Feb 16, 2010, 21:44 GMT
Santo Domingo - The ousted president of Honduras Manuel Zelaya has taken up singing and guitar-strumming to pass the time in exile in the Dominican Republic, the daily newspaper La Nacion reported Tuesday.
Zelaya got together with musician Hector Acosta to produce Merengue music - a style endemic to Dominican Republic and known across Latin America.
The two men first played together in May 2009, but in much more powerful surroundings: the presidential palace of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.
A month later, Zelaya was summarily exiled in a middle-of-the- night coup, and sent abroad while still in his pajamas - not because of the music, but because his critics charged he was trying to violate the Honduran constitution.
Zelaya snuck back into Honduras at risk of arrest, and was given asylum by the Brazilian embassy during a months-long standoff between the coup government and the rest of the North and South American diplomatic community, which insisted in vain on Zelaya's reinstatement.
Zelaya left Honduras in January after a newly-elected leader was inaugurated.
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