’s biggest power is taking new interest in the region’s fourth-poorest nation, with coffee-shop chatter in Brazil’s financial capital now including insightful comments such as, “Honduras is a country in Central America.”
It’s hard to blame a Brazilian for asking: Metropolitan Sao Paulo alone has nearly three times more people than all of Honduras, which is 3,700 miles away and has an economy less than one-100th the size of Brazil’s.
But Brazilian media are suddenly scrambling to explain a Honduran political crisis that has dragged on since June, when soldiers roused that country’s president from bed at gunpoint and flew him from the country in his pajamas. This week, ousted president Manuel Zelaya snuck back across the border and unexpectedly announced that he was holed up inside Brazil’s embassy in Tegucigalpa, which has since been surrounded by Honduran troops waiting to arrest him.
Late Saturday, Honduras’ sitting government said it would give Brazil ten days to decide whether or not to grant Zelaya political asylum, or warned that it would be “obligated” to take unspecified actions.
In Brazil, word of the standoff at the embassy covers front pages and leads the nightly news, as commentators wonder what their country has to gain from thrusting itself into such a diplomatic pinch. It’s a risky wager: Brazil can either resolve a stalemate that no other intermediary has managed to fix, or it can stay center stage in an impasse that has little to do with its own national interests.
Honduras’ sitting government, which is backed by a significant part of that country’s population, is calling Brazil’s involvement a violation of international law and accusing it of meddling in domestic affairs.
International media have suggested that Zelaya’s presence in the embassy gives Brazil a new chance to boost its role as a diplomatic power – something Lula had set as a goal for the century, opening 35 new embassies as part of a growing “South-South” strategy that would counter U.S. influence in the developing world. With Zelaya now “betting all his chips on the only country that he believes is going to return him to the presidency,” the world has “tangible proof of a shift in the axis of power in the region,” the BBC Brasil cited a Swiss newspaper as stating.
But it may have been simple domestic politics, rather than a regional power shift, that drove Zelaya to seek help from Brazil rather than from his recent ally, Venezuela: Many Hondurans had disliked their president’s growing ties to Chavez, which contributed to the backlash against him that set the stage for the coup. According to unnamed presidential and foreign ministry sources cited in Brazil, it was actually Chavez who suggested that Zelaya go to Brazil's embassy, precisely because Brasilia is seen as larger, more neutral and harder to dismiss in a partisan dispute like the one now gripping Honduras.
Zelaya was deposed on June 28, after backing a referendum that sought to call a vote on a constitutional amendment to extend presidential term limits. Because Honduras’ constitution forbids a president from seeking to extend his time in office in any way, the Supreme Court ordered Zelaya’s arrest – but military officials decided to avoid potential riots among his supporters by exiling him instead.
Like most of the world, Brazil condemned Zelaya’s ouster, suspending aid and breaking ties with the country's new sitting government, which it continues to describe as “golpista“ – a strong term in Brazil, which over the years has seen three separate “golpes,” or coups, of its own.
Lula worked Honduras into his speech to the U.N. General Assembly in New York last Tuesday, calling for Zelaya’s immediate return to office and protection for Brazil’s embassy. His comments drew criticism from opponents at home who complained that they'd diverted attention from issues closer to Brazilian interests, including upcoming global talks on climate change.
Honduran soldiers have meanwhile maintained their blockade at Brazil’s white-walled embassy in Tegucigalpa, where electricity, water and phone service were initially cut and where, according to frequent telephone interviews given to journalists by Zelaya, police launched high-pitched sounds and toxic gas that he said left colleagues vomiting and bleeding. Honduran officials denied using any such chemical.
A top embassy official camped in the compound last week compared the situation to a siege, while Brazil’s Foreign Minister Celso Amorim called it “a clear violation of Vienna Convention rules on diplomatic relations” and warned the sitting government against invading the property. On Friday, the U.N. Security Council condemned any acts of “intimidation” against the embassy.
One of the biggest questions remains: How did Zelaya sneak into the country in the first place, and who knew that he was coming? Lula has insisted that Brazil had no prior knowledge of any plan, and Amorim told reporters in New York that Brazil was asked if Zelaya could enter its embassy less than one hour before he appeared at its door.
Now that he is camped out there, Brazil must decide what to do next. Advisors to Lula conceded to the BBC Brasil that the ousted president has in fact put their nation in a very “delicate” situation, “imposing” a mediator role upon it that really should be played by the Organization of American States.
Zelaya says he only wants to serve out his original term, which ends in January, at which time he vows to step aside for the winner of Nov. 29 presidential elections. Sitting president Roberto Micheletti has also agreed to leave office for a newly-elected successor, but says he will under no circumstances step down for Zelaya.
Six Brazilian lawmakers were enroute to Honduras for talks on Sunday, according to Brazil’s Globo1 website. But with an OAS delegation turned away at the Tegucigalpa airport that same day, it wasn’t clear that the Brazilians would actually gain entry to start negotiating – a situation that may be symbolic of their nation’s bigger predicament now playing out on a global stage.
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