José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, Image by El Proceso Digital

As he threatened in the past few days, because he was not restored to power, Manuel Zelaya is not participating in the unity government prescribed by the Tegucigalpa/San José accord. (For brevity, let’s call it the T/SJ accord). Micheletti has plowed forward with the unity government anyway, saying it represents a “broad political and ideological spectrum” of people. Expect trouble ahead.

The question is “now what?”. The US has stated that it will recognize whatever decision congress takes according to the T/SJ accord, but Congress hasn’t even voted yet, and has refused to speed up its vote, which in my opinion is unwise and counterproductive. But, the congressional deputies are much more worried about their reelection, in which they are counting on votes from the “resistance” and what I call the “pro-constitution” sides. Were Zelaya to be restored, the pro-constitution camp wouldn’t reelect them. If Zelaya weren’t restored, the resistance would boycott the election.

This is very foolish, not making a choice is already a choice, which is essentially the same as not restoring Zelaya. They should forget about the resistance vote from the outset and get done with it. In the time created by their selfish fears, Zelaya can open Pandora’s box and gleefully watch the T/SJ accord, and possibly the nation, go up in flames.

Zelaya insists that he should have been restored to power before the unity government was set up, and that Micheletti should not be leading it at all. He has called the T/SJ accord a “failure”, and a great portion of the media has parroted that line without any context whatsoever. Read this tiny Reuters article for instance; I complained to the editors about it. It fails to mention that Zelaya is refusing to participate in the unity government, much less why. I am not surprised, as this is exactly what I’ve come to expect from Reuters. Sadly it has millions of readers under-informed if not outright misled. The BBC article on the same topic, even though it says the same thing, fleshes out its report with both sides of the issue.

Blogger, the Caracas Gringo wrote a very complete analysis of the situation, from the perspective of a US citizen living in Venezuela. As he said “it still ain’t over ’til it’s over”.

Related posts:

1. Congress to Vote on Zelaya’s Restitution
2. US Speaking Surprisingly Straight
3. State of Exception Lifted, but Zelaya Scorns
4. Lack of Amnesty Makes Restitution Unlikely
5. Zelaya Instigates Revolts Again