Over the weekend came a military coup in Honduras that, WSJ pundit Mary Anasatsia O'Grady writes, reflects Honduran rejection of Venezuelan thug-tyrant Hugo Chavez. Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, following Hugo Chavez, called an referendum illegally and extra-constitutionally, in defiance of the legislative and judicial branches. Thus the military stepped in to prevent the travesty of another Hugo Chavez. The military immediately turned over control to Congress, whose leader assumed an interim Presidency pending a November election.
Roger Noriega sees the ousted President as a Chavez clone. Noting that most Latin American governments limit their Presidents to single terms, mindful of past abuses, RN details why the military stepped in, recalling what Chavez did and Zelaya wished to emulate:
Once he was elected in 1998, Chavez rammed through constitutional amendments that concentrated most of the powers of the state in his hands. In the coup de grace against Venezuelan democracy, last year he engineered a "reform" that permits him to seek the presidency indefinitely.
Chavez has urged his acolytes in Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras and Nicaragua--upon whom he has lavished vast sums of foreign aid--to shove aside constitutional norms to impose their will. That is precisely what Zelaya was attempting to do when he came up against the country's other democratic institutions, which declared unconstitutional a popular referendum that he hoped would bless his second term.
Specifically, Honduras Electoral Tribunal, Congress, Supreme Court, attorney general and human rights ombudsman each declared Zelaya's plan unlawful. Undaunted, Zelaya stepped up his populist rhetoric in a bid to whip up the mob against the legal obstacles in his way. It speaks volumes that Zelaya was never able to mobilize large demonstrations. The idea that "Mel" Zelaya thought he deserved a second term left most Hondurans merely mystified.
NRO''s Mona Charen adds more context to the picture. On CNBC "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough made a neat point about President 44, noting that he regards the Iranian struggle between a vicious regime and democratic dissenters as a largely internal matter that calls for an Iranian solution, while he instantly condemned the Honduras coup and called for reinstatement of the deposed President. Given that the coup was intended to protect democracy from a Chavez-style displacement, 44's reaction is premature and unsettling.
The OAS, predictably, backed the would-be Hugo. President Obama sided with Hugo & Castro, calling the coup illegal and "a terrible precedent"; Hugo (naturally) threatens to invade.
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