New Honduran leader's promises lack specifics to help poor

[Judi Lynn]

New Honduran leader's promises lack specifics to help poor
By Johannes Werner, Guest Columnist
In Print: Sunday, December 20, 2009

Now that the curtain has fallen on a controversial post-coup election in Honduras, one outcome is obvious: The Central American country's elite and military have clobbered left-leaning populists into submission and smashed their reform project to bits.

The day after the Nov. 29 election, the National Resistance Front Against the Coup announced it would neither recognize nor talk to conservative President-elect Porfirio Lobo Sosa, and maintain a state of "permanent mobilization" to press for a constituent assembly.

Whether the activists can effectively keep up that level of defiance, after five months of mobilization while being hit over the head, is questionable. But one thing is sure: The 40-plus grass roots organizations under the front's umbrella — teachers' unions, peasant groups, indigenous organizations, students, a sprinkle of small-business owners — aren't going to go away.

Chusma, as upper-class Latin Americans like to call them when other people get organized. The rabble, the mob. But even if you are of the school of thought that too much democracy is bad for health and business, it's hard to deny one fact: Chusma power is on the rise everywhere in the continent.

More:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/article1059942.ece

The article also mentions Lobo got a bachelor's degree in business administration at the University of Miami. Figures, doesn't it?

[Braulio]

1. Beats an Economy Degree at Lumumba University

I suppose you prefer the guy have a degree from the Soviet's Lumumba University, in which graduates were taugth the glories of central planning and weren't told about the estimation of present value, or simple supply-demand balances.

I spent a few years in Russia, after the Soviet Union fell, helping dismantle their communist system, and it was vexing to find so many officials, graduated from the most prestigious Soviet schools, who had to be retrained in the basics of capitalist market based economics. However, they were quick on the uptake, and even though reform was uneven and has been marred by corruption, I'm sure what we taught them took hold, and today their economics and business education courses are a lot more practical.

[Downwinder]

2. The Military does not consider social or economic conditions.

You just submit an order for what you want and it will be granted.