José Manuel Zelaya Rosales (born 20 September 1952) is a politician who was President of Honduras from January 27, 2006 until June 28, 2009. The eldest son of a wealthy businessman, he inherited his father's nickname "Mel," and, before entering politics, was involved in his family's logging and timber businesses.
Elected as a conservative, Zelaya shifted to the political left during his presidency, forging an alliance with the ALBA. On 28 June 2009, in the 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis, he was arrested by the military and secreted to Costa Rica in an event that has been condemned as a coup d'état. On 21 September 2009 he returned to Honduras clandestinely and resurfaced in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. In 2010 he left Honduras for exile in the Dominican Republic. He is now a deputy of the Central American Parliament representing Honduras.
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