Zelaya implemented domestic reform policies, significantly increasing the minimum wage of workers and teachers’ salaries, while increasing spending on health care and education.
The upshot is that a reform-minded president supported by labour unions and social organisations is now pitted against a mafia-like, drug-ridden, corrupt political elite that is accustomed to controlling the Supreme Court, Congress and the presidency.
It is a story often repeated elsewhere in Latin America, with the United States almost always weighing in on the side of the established, entrenched interests.
The Honduran elites were outraged that a member of their class would carry out even modest reforms. They began to portray Zelaya as a demagogue, and demonised Chavez as trying to take over the country.
When Zelaya announced that he would hold a plebiscite on June 28 to see if the country wanted to have the option in the upcoming November presidential elections to vote for the convening of a constituent assembly that would draft a new constitution, the political establishment would have none of it.
They falsely claimed that Zelaya was trying to stand for re-election (a lie repeated by the international media).
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/801/41254
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