| So the democratically elected leader of Hondouras is ousted by a military coup...and the Wall Street Journal's editorial on the event begins with this title:
"Honduras Defends Its Democracy."
Of course, the situation isn't as simple as "democracy vs. authoritarianism," the way the WSJ would frame it. Nor is it simply "the people vs. power," as others would frame it. IMHO, MyDD's [Charles Lemos] explains it best:
President Manuel Zelaya's promotion of a referendum on constitutional changes plunged the small, poor Central American country into crisis by setting the president at odds with the military, the courts and the legislature who had branded the vote illegal. In his attempt to hold this non-binding referendum, President Zelaya deposed his Military Chief of Staff, which in Honduras remains a powerful post, ignored Congress, his own party and the country's Attorney General. The President refused to obey the Supreme Court's orders to reinstate General Romeo Vázquez, who had refuse to comply with an order to conduct the referendum. In Honduras, the military plays a role in conducting elections. President Zelaya undercut his own legal standing with his extra-constitutional attempts to amend the Constitution.
While President Zelaya paid the price for his strong arm tactics, his ouster hardly seems Constitutionally prescribed either. President Zelaya was dispatched into his exile in his pajamas. Troops surrounded the Presidential Palace at dawn. They took his cell phone, shoved him into a van and took him to an air force base, where he was put on a plane to San José, Costa Rica. I haven't read the Honduran Constitution but I doubt this is the procedure for impeachment.
It's not exactly a situation with clear-cut acts of injustice, is it? A bad event to hang your ideological hat on.
Still, with universal condemnation of the coup from American governments splayed out across the entire political spectrum, there's one thing that's clear: the Hondouran military overstepped its boundaries.
Which makes you wonder all the more why a group of US conservatives like the one who penned this editorial are so enthusiastic about military power being used to topple an elected leader... |
