A Little Room for Dignity

He will take a lot of heat for letting Mr. Zelaya off the hook so easily, and that's unfortunate because a little mercy is a relatively small price to pay to be left free to begin cleansing and freeing ourselves.

By Marco Cáceres
Many people in Honduras are upset, even enraged at President-elect Porfirio Lobo for promising to give Manuel Zelaya safe passage to travel to the Dominican Republic as a "distinguished guest". The concern is three-fold. First, after all that Honduras has gone through in the past year, there is the image of Mr. Zelaya being received with honors anywhere. There exists more than a little support in Honduran society for locking Mr. Zelaya up and throwing away the key. Second, there is the matter of Mr. Zelaya's alleged crimes. People are asking, "What... he's just going to get off without any punishment at all?" Lastly, many are worried about Mr. Zelaya's propensity to insist on making trouble if left unleashed. It's one thing to have Mr. Zelaya leave Honduras under political asylum status, which would deny him the freedom to engage in political activities. It's something else entirely to allow him to roam unrestricted.

I get it. But I also get that Mr. Lobo has no great options, rather a slew of unappealing ones followed only by a collection of slightly less unappealing ones. Yep, it is like being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Mr. Lobo is simply trying to find a way to put the Zelaya saga behind him so that he can get on with the job of governing Honduras and trying work his way through a complex maze of problems that keep the country from moving forward.

If he is forced to continue dealing with this sideshow, Mr. Lobo will never stand a chance at rebuilding Honduras' economy, creating decent paying jobs for people, properly educating children, fixing the country's utterly broken healthcare system, coming up with alternatives to cutting down the forests and having extractive industries destroy the land and poison its rivers, providing clean drinking water, preventing the impending famine in the south, rehabilitating tens of thousands of gang members, fighting drug traffickers, changing the culture of machismo that leads to the abuse of women and children... Well, you get where I'm going with this, right?

The point is that continuing to dwell on our feelings about Mr. Zelaya, be they good or be they bad, is just not worth it when there is so much real work to be done in Honduras. The political crisis during the past year has been a soap opera. It has been tragic, and thus it has been distastefully entertaining and time-consuming. It has been addictive like a drug, and so it is natural to find it difficult to lay it aside. To his credit, Mr. Lobo knows that this is precisely what has to be done. He will take a lot of heat for letting Mr. Zelaya off the hook so easily, and that's unfortunate because a little mercy is a relatively small price to pay to be left free to begin cleansing and freeing ourselves.

Mr. Lobo has given his fellow "Olanchano" what he seems to have most wanted since his overthrow on June 28 -- a way out that permits him to maintain (... in reality or in his mind) a sense of dignity. In a culture dominated by machismo, the concept of honor is central to the identity of many men. This cannot be ignored or underestimated because it carries the risk of indefinitely prolonging conflicts which eliminate any hope for reconciliation. Mr. Lobo understands this, which is why he is opting for the moral high ground, even if it doesn't feel that way to some.