Honduras coup feeds leftist leaders’ fear

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Call for order, left to right: Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela at the meeting in Managua

Leftwing Latin American presidents held an emergency meeting in Nicaragua on Monday to try to restore order to Honduras after a military coup ousted its president on Sunday.

Hugo Chávez, the radical Venezuelan leader, fiercely condemned the coup and called for the immediate reinstatement of Manuel Zelaya as president of Honduras, Central America’s second largest nation.

“We cannot allow a return to the past,” said Mr Chávez, in reference to the region’s long history of political instability and military intervention. “We will not permit it.”

The group of Central American countries also said they would withdraw their ambassadors from Honduras in protest at the coup, which has seen a media blackout with some television and radio stations being shut down.

Clashes continued on Monday, with Bloomberg reporting that gunshots were heard outside the presidential palace where protesters confronted security forces.

Military officials stormed the presidential palace shortly before dawn on Sunday and arrested the left-leaning Mr Zelaya before putting him on a flight to Costa Rica. The president was barefoot and still in his pyjamas.

The coup, igniting the biggest political crisis to hit Central America in more than a decade, followed last week’s decision by the supreme court to declare illegal Mr Zelaya’s push for a constitutional amendment allowing for re-election.

Barack Obama, the US president, on Monday said the coup was illegal and would set a “terrible precedent” of transition by military force unless it was reversed. In spite of Mr Obama’s comments, the administration said it was not formally designating Mr Zelaya’s removal as a military coup for now – such a designation would force the US to cut off most aid to Honduras.

Mr Zelaya is expected to address the United Nations general assembly on Tuesday.

There is a growing fear among the international community that the absence of a quick solution could jeopardise regional stability at an acutely delicate moment.

In neighbouring Guatemala, for example, the presidency of Alvaro Colóm has been dangling by a thread for weeks as mass demonstrations in the capital press for his resignation after accusations that he was behind the murder of a prominent lawyer.

In Nicaragua, many analysts argue that Daniel Ortega, the former Marxist president, has been undermining democratic institutions since he took office in 2007. They hold up last November’s disputed mayoral elections as a show of shady electioneering and lack of transparency.

More generally, the international community has repeatedly underlined its concern at the growth of organised crime, in particular drugs cartels, as well as the new threat posed by the US and global recession on an already poor region.

“If all this were just about one country, you might expect the international community to just say, ‘Poor Honduras’,” said Michael Shifter at the Inter-American Dialogue, a US-based think-tank. “The real concern is about the fragility of institutions in Central America.”

Little wonder, then, that international reaction to Sunday’s coup was so vocal. The Organisation of American States issued a resolution criticising Mr Zelaya’s arrest. “We will not recognise any government that emerges from this unconstitutional rupture,” it read. The OAS has called a meeting for Tuesday .

The problem is that, for all the attention, there appears no quick fix for the nation of 7.2m people. For one thing, people within the coffee and banana-producing nation remain divided.

As Roberto Micheletti, who heads Congress and has now been appointed interim president, moved to declare a two-day curfew, people took to the streets in defiance to demand Mr Zelaya’s return.

But perhaps the biggest obstacle to a solution is the fact that the military coup and new president appear to have the backing not only of Congress but also of the Honduran supreme court.

According to CNN, Marcia Villeda, vice-president of Congress, said Mr Zelaya had tendered a letter of resignation. She also insisted that there had been no coup but rather “a transition of power”.

Mr Zelaya has denied the existence of such a letter.

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