Honduras: Can You Have A Democratic Coup?
I’d like to complicate the way that we’re talking about what is democratic and what’s a coup. So far, one side has been saying that if the Honduran military gets rid of the president, it’s bad, it’s undemocratic and it’s a coup. The other says that if the military is doing the right thing, it isn’t a coup.
Instead of seeing this as either/or, I’d prefer to think in terms of a spectrum of legitimacy that has a gray center in between the white pole of democracy and the black side of coups. In principle, there is some point at which any democratic military has an obligation to defend the constitutional order from illegal threats. The real question is whether Honduras reached that point, or whether the military acted prematurely.
Among American commentators (at least that I’ve read), there is a consensus that President Manuel Zelaya was openly threatening the constitutional order of Honduras by defying the supreme court and holding a referendum the court had declared illegal.
Yet I still find it very disturbing that the crisis had to be resolved by the Honduran military, even if it was acting on the orders of the court. The absence of other law enforcement bodies capable of upholding the orders of the court is deeply problematic.
The WSJ reports,
The Obama administration and members of the Organization of American States had worked for weeks to try to avert any moves to overthrow President Zelaya, said senior U.S. officials. Washington’s ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, sought to facilitate a dialogue between the president’s office, the Honduran parliament and the military.
That was certainly the right approach. It would have been better for everyone involved if this crisis were resolved without camouflage uniforms on the street.
The behavior of the military since its removal of Pres. Zelaya suggests that it is sincerely interested in upholding the democratic order. That does not necessarily justify the removal, however.
The behavior of Pres. Zelaya before his removal from power suggests that he has a deeply flawed view of democracy, one that is influenced by the authoritarian ways of Hugo Chavez and his allies in the hemisphere. That, however, does not justify the removal either.
Once the military has left the barracks, the potential exists for the situation to spin out of control, regardless of the good intentions of everyone involved. Without knowing more about Honduran politics, I cannot say whether the military demonstrated sufficient patience. My sense is that Pres. Zelaya’s behavior represented an extremely serious threat to Honduran democracy, yet there may have been a safer way to remove him from power.
Moving forward, I hope that the US, the OAS and the new Honduran government work toward a resolution that is legal, democratic and acceptable to a strong majority of Honduran citizens.
7 Responses to “Honduras: Can You Have A Democratic Coup?”
Absolutely…
All coups that overthrow leftist governments are legal…
See Chavez, 2002
Can't wait to see all the dirt coming out on this coup, I wonder which branch of the Empire is involved.
Well, Don, at least I can agree with you on one point. Legality is an essential question. I'd be curious to know if the Honduran constitution allows the supreme court to issue orders to the military, or if that was a contrivance made under pressure.
Anyhow, I welcome your thoughts on how the Honduran high court should've enforced it's decision, if not by working with the military.
The way I am seeing this, and somebody please correct me if I am wrong, is that there were two steps to removing Zelaya. The first was the political/administrative step of the Congress voting to remove Zelaya and the endorsement by the Supreme Court. The second step was the physical removal of Zelaya, which was carried out by the military at the direction of the Congress and Supreme Court.
Some are portraying this as the military unilaterally swooping in and tossing Zelaya out, similar to coups involving tinhorn generals, etc. To me the military appears to be an arm of the government acting properly at the government's direction. In that sense then, this appears to be a legal removal of Zelaya.
These people are nitwits. they went to war over a damn soccer game.
http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/sierra/soccer196…
Then, of course, there's the perfect opportunity here for accurate equivocation.
A “Democratic coup” (of another kind) was attempted here in the USA, in 2000, after Bush won.
[grin]
Bush did not win, he got selected by the Supreme Court
And after having stolen the election did such a crappy job that the Democrats now control the house of Representative, have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate and control of the Presidency and are very likely to lock in four or five positions on the Supreme Court for the next twenty years.
Some are portraying this as the military unilaterally swooping in and tossing Zelaya out, similar to coups involving tinhorn generals, etc. To me the military appears to be an arm of the government acting properly at the government's direction. In that sense then, this appears to be a legal removal of Zelaya.
I wonder why none of the people who are saying that Zelaya had to be overthrown and exiled because he was making a mockery of Honduras's Constitution by calling for a referendum appear to be at all interested in finding out what Honduras's Constitution has to say about the procedure for removing the president from office. Does Honduras's Constitution say that the military can break into the presidential palace, force the president, at gunpoint, out of his bed where he's sleeping (because it's 3 am), march him outside, force him into a car w/o even allowing him to get dressed, take him to the airport, put him on a plane, and exile him from the country he is the elected president of? I mean, I am struck by the total lack of concern for whether the Honduran military, Congress, Supreme Court, etc., etc., removed Zelaya from office in a manner and according to a procedure prescribed by that country's Constitution, as opposed to making a mockery of the Constitution by behaving in a totally illegal and unconstitutional fashion.
Why doesn't that bother anyone? It's only the president who must respect the Constitution?