Power Sharing in Honduras

It's a time honored tradition in third world nations that when there's a dispute the answer is a power sharing agreement. Back at the beginning of 2008, Kenya's election was full of fraud. It spun out of control and bordered on genocide. The United Nations stepped in and the violence stopped with a power sharing agreement between the two parties. In Zimbabwe, we had a similar agreement following that election in which there was widespread fraud. The only good news was that it was the first check to the power of strong man Robert Mughabe. More recently, there were folks that wanted to create a power sharing agreement between Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah following widespread fraud in the Afghan elections.

Everytime there's a crisis, constitutional or otherwise, in a third world nation you can bet that the crisis will be resolved through a power sharing agreement. That appears to be the result in Honduras.

Representatives of ousted President Manuel Zelaya and Honduras' interim government signed an agreement late Thursday that could open the way for Zelaya's reinstatement four months after he was ousted in a coup.

No text of the accord was immediately released, but it was greeted by all sides as a resolution to the long-running political dispute that has polarized the country and subjected it to international sanctions.

"Tonight I am pleased to announce that ... I authorized my negotiating team to sign a final accord that marks the beginning of the end to the political situation in the country," interim President Roberto Micheletti said in a televised address

Now, imagine if in December of 2000, we decided that the election was just too close and so Al Gore and George Bush would "share power". What do you think the reaction in the States would be? There would be outrage and total chaos.

Power sharing is one of those nice sounding and diplomatic words that makes it seem as though grown ups are in charge. They aren't. In each case I highlighted a serious issue caused a crisis. In each case, the crisis wasn't resolved. Instead, both sides came together to share power. The fact that elections were stolen through mass fraud became irrelevant. That's because the chaos following the situation was so extreme that all sides just wanted the chaos to stop.

The same thing is happening now. Manuel Zelaya tried to subvert the Constitution. There are no ifs, ands or buts. That's what he did. He went around what the Constitution allowed in an attempt to govern for life. He was stopped and removed. A crisis insued. The crisis was resolved by allowing both to share power. The crisis following the coup is now resolved, but the Constitutional crisis has not been resolved. If Zelaya can subvert the constitution and keep his power, then the Constitution in Honduras has little worth. That's a much bigger problem for that nation than the violence created.