As the Honduran constitutional crisis moves inexorably toward some endgame (this, the original "banana republic," must eventually come in from the cold), let's go easy on tossing around the term "military coup" and reflexively comparing the situation to Iran's ongoing tumult. According to the country's oddly prescient constitution, it was actually ousted President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya who had crossed the forbidden line. The military, in fact, was merely fulfilling its prescribed duty against Latin America's resurgent threat of
continuismo — the tendency of elected leaders to stay beyond their expiration dates, Chavez-style.
So complain all you want about U.S.-trained military leaders (yes, we're talking the Army's School of the Americas) engaging in extralegal activities down south again, because this time around the real defenders of constitutional order were the ones wearing the uniforms.
Mel: Poster Boy in a Time of Post-Tehran Tumult
Here's the story everyone's been told: On June 28, President Zelaya, with only months to go in his one and only presidential term (that's all Honduras's constitution allows), was "kidnapped" from his official residence by military personnel and shipped off to Costa Rica — still in his pajamas. The primary charge was treason relating to Zelaya's stubborn effort to mobilize popular support, through a non-binding poll, for a constitutional assembly. But the underlying suspicion was that the lame-duck and deeply unpopular (as in, sub-30-percent approval ratings) president was plotting to extend his personal rule with the strong encouragement of his new "oil daddy," Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, whose well-established blueprint has worked with political protégés elsewhere (e.g., Bolivia's Evo Morales, Ecuador's Rafael Correa).
Essentially, this Chavez scenario was a Pandora's box that Honduras's political elite refused to open. Why? Because after too many decades of nasty military dictatorship, Honduras, while still quite poor, had managed seven straight civilian transitions thanks to its 1982 constitution.
So the Honduran legislature, which had previously ordered Zelaya's arrest (but not his deportation), promptly voted him out of office and — following the constitution — selected its ranking member, Speaker Roberto Micheletti, as the interim president. Two key points to remember here: Martial law was never instituted, and the national elections, slated for November, are still a go. In effect, Zelaya's removal from power was an impeachment without trial — a classic rush job that denied him his day in court even as he had already lost his battle with the country's supreme court and displayed overt contempt for its rulings on his proposed poll.
It was this short-circuiting of the process that elicited universal condemnation from the world's governments, transforming a lame-duck president facing inevitable impeachment into the global poster boy for Latin America's endangered democracies — a complete snow job that only a post-Watergate Richard Nixon could appreciate in its irony. As the new finance minister,
Gabriela Nunez complained to the Washington Post: "Look, we're democratic and here we respect the ideologies of other countries. But we do not want to change our system of government."
Was Zelaya determined to go down the Chavez route? Well, from the perspective of his opponents, when it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, and hangs around with known, repeat-offender ducks... it's not crazy to assume we're talking about a duck — as in, the kind that wants to end its "lame" status. Zelaya made a habit of standing beside Chavez when the latter delivered speeches promising class warfare against capitalists, and, a few months ago, Chavez made a state visit to Honduras where he went out of his way to publicly ridicule Zelaya's political opponents. So the bonding process here was anything but subtle. Indeed, since Zelaya's ouster Chavez has openly threatened war with Honduras.
Obama: Following the Lead of Hugo Chavez?
Despite the nuances in this short-circuiting, the world has chosen to view the Honduran crisis as a coup worthy of swift and not necessarily worthwhile action.
Befitting its long reputation for cluelessness, the United Nations General Assembly quickly passed a unanimous resolution demanding Zelaya's reinstatement, and within a week's time, the Organization of American States, with Chavez's strong urging, suspended Honduras's membership. Loan disbursements from both the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank were immediately suspended, and the ambassadors from all major powers — save the United States — were pulled from the capital. To date, no foreign state has recognized the Micheletti government.
With President Obama strongly condemning Zelaya's forced removal from power ("We do not want to go back to a dark past. We always want to stand with democracy."), and Hillary Clinton agreeing to meet the ousted president after Sunday's failed attempt to land his plane at Toncontin International Airport (military troops blocked the runway with their bodies), Zelaya appears to enjoy the heartfelt backing of the entire world, even as Hondurans are deeply divided about both his forced departure and the prospects of his return to power.
So far, Obama seems focused — perhaps
too focused — on avoiding the sort of quick-draw diplomatic gaffe that Bush-Cheney committed when they unblinkingly threw America's support behind Venezuelan coup plotters seeking to snuff out Chavez's emerging dictatorship in 2002. Fair enough, as that cautious instinct has served him well regarding Iran's recent election. But this approach has put America in the odd situation of following Chavez's lead during this crisis — a decided case of the fox defining the hen house's security requirements.
Still, look for Secretary Clinton, who has assiduously avoided the "c" word to date, to work behind the scenes in coming days and weeks to engineer some acceptable compromise. But that kind of a quiet deal will be tough, because it's easy to forget that Honduran troops have served in Iraq, and the U.S. can't really afford to sell out a rather staunch military ally. But the deal also can't result in Zelaya's unconditional reinstatement because, as a rule, ousted Latin American presidents stay ousted.
