Honduras: Cafeteria democracy.

A diplomat’s job is toughest when there is no obvious “good guy” to support, and that is clearly the case today in Honduras.

Both the new, de facto government and the deposed regime of President Zelaya have serious issues when it comes to abiding by their own laws and constitution. Both groups seem determined to make Honduras a “cafeteria democracy” in which they get to pick and choose which democratic principles and institutions deem legitimate. Zelaya didn’t like the constitutional limit on his time in power, so he called for an illegal referendum and, when challenged, fired the head of the country’s armed forces, General Romeo Vasquez, who had refused to coordinate Zelaya’s poll. The situation in Honduras went downhill from there.

The new boss — not quite the same as the old boss — is Roberto Micheletti, head of the new government. He and his right-wing accomplices say they deposed Zelaya because he violated the constitution when he ignored the Congress and the Supreme Court. So, cafeteria style, Micheletti and Company ignored Honduras’ law, arrested and flew Zelaya, still in his pajamas, out of the country. 

That’s made the role of the U.S. tougher than the generic coup d’etats we used to see in the good old days, when the bad guys wore black hats and the good guys rode in on white horses. So, Secretary Clinton and the State Department are doing what any sane diplomat would do under the circumstances: they’re picking no one.

In a State Department briefing late yesterday, Secretary Clinton announced the Administration’s support for mediation between deposed President Zelaya and the de facto government in Honduras. In other words, since we can pick no one, we’ll let both bad guys work it out. The mediation will be conducted by President Arias of Costa Rica, an experienced mediator who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work mediating the crisis in El Salvador.

Hillary stressed the importance of having the two conflicted parties talk to each other to resolve the country’s constitutional crisis, and for the U.S. not to try to impose a solution on one group or the other.

“Our goal has been to reach the point where I believe we are now, which is to get the parties talking to each other and not through us or through other third parties. There’s been, as you know, an enormous amount of contact going on across the hemisphere and, literally, around the world. But it has been my view for several days that the most useful role we could play is to convince all that are directly concerned, not only President Zelaya, but also the de facto regime, the OAS, the UN, everyone, that we needed to have a process where the Hondurans themselves sat down and talked to each other. And that is – that’s been my goal, and I believe that we are on the brink of that happening.”

Here is Hillary’s briefing on the decision to support mediation for Honduras:

In a bit of irony, while visiting another cafeteria democracy, Russia, President Obama threw his support behind Zelaya. Nevermind that this position contradicts the one taken by the State Department, it’s the president’s rationale that strikes me and others as ironic given his willingness to challenge the legitimacy of Iran’s newly re-elected president, Ahmadinejad:

“America supports now the restoration of the democratically-elected President of Honduras, even though he has strongly opposed American policies,” the president told graduate students at the commencement ceremony of Moscow’s New Economic School. “We do so not because we agree with him. We do so because we respect the universal principle that people should choose their own leaders, whether they are leaders we agree with or not. “

Anyone still hungry?