(NFL jerseys)Roberto Micheletti, a 63-year-old businessman and stalwart Liberal Party member, took the oath of office Sunday to replace another Liberal politician, Manuel Zelaya, 56, a rich rancher who was deposed in a predawn raid that day and exiled to Costa Rica.
Mr. Zelaya is a tall man who sports a trademark Stetson. He studied industrial engineering, but dropped out of college to manage his family’s ranches. He served in Congress before running for president in 2006 on a populist platform that blasted the rich and promised to fight crime, corruption and poverty.
Once in power, Mr. Zelaya, who said he had been ignored by the U.S., made a sharp left turn, becoming a close ally and confidant of Venezuela’s populist President Hugo Chávez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
Mr. Chávez sent tractors and provided Honduras with financing to buy Venezuelan oil. Last year, as Mr. Chávez promised to supply $300 million in aid to Honduras, Mr. Zelaya made the country a member of the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas, known by its Spanish acronym ALBA, a trade and political bloc formed by Mr. Chávez to counter U.S. influence in the region. Honduras also has been a member of the U.S.-sponsored Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA, since 2005.
Mr. Zelaya’s friendships with Mr. Chávez, Mr. Castro, and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, coupled with his apparent desire to continue in office by rewriting the constitution — as Mr. Chávez has done — put him in direct conflict with Honduras’s Congress, courts, and military. He alienated the media when he dictated that radio and TV stations had to broadcast two hours of government propaganda daily. Businessmen didn’t like measures including a 60% increase in the minimum wage early this year.
Last week, the president insisted on holding a referendum on rewriting the constitution, which critics feared could have led to overturning Honduras’s constitutional ban on re-election. That led to Mr. Zelaya’s forced removal that shocked the region, bringing back bad memories of decades past when it was common for soldiers to make and unmake presidents.
Mr. Micheletti, as president of the Congress, pinned the presidential sash on Mr. Zelaya during his 2006 inauguration. Now he has the almost impossible task of winning international support for his administration until he can be replaced after presidential elections, which already had been scheduled for November.
On Monday, Mr. Micheletti was hard at work. He insisted Mr. Zelaya’s ouster was no coup. “We did not arrive at the presidency with thoughts of vengeance,” he told reporters. “We must seek the unity of Hondurans.”
Mr. Micheletti calls himself a “right-wing progressive” and says he is a good friend of the U.S., which he said has always helped Honduras. Mr. Micheletti has served in political and party posts in five Liberal governments.
A soldier in his youth, he was part of the honor guard of then-President Ramón Villeda Morales, who was overthrown in 1963 by a coup that marked the beginning of almost two decades of military domination of Honduran politics. In the aftermath of that coup, Mr. Micheletti spent some time in prison.
As a rancher and businessman who owns transport companies, Mr. Micheletti had a strained relationship with Mr. Zelaya, whose leftward tilt he opposed.
Mr. Micheletti said in an interview that he is worried by Honduras’s current isolation, and made a plea for understanding from Latin American governments and especially the U.S. “If [the U.S.] does not recognize us, it would be condemning to failure the aspirations of Hondurans,” he said.
If Mr. Zelaya were to return, Mr. Micheletti said, he would have to face the courts on charges of violating the constitution.
Hondurans awoke Monday in a country with two presidents. One, adjusting to his second day of exile, is still recognized by countries around the world. The other, who enjoys the strong backing of all of Honduras’s major institutions, has quickly become a diplomatic pariah.
Glen Johnson Portsmouth 