Is it a “Military Coup”?

The media discussion of events in Honduras is remarkably confused. Here’s CNN:

The president of the U.N. General Assembly scheduled a noon session Monday to discuss the situation in Honduras, following a military-led coup that ousted the sitting president.

and

Micheletti, the head of Congress, became president after lawmakers voted by a show of hands to strip Zelaya of his powers, with a resolution stating that Zelaya “provoked confrontations and divisions” within the country.

The coup came on the same day that he had vowed to follow through with a nonbinding referendum that the Honduran Supreme Court had ruled illegal.

Imagine that George Bush, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan or some other American president had decided to overturn the Constitution so that he could stay in power beyond the constitutionally limited time. To do that, he orders a nationwide referendum that is not constitutionally authorized and blatantly illegal. The Federal Election Commission rules that it is illegal. The Supreme Court rules that it is illegal. The Congress votes to strip the president of his powers and, as members of Congress are not that good at overcoming the president’s personally loyal and handpicked bodyguards, they send police and military to arrest the president. Now, which party is guilty of leading a coup?

This is another example of populist, dictatorial, anti-democratic thought parading as “democratic.” I discussed  the issue  recently in my recent lecture on enduring democracy for the Julian L. Simon Memorial Lecture  at the Liberty Institute in New Delhi.

This post was originally published on Tom Palmer’s personal blog .

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 12:53 PM. It is filed under Latin America and tagged with Barak Obama, CNN, constitution, George Bush, Honduras, Liberty Institute, Micheletti, New Delhi, Ronald Reagan, rule of law, Supreme Court, Zelaya. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.