How to Get Kicked Out of Office, Part 1
And Zelaya should stay ousted, for what the OAS described as an "unconstitutional alteration of the democratic order" is better described as a constitutional preservation of Honduras's democratic order. Let me walk the dog backward on this one:
Zelaya, a wealthy businessman, was elected president as a center-right candidate by a tiny margin in late 2005, only to become, according to respected political columnist Alvaro Vargas Llosa, a "political cross-dresser" within a couple of years of assuming power. Declaring himself a socialist in 2007, Zelaya quickly alienated much of Honduras's political order by overtly seeking Chavez's political patronage. First, he exposed Honduras to Petrocaribe — Chavez's political funnel for spreading his nation's oil wealth to regional leaders who matched his penchant for rendering democracies illiberal through class-baiting, strong-arm tactics.
Imagine how Americans would treat a sitting president who suddenly started taking large amounts of political funding from, say, the Chinese Communist Party.
Then, Zelaya signed up Honduras to Chavez's Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our America, the Venezuelan autocrat's nine-nation alternative to the failed Free Trade Area of the Americas (a Bill Clinton initiative). How popular was that with the people? A recent Gallup poll indicated that about one out of every ten Hondurans wanted closer ties with Venezuela while almost six out of every ten wanted better relations with America and its new president.
Soon enough Zelaya began to ape Chavez's talk of "people power," and with his decision to raise the minimum monthly wage by more than 60 percent, he won a lot of goodwill from poor Hondurans, 40 percent of whom live on less than $2 a day. Naturally, business leaders, who were forced to shed a lot of workers lest their low-margin businesses went under, were less than pleased. But let's be clear here: On its own, that defensible step would have never gotten Zelaya fired.
How to Get Kicked Out of Office, Part 2
So how did Zelaya manage to earn the lowest popular approval ratings in the region prior to his ouster?
He set about sabotaging Honduras's political system, refusing to sign bills sent to him by the legislature and trying to pack the nation's supreme court. By 2008, journalists were being murdered and Honduras was being cited by the OAS for media suppression — very much in the vein of a rising practitioner of the Chavez way.
But here's where it got openly confrontational: A few months back, Zelaya raised the issue of a constitutional assembly. Honduras's lengthy constitution (375 articles) can be changed by a two-thirds vote in the legislature, except when it comes to a handful of core articles that cover term limits, presidential succession, and the essential form of government. Because Zelaya proposed a non-legislative route of rewriting the constitution, his legislative opponents logically assumed he sought to alter the core articles surrounding the role of the presidency. Unsurprisingly, the nation's court system and its highest legal officer, the attorney general, rejected Zelaya's call for a non-binding poll.
Zelaya, however, was undeterred by this firm opposition, and declared that he would press forward. Unable to get any local printers to produce ballots, he found — surprise, surprise — a Venezuelan source. Zelaya then ordered the military to prepare for the impromptu plebiscite (which he scheduled for June 28), because, by law, only the military can oversee elections. The head of the military, citing the judicial opposition, refused. Zelaya sacked him on the spot, only to have the supreme court reinstate him. In response, Zelaya led a people's march on the building holding the ballots, broke into the facility, then had his supporters start distributing the ballots. All of this was done in complete defiance of the nation's judicial system. Whew.
Here's where we need to be very clear on what the Honduran constitution says. Article 239 says the following (my emphasis):
No citizen who has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President. Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.
Zelaya, in his stubborn pursuit of this referendum, was giving sufficient indication — in the eyes of his political opponents — of pursuing such a path. And as Article 272 of the constitution declares, it's the Honduran military that is charged with defending the "alternation" of the presidency.
Honduras: Ally, Cocaine Way Station, or Both?
From the Honduran military's point of view, their actions broke no law, and since the military never assumed power, calling these events a "military coup" is completely misleading.
From America's point of view, it seems clear enough that Chavez-style politics has its limits, so overreactions are to be avoided. But from a national-security perspective, when your own Drug Enforcement Agency is telling you (as a Bush official did a year ago) that Chavez has become a "major facilitator" of the flow of Colombian cocaine to America, and when there are credible reports that Honduras, under Zelaya, has joined that network as a trans-shipment waypoint, there definitely needs to be some limits to your diplomatic efforts to reinstate this suddenly revered "pillar of democracy."
Again, look for Hillary Clinton to generate some face-saving compromise, but don't expect easy answers, and don't expect them soon. It's good news that the interim Honduran government has said it's willing to negotiate with the OAS. So long as Team Obama doesn't bend over backward to meet Chavez's demands, we ought to be able to locate some outcome that respects Honduras's right to remain outside of Chavez's imperialist grasp — as it so chooses.
Esquire contributing editor Thomas P.M. Barnett is the author of Great Powers: America and the World After Bush.
