As the Obama administration and a host of Latin American governments campaigned to reverse the coup in Honduras, another democratically elected Latin leader embarked on a lonely effort to draw attention to the double standard that has lately governed violations of political and human rights in the region.
Venezuelan Antonio Ledezma is no gadfly or dissident; as the mayor of Caracas, he received almost as many votes in last November's election (700,000) as Manuel Zelaya (915,000) did when he won the presidency of Honduras in 2005. Yet while the Organization of American States has been united in demanding Zelaya's return to his post, and in suspending Honduras for violating the Inter-American Democratic Charter, it has studiously ignored the case of Ledezma -- who, since his election, has been illegally driven from his office by a mob, stripped of most of his powers and budget, and subjected to criminal investigation by the regime of Hugo Chávez.
So on July 3, as OAS ministers were gathering in Washington to act on Honduras, Ledezma launched a hunger strike in the OAS offices in Caracas. His aims were pretty straightforward: to force Chávez to turn over funds needed to pay thousands of municipal employees and to compel OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza to investigate Chávez's massive violations of the democracy charter.
Insulza, a Chilean socialist who is counting on Chávez's support to win a second term in office, embodies the double standard. He has been theatrical -- and ineffectual -- in his attempts to manage the Honduran crisis; a week ago he joined a foolish, Chávez-sponsored attempt to force Zelaya's return to the country. Undertaken against the advice of every government in the Americas, save those allied with Chávez, the airborne caper produced violent clashes at the Tegucigalpa airport and led to the sidelining of Insulza's diplomacy in favor of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias's.
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