Where are we with Honduras?

The significance of this is mostly directed at the region's multilateral institutions, and somewhat similar to the knot that the world's multilateral institutions find themselves in with regards to China's growing influence in developing countries, principally Africa and Latin America. The conundrum is precisely this: using transparent governance and/or human rights considerations as a negotiating lever with developing countries has decreasing effect in the face of regimes (China in the global context, Venezuela in the regional context) that are willing to make deals without any sort of lip service to such concerns.

Next passage that drew my attention, which effectively answers the "why should we care?" question but doesn't do so until halfway through the article, is this:

Honduras' crisis has thrown a growing regional problem into sharp relief: the trend of democratically elected presidents attempting to stay in power past their designated time in order to carry out a populist and leftist agenda. These leaders, led by Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, have used the region's historic poverty and inequality to gain support from the poor. On the way, they have created deep divisions and accentuated class hatreds while concentrating power by increasing government control over the economy and media.

Zelaya, a 57-year-old former rancher and logger, is part of this group that includes Chávez, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. In July, Ortega announced plans for a referendum to rewrite Nicaragua's constitution to allow him to be re-elected indefinitely, something Chávez has already achieved in oil-rich Venezuela.

A similar move by Zelaya is responsible for the unrest in Honduras. For more than a year, Zelaya led a drive to rewrite the constitution to abolish term limits. On the day soldiers rousted him out of bed, he was planning a referendum to call a constitutional assembly, even though the vote had been declared illegal by the country's Supreme Court.

And shortly after: 

...Washington's insistence that Zelaya return to power has angered many middle-class Hondurans, who feel the U.S. has profoundly misread the situation. They view Zelaya's ouster not as a coup but a legal and patriotic defense of the country's institutions from a Chávez-style power grab.

"The terror of Chávez goes beyond the rational, it's a panic," says Edmundo Orellana, Zelaya's former defense minister, who blames the fear inspired by Chávez for Zelaya's ouster. Moises Starkman, who advised Zelaya on special projects and now works for the interim government, also blames Chávez. "This is a showdown which will determine if the Chávista model triumphs or not," he says.

More to come soon on this no doubt, but for now one thing that is becoming clearer is that every single option the U.S. faced vis-à-vis the Honduras situation was a loser. It was merely a matter of choosing the poison.

Finally, not touched on at all in the Poder article is how Micheletti has done himself absolutely no favours since becoming acting president, but more on that another time.