Miguel Estrada, a Honduran native and member of the US delegation to former President Zelaya’s 2006 inauguration, explains the nuts and bolts of why what happened in Honduras was not–I say again, not–a coup, despite what Obama and other lefties would like to claim:
Something clearly has gone awry with the rule of law in Honduras — but it is not necessarily what you think. Begin with Zelaya’s arrest. The Supreme Court of Honduras, as it turns out, had ordered the military to arrest Zelaya two days earlier. A second order (issued on the same day) authorized the military to enter Zelaya’s home to execute the arrest. These orders were issued at the urgent request of the country’s attorney general. All the relevant legal documents can be accessed (in Spanish) on the Supreme Court’s website. They make for interesting reading.
What you’ll learn is that the Honduran Constitution may be amended in any way except three. No amendment can ever change (1) the country’s borders, (2) the rules that limit a president to a single four-year term and (3) the requirement that presidential administrations must “succeed one another” in a “republican form of government.”
In addition, Article 239 specifically states that any president who so much as proposes the permissibility of reelection “shall cease forthwith” in his duties, and Article 4 provides that any “infraction” of the succession rules constitutes treason. The rules are so tight because these are terribly serious issues for Honduras, which lived under decades of military rule.
Estrada goes on, but the general gist of it is simple: Zelaya broke the Honduran Constitution, therefore he got the boot.
Of course, we all know that lefties consider constitutions, whether Honduran or American, mere impediments in their march to absolute power over the lives of the proletariat.
