The author of this Washington Post article has a very balanced opinion, we need more of these. It also makes me wonder what John McCain would have done. I suppose if he were president, the crisis would be over, Micheletti would be confirmed as president, and Chávez would be erupting with insults.

Don’t get me wrong, I sympathize with the republicans, but I like to stay in the center.

A pilot with a very thick Venezuelan accent asks permission to land at Toncontin airport in the Honduran capital. He says that the president of the UN is aboard, but making no mention of Zelaya. The tower denies permission saying the airport is restricted to all except Honduran military aircraft at the moment. When permission is denied, he says that he will turn away to Managua, but then insists twice on landing at Toncontin. The tower says that if he does not turn away, that they will be “intercepted”. A different voice (Zelaya’s?) asks the tower as to what it means by “intercepted”. The rest we have seen…. Zelaya’s supporters broke through the fence, and were driven away by tear gas and rubber bullets.

Manuel Zelaya is trying to slither his way back into Honduras, using the dialogue Oscar Arias is mediating as an excuse. Zelaya has made it very clear that he is not interested in dialogue. But, according to this El Heraldo article, Zelaya’s representatives have requested that the conversations between Micheletti and himself be moved from Costa Rica to Honduras. The weasel! He just wants to get back in the country, where he already has thousands of Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and Cubans waiting for him.

If realized, Zelaya’s return attempt will be marked by blood like last time. La Prensa and el Heraldo, major newspapers, has been publishing some worrying, but hardly surprising articles about Chávez’s direct intellectual role in instigating protesters to provoke the military to respond to them with fatal force. Wake up news sources. Suicide by cop. Suicide by soldier. Those are the measures of the love Chávez has for the poor, his victims.

In the midst of so much conflicting information, I don’t know whether to believe that Chávez and Zelaya disagree on something, but in the hours before the meeting in Costa Rica, Chávez is reported to have chastized Zelaya for accepting a dialogue, and praising the role of the US in it. The humbly obedient Zelaya now bleats a message that mirrors his shepherd’s.

This is very bad for Zelaya. He originally justified his friendship with Chávez saying that Honduras did not need to ask permission of the US to make friends and business partners. He claimed we were a sovereign free nation. He was right about that. But he himself is no longer free. Unable to come up with a strategy of his own, he is blindly following Chávez’s advice, trusting his genius completely.

Zelaya is unaware that accepting Chávez’s help is at the price of complete loyalty, loyalty to a man who cares nothing for anyone but himself, and has discarded many allies already when they were no longer of use to him. Chávez is not Zelaya’s friend, but Zelaya is Chavez’s friend. Zelaya is useful to Chávez, that is all. Mel doesn’t have the machiavellian skill to use Chávez as Chávez is using him.

Zelaya, wake up. Shepherds fleece sheep, and eat them!

Image by Christine Quirion, used with a Creative Commons license