Military force no way to deal with constitutional crisis in Honduras
Tribune Media ServicesThe following editorial appeared in The Miami Herald on Tuesday, June 30:
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The forcible removal from office of President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras is an undeniable setback for democracy in a country that, until this past weekend, had relegated the military overthrow of governments to the history books.
That Zelaya's own ambitious political schemes set in motion the chain of events that led to his ouster is no excuse for a coup d'etat. He stubbornly insisted on holding a plebiscite that the Supreme Court had disallowed.
Sure, it was a thinly veiled attempt to circumvent a restriction that limits a president to a single term, but there are ways to deal with presidents behaving badly short of a military coup.
Zelaya had little political support for his machinations. Even his own Liberal Party had condemned the plebiscite beforehand. With that in mind, Congress could have ignored the outcome and stepped up preparations for scheduled presidential elections in November. It could have impeded the referendum by less drastic means that upheld the rule of law.
Fed up with Zelaya's recklessness, they chose instead to short-circuit the process by apparently conspiring with the military to remove him by force.
On Sunday, Roberto Micheletti, president of the Congress, was appointed to take Zelaya's place and promptly had his Woody Allen moment. In a scene straight out of the farcical movie, "Bananas," Micheletti proclaimed "Long live democracy!" insisting no coup d'etat had occurred.
Nonsense. What else do you call it when soldiers wearing hoods stage a pre-dawn attack on the presidential palace, seize the president and send him into exile, still in his pajamas? Not an orderly transfer of power, even by Woody Allen standards.
Two wrongs do not make a right. What happened in Honduras makes political power the hostage of whoever has the most guns.
Democracy is messy and does not always yield instant results, but it beats resorting to gunplay. Zelaya gave his enemies ample ammunition by his political recklessness, but he was elected for a four-year term and should be allowed to complete it _ unless he were to be removed by a legal and orderly process.
It's worth asking whether any of this would have occurred without the noxious influence of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. His angry populist rhetoric and successful efforts to prolong his stay in office have tempted budding demagogues like Zelaya to follow in his footsteps.
Now Chavez is threatening to intervene in Honduras if Zelaya is not returned to office. He promised to overthrow a government led by Micheletti, which the latter shrugged aside. Mr. Chavez's threats may be nothing but empty bluster, but they make matters worse by raising tensions and serving as a distraction from the search for an acceptable solution to the constitutional crisis.
The best thing Chavez can do for Honduras now is to stay out of it. Diplomats from the OAS and leaders of other countries in the region wringing their hands about events in Honduras should say so clearly lest Chavez interpret their silence as consent for his intervention.
Zelaya's schemes have been thwarted, but Honduras' democracy has paid the price. A return to constitutional order as soon as possible is the only remedy, even if it entails the return of Zelaya for the few months remaining in his elected term.
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(c) 2009, The Miami Herald.
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