My summary of what's going on here now...

[Nick]

Don't take all this as gospel since I'm going off of memory from reading many things over the past couple days but here's my summary of what's happened in a nutshell...

If you’ve watched any news lately, I’m sure you’ve seen the recent events going on with the “coup” that removed Honduran president Manuel “Mel” Zelaya. Here’s what actually happened since the media seems to be missing some info. I don’t follow US politics, let alone Honduran but Mel’s most notable action lately was to raise the Honduran minimum wage 60% over the protests of pretty much anyone who owned a business of any kind. It did help some of the poor but many lost their jobs due to their business downsizing or even going under. In fact many people still don't pay the minimum and from what I've heard there isn't much inforcement on it. Anyway, more recently he’s aligned himself with several world leaders who don’t have the best image. I can’t remember them all but Castro and Chavez are a couple names and Hugo is actually good buddies with Mel. Strangely enought though Pres Obama supports him as well so figure that one out.

But most recently and what has caused the events of the last week was the fact that Mel decided he wanted to change the Honduran constitution to allow presidents to stay in office for more than one term. The Honduran constitution says it’s illegal to make changes to that part of the constitution. Mel wouldn’t drop his desire to change it so decided he would hold a non binding public poll to ask the public if they would like a box on the November ballot to change the constitution. (That sounds kinda democratic to me but what do I know) Once he announced he wanted to hold this non binding poll, the congress immediately made up a law that made it illegal to hold a poll less than 180 days before an election. Since Mel still insisted he wanted to hold the poll, along with a large crowd of people, he broke into the base where they were storing the ballots and polling info and took them to be used. So the congress now says he broke the new law they just made. Instead of arresting him and holding a trial, early the day the poll was supposed to take place on Sunday the 28th of June, the military under orders from congress grabbed him while still supposedly in his pajamas then flew him out of here and dumped him off at the airport in Costa Rica.

Now Mel is in Venezuela hanging with Hugo who by the way supplies Honduras with the majority of the fuel we use daily. Mel also in his short time in office managed to get Honduras deep in debt to Venezuela borrowing money to pay for social programs (I’ve heard that somewhere before) and now Chavez says reinstate Mel immediately or no more gas and no more money. Then you have the rest of the world who thinks Mel was a good president who was wronged and who now are also demanding his reinstatement.

Now if you read the chat boards filled with retired gringos who live here and if you talk to business persons, they’re extatic Mel is out. But the fact is the next guy probably isn’t any better. Politicians are crooked here like everywhere else. The main difference is they don’t have to hide it here. Although from what I’ve read and heard, Mel wasn't the best president ever but I say “who really cares who he's aligning himself with or what he's trying to pull?”! He was due to be out of office in a half year and even if the "change the constitution" box somehow got on the ballot and somehow passed, If anyone ever did vote to cange the constitution in the future the constitution wouldn't have been changed until well after he's gone.

(Don't forget Democracy is occasionally asking the people if they would like a change and sometimes a constitution may need a change. I think the term limit thing is one of those points. Hell I think it needs changed in the 'states as well. If you get a president who does a great job, it would be nice to keep him around for a while!)

At any rate, if you don't like what your elected leader is doing, you impeach him, arrest him, or by some other means put him on trial. Grabbing him in his pajamas and dumping him off in another country was a plan that couldn't have been thought out for more than maybe an hour or so. Anyone could guess how pretty much the whole world was going to see that action. Like it or not, the only solution that's going to fix Honduras now is to put him back in power until the end of his term. I don't have an opinion good or bad about him since I haven’t followed much on what he’s done but the way the situation was handled was inept to say the least.

Now in two days (Thursday) Mel says he's coming home to take back control. That day will be interesting to say the least. I just hope the bloodshed is kept to a minimum and this all works out soon so we can get back to the normal non-political everyday crazy happenings that make Honduras a great place to be!

Nick