Chile Forum

the wacky story continues....a couple of weeks ago there was an "agreement" in place to supposedly allow zelaya to return to his office as president (with very limited powers) until the elections. michiletti et al reconstructed the cabinet before zelaya re-took office, so zelaya now refuses to participate in the newly "re-constructed" government, the one that was constructed without his participation. he has recently been quoted as saying that the US left him "in the middle of the river". zelaya is still holed in at the brazilian embassy, presumably until the new elections in two weeks. at this point, the focus should be on a fair election and a peaceful transition to power....zelaya and michiletti are both lame ducks.

Zelaya must be disheartened to learn that the world isn't going to spend a whole lot of energy getting him reinstalled as president for a month or less. He's now yesterday's news, and news consumers have a notoriously short attention span, unfortunately. Hugo Chavez must be bummed as well, but is presently too busy whipping up the latest straw man for his suffering "children" to focus on, so they don't focus on his own administrative shortcomings.

My wife is Venezuelan, and when we were in Chile and Argentina last Feb/Mar, the locals would note her accent and always ask what she thought of Chavez. I could never seem to successfully flash them the "Don't get her started" look quite fast enough.

Pat Mc

i haven't met a chilean yet who has a high opinion of hugo chavez....nor alan garcia. evo morales ranks a little higher unless he starts talking about bolivia's right to the land they lost to the chileans 130 years ago. understandably, chileans don't like what the honduran army did earlier this year....too many parallels to their own experience in 1973.

it seems to me that both michiletti and zelaya overplayed their hands. they are both walking away from the situation with much-lowered public esteem and, as usual, the poorest people pay the heaviest price. the honduran people would have been much better off if zelaya hadn't pushed his agenda so hard, and if the honduran courts and military had found a solution that didn't smack of latin american politics as usual. the part that puzzles me is why all of this happened with just a few months left in zelaya's term....i mean...if you're gonna throw the president out in his pajamas, isn't it better to do it early in his term?

cali_chile48 wrote:i haven't met a chilean yet who has a high opinion of hugo chavez....nor alan garcia. evo morales ranks a little higher unless he starts talking about bolivia's right to the land they lost to the chileans 130 years ago. understandably, chileans don't like what the honduran army did earlier this year....too many parallels to their own experience in 1973.

it seems to me that both michiletti and zelaya overplayed their hands. they are both walking away from the situation with much-lowered public esteem and, as usual, the poorest people pay the heaviest price. the honduran people would have been much better off if zelaya hadn't pushed his agenda so hard, and if the honduran courts and military had found a solution that didn't smack of latin american politics as usual. the part that puzzles me is why all of this happened with just a few months left in zelaya's term....i mean...if you're gonna throw the president out in his pajamas, isn't it better to do it early in his term?

I guess earlier in his term he had not yet played (overplayed) his hand. He seemed to be taking a page from old Hugo's playbook, but even Chavez was rebuffed last year in his first try at eliminating term limits. The dead giveaway was that the "advisory referendum vote" about whether to convene a constitutional review was to only be among the government employees!! Duh!! Classic patronage game. Kind of like if G.W. Bush decided to take a vote as to whether to amend the constitution so he could have a few more terms, disband congress and declare himself president for life, and then only give ballots to the religious right and the military.

You raise a great question about the lateness of his term, but I would wonder rather why Zelaya waited until he had only five or six months in his term to try this stunt. He must have somehow felt that he had laid enough groundwork throughout his legal term and his "people" would act with urgency to anoint him if time were short. Who knows?

Or, after reading Charles' observations, maybe he was afraid of Israeli agents with gas canisters.

I will say that arresting him in his jammies was a bit undignified.

Do people still wear pajamas? Charles, can we get a poll going?

Kidding...

Pat Mc

xxx

The interpretations of the events in Honduras fall predictably along ideological lines. Editors of The Nation saw a completely different story than the crowd at National Review, no surprises there. What did surprise me was the knee jerk reaction of Obama, and it told me a lot about who the man really is. Yesterday he lectured Republican members of congress accusing them of "demonizing" his health care initiative as though it were a "Bolshevik plot". LOL - I wonder where they got that idea?

Another good reason "for el puelche" being nominated as "key contributor" to this forum. I wonder if many forum members REALLY understand his contribution to Chile Net (other than Admin and possibly eeuu. ;)

For the record, this retired American gringo residing in Arakansas, USA, is planning on moving to Chile in the next several months, thanks in part to to indivs mentioned above and Tom B. in Arica, for their perspective on the REAL Chile !!!!!

Stang

Sorry for the mis-spell of ARKANSAS !!!!! We are in the midst of a ice/snow storm here and my fingers are numb. Another good reason to move to Chile.

xxx

el p,
Give me an "E" for effort !!!! On my next trip to So Cal, I'll give it another try !!!

Stang