Or maybe he, like many politicians in Mexico, just doesn’t like the idea of people ousting officials once the ruling class’ plans become unfavorable for most of the population. “Why let the people get in the way of our plans?”

Your position vis-a-vis the OAS does not appear to take into account such anti-Chavista governments as the ones in Mexico and Colombia. President Calderon of Mexico has issues one of the strongest statements of any in the region, and he is not only decidedly of the center-right and anti-Chavez he is limited to one term and has not even breathed a word about extending his stay in office, so I am not sure what his motivation would be apart from recognition that Zelaya’s ouster was democratically problematic and legally dubious.

That said, the international response, seeking to reinstate Zelaya without any mention of his illegal acts, has been highly inadequate. The Organization of American States, led by its secretary general, José Miguel Insulza, has acted like Venezuela’s poodle. At Chávez’s request, Insulza went to Nicaragua, where a summit of the anti-democratic ALBA group became the hemisphere’s political center of gravity after the coup. Insulza and other populist presidents said nothing about Zelaya’s dictatorial conduct leading up to last Sunday’s events and simply echoed Venezuela’s self-serving stance. Efforts by other countries, including the United States and many South American governments, to put some nuance into the public statements were neutralized by the spectacle unfolding in Nicaragua, which was widely reported across the Spanish-speaking world. It was sad to see Insulza suddenly remember his organization’s Inter-American Democratic Charter in relation to Honduras — the same rules of democratic conduct that Chávez, Morales, Correa and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega have violated on numerous occasions while the OAS looked the other way.

I suppose it is this two-faced approach by the OAS that bothers me more than any specific sanction being taken against Honduras. It’s a bit like the people who had no problem partitioning Serbia, but were suddenly horrified at the violations of Georgian sovereignty later the same year (and, of course, they could not see that the one had led more or less directly to the other). Last month few of these people were terribly interested in the contents of the Democratic Charter. Today it is holy writ. It’s a little hard to take their newfound devotion seriously.

Nice