By Michael Soltys, Senior Editor of Buenos Aires Herald.

A bemused Argentina is wondering what on earth its president was doing North of the Equator amid a flu-stricken winter fraught with mounting political and economic difficulties - unless this, of course, was precisely the reason for her absence. To be sure, the coup d'état in Honduras calls for the unanimous repudiation of all hemispheric leaders but this is best achieved by the international community via the United Nations and regional solidarity via the Organization of American States (OAS), not by such spasmodic and individual initiatives as flying up to Washington and Central America.

Only the presidents of Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay saw the situation otherwise and of all Latin American leaders President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner would seem to have been the most justified in staying at home and leaving the Honduran crisis with the UN and OAS where it belongs - she not only has to pick up the pieces for the second half of her term after a shattering midterm election defeat but also wrestle with a flu epidemic whose patients are already well into six digits according to her new health minister. The suspicion that she was running away from these problems thus becomes impossible to avoid.

Nor is the situation in Honduras as simple as CFK would like to think. There is nothing more unconstitutional than a military coup but ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was not lagging far behind. Rather than being a case of a military junta brutally crushing all civilian institutions, the Honduran upheaval springs from a dispute between the three branches of government with both Congress and the judiciary pitted against an aggressive executive seeking to become an elected dictator along Hugo Chávez lines - in this context it seems incomprehensible that the situation could not have been resolved via impeachment or patiently awaiting the forthcoming elections.

Ironically enough, the shattered Honduran institutions are being most vehemently defended by the regional leaders with the least respect for institutions themselves such as the Cuban dictatorship or the populist authoritarians of Venezuela and Bolivia - apparently this is the company CFK most likes to keep. The false start of CFK's presidency in late 2007 included an absurd mission by her husband to Colombia to liberate a child hostage who was already free - she should not put the wrong foot forward for the second half of her term with a Central American adventure now when the country is awaiting solutions to political gridlock and an economic crisis which can only be compounded by a devastating flu epidemic.