Coming from the US, the prevaling view is that we need to always support peaceful transitions of Presidents. If you have a corrupt or bad President, the population should vote him/her out. That's the concept to which we adhere in the US and in other democratic countries.
While I never really gave it much thought, I've lately come to consider country size. With a small country like Honduras, things can move swiftly. Lots of damage can be done in a short span of time VS the US where we're so big, it takes so much more time to turn the ship towards unfavorable practices. We have enough time to vote the bad ones out of office. What do you do in the case of a small country where you don't have the luxury of time? If we want to stick to the peaceful transition concept, we've got to find a process through which small countries can speed up the change legally and please the self-righteous international community.
At Prisma Honduras, we deal with the poorest of the poor. We see what goes on daily as we work with the lower economic segment of society. There is so much hype, but nothing gets really done. A good example: President Zelaya upped the minimum wage last year by 45%. Great leap and a wonderful gift to the poor population. Good for Zelaya's ego and to sway voters. However, he failed to consider whether the macro-economic situation could actually carryout such an increase. The result wasn't that the government had to enforce the new wage, instead the businesses just went bankrupt and closed shop. Now where did that get you? How are you going squeeze more juice from that turnip? Easy solution - blame the rich people who don't want to pay the new wages. However, our customers don't work for rich people. They work in small shops, make tortillas, barely make a living. So much political hype.
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