As the coup in Honduras continues to attract condemnation from governments and civil society groups, the Organization of American States today gave Honduras 72 hours to reinstate deposed President Manuel Zelaya or face suspension.
It announced that OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza will undertake “diplomatic initiatives aimed at… the reinstatement of President Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales,” over the next three days.
Zelaya’s overthrow was an “old-fashioned coup,” Insulza said: “We need to show clearly that military coups will not be accepted. We thought we were in an era when military coups were no longer possible in this hemisphere.”
There is speculation that the U.S. could cut off foreign assistance to Honduras. For a state to be eligible for foreign aid, the president is legally required to certify to congressional appropriations committees that “a democratically elected government has taken office.”
The OAS has been accused of hypocrisy for condemning the violation of democratic standards in Honduras while pushing for Cuba’s re-admission into the regional group.
Where were you last week?, one analyst asks the “new-found defenders of Honduran democracy”, when Zelaya was “engaged in a naked and illegal power grab, trying to rewrite the Honduran constitution to allow him to run for reelection in November.”
The ousted president’s cause has been taken up most aggressively by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and his left-wing allies. But Zelaya is an unlikely hero for the left, The Washington Post reports, coming from the country’s wealthy elite and only joining several years into his presidency.
As military “coups” go, the one this weekend in Honduras was strangely, well, democratic,” The Wall Street Journal argues:
The military didn’t oust President Manuel Zelaya on its own but instead followed an order of the Supreme Court. It also quickly turned power over to the president of the Honduran Congress, a man from the same party as Mr. Zelaya. The legislature and legal authorities all remain intact.
But others insist that a democratic coup is an oxymoron.
Democrats must exhibit “zero tolerance” for coups d’état, says Stanford University’s Larry Diamond, even when would-be authoritarians like Zelaya appear to threaten democratic institutions. “Other, peaceful and democratic means, internally and regionally, needed to be mobilized to stop his assaults on democracy,” he told Democracy Digest.
“We have a lot of leverage we could apply to very powerful effect. The last thing we need is to start legitimizing or even temporizing about military interventions in Latin America again,” said Diamond, co-director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy.
Sir,
Don’t be so quick to join the herd and condemn the Honduran “coup”.
The Honduran constitution is quite clear on the consequences of promoting reelection, as former president Zelaya was openly advocating.
Article 42 states that “The designation of citizen is lost for inciting, promoting or supporting the continuity or reelection of a president.”
Article 239 is aimed at the president who attempts to break this rule. It essentially prescribes “immediate” impeachment plus a cessation of any public office for ten years, for even proposing his reelection.
As if NED needed reminding of the modus operandi of the new Castro-Chavez axis in the Hemisphere. Their allies first win elections, then dismantle institutions, intimidate opponents, rig elections and perpetuate themselves in power.
When Larry Diamond (his sympathy with leftist “intellectuals” in the Hemisphere surely not coloring his opinions), glibly recommends using other tools to remove Zelaya-type leaders, he forgets that Hondurans already did. They deposed Zelaya constitutionally.