When Manuel Zelaya was deposed as president of Honduras with the support of the Supreme Court, the National Congress, the attorney general and most of his own party, much of Latin America went into conniptions about safeguarding the constitution. Of course, that was precisely the issue. Zelaya was about to traduce the constitution, which forbade extension of the chief executive's term, precisely his intention. This is common in the lower part of the Western Hemisphere, and it is the opus operandi of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
Francisco Toro and Juan Nagel write the Venezuelan news blog Caracas Chronicles. A version of this post originally appeared there.
The Honduran tragicomedy that has consumed the hemisphere's diplomats for months is at an end (read the details here). Barring the unforeseeable, which is always an iffy thing to do in Honduras, the coupster is out, the mercurial elected president is back in (pending a face-saving vote by Congress and the Supreme Court), and an election to replace him will be held on November 29, as planned.
In light of all this, who was the winner in the Honduran crisis?
On September 12, the United States government revoked the visas of de facto Honduran President Roberto Micheletti and 14 of the country’s Supreme Court justices. Days earlier, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S.-government body, voted to cut off $11 million in aid to the cash-strapped Central American country. The move came two months after the Honduran military, on the orders of its Congress, Supreme Court, and attorney general, removed Micheletti’s predecessor Manuel Zelaya from office following his repeated attempts to undermine the country’s constitutional provision limiting presidents to a single term. Explaining its decision to not recognize Honduras’s interim government, which it has repeatedly declared came to power via a "coup d’état," the Obama administration says that it is sending a "very strong message" to "anyone, be they civilian or military, who are thinking of deposing or removing from--illegally removing from office a duly elected president in any country."
