Some General Thoughts About the Coup

I'm beginning to wonder if my commenters in the previous thread have taken leave of their senses and welcome a return to the bad old days of military overthrows.

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. If that is the path you choose, you forfeit all right to complain when it is used against your side.

You don't get to pick and choose which military overthrows of elected governments are acceptable to your individual preferences/beliefs. They're all bad. Whether President Zelaya overreached or not is a matter to be settled via due process, not by sending the military to throw a man out of his country in his pajamas.

Boz nails it here:

The interim Micheletti government in Honduras has not helped itself by issuing a curfew, censoring the media and breaking up protests. Their attempts to claim democratic legitimacy don't look particularly convincing when they decide to shut down pro-Zelaya media outlets and censor the international coverage entering the country. The only remotely positive thing they've done is call for presidential elections in November as scheduled, but that doesn't negate the fact that the government could be an unelected regime for the next six months.

Read the whole thing.

Comments

[xavier]

Randy:
haven't lost my head over the coup. Being democratically elected doesn't give anyone immunity from protecting the institutions and laws that he/she swore to uphold.

Zayala's defiance of the constitutional procedure to change the constitution as well as his flouting of the Supreme Court, the Electoral court and the Attorney general raises that pernicious spectre worse than a coup:the president for life mentality that so corrupts everything. Let's not forget the Hondurans aren't in a vaccuum. They see what's happen in Venezuela, Columbia, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua and wonder if this is a disturbing trend.

The anti-Zelayistas didn't do any favour by shutting down the pro Zelayistas sites but let's not conclude that expelling Zelaya was a typical oligarchical circle jerk against a 'reformist'

xavier

[Scott P.]

So the military is justified in overthrowing a civilian government anytime a 'spectre is raised'? Is there a minimum amount of ectoplasm that needs to be involved?

[Randy Paul]

You're wrong on this Xavier. This is a giant step backwards for the region.

There was no due process accorded here.

[Ian Zuckerman]

I don't think I've ever left a comment on a blog before, but I found myself stunned by these comments. The fact that the majority of comments on a liberal, human rights supporting blog are full of cheer and praise for a military coup is appalling, chilling enough that I can at least delay getting to work this morning to make a few points in response:

1. Supporting a military coup on the grounds that it was in defense of the constitution itself is so hardly merits a response. It is like those military units in the vietnam war that had to destroy villages in order to save them. This would be funny, I guess, if we didn't have to think about the actual consequences and feel sick.

I know you consider constitutions that do not prevent the reelection of leaders you happen not to like as useless "politically correct rules," but for those who actually care about these things, like the entirety of the nations in america - many of which in the 70s and 80s were left brutalized and blood soaked by the military coups that T prefers to constitutions - here is art. II of the Honduran constitution:

ARTICULO 2.- La Soberanía corresponde al Pueblo del cual emanan todos los Poderes del Estado que se ejercen por representación.

La soberanía del Pueblo podrá también ejercerse de manera directa, a través del Plebiscito y el Referendo.

La suplantación de la Soberanía Popular y la usurpación de los poderes constituidos se tipifican como delitos de Traición a la Patria. La responsabilidad en estos casos es imprescriptible y podrá ser deducida de oficio o a petición de cualquier ciudadano.

And the relevant provisions on civilian control of the military:

Art. 245.16, The president of the republic has the power of Ejercer el mando en Jefe de las Fuerzas Armadas en su carácter de Comandante General,

ARTICULO 272.- Las Fuerzas Armadas de Honduras, son una Institución Nacional de carácter permanente, esencialmente profesional, apolítica, obediente y no deliberante.

etc.

The fact that constitutions sometimes permit the elections of leaders that you happen not to approve of does not mean they are meaningless scraps of paper, or can be reduced to the fictional "democratic institutions" and "democratic rights" that justify undermining actual institutions and rights. Democracy, T, means sometimes the side you don't like wins, whether it's Uribe or Chavez. It means that if you want to defeat them, you have to do it through organizing, campaigning and actually persuading people. You prefer to do it through bayonets, and no amount of cant about "democratic institutions" can mask the totally anti-democratic nature of your position.

2.
T's second argument seems to be that Zayala himself violated the constitution, and refused to observe the supreme court's decision about his (non-binding!) referendum. First of all, I am certainly no expert on the Honduran constitution, but it seems to me that the constitutional issue is much less straightforward than you seem to assume, and moreover the Court, by encouraging and then supporting a military coup directly prohibited by the constitution in the most explicit terms (again see art. II above) has at the very least forsaken any credibility as a valid tribunal of the law.

But even if this were not the case, and assuming Zayala is the sole violator of the constitution, that the court has jurisdiction in this issue, etc., the proper response would be to initiate impeachment proceedings. When a legitimately elected leader violates the constitution, this does not mean he "went rogue," and law somehow ceases to exist and everyone is under the protection (more likely, the boot) of the military. If this were true, the majority of US presidents, certainly among them Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, FDR, etc. would have been "morally and politically wrong" and justified a military coup. Under our useless politically correct rules (i.e. constitution), when a branch of the government violates the constitution, this does not make the official a criminal much less a "rogue." It is grounds for invalidating a statute, reprimanding an administrative act, at the most initiating political -NOT criminal or still less military - proceedings against the official. But under T's democratic institutions, I guess whenever a public official is charged with violating the constitution (and please name me a president anywhere who wasn't charged with this at some point by his opponents), this is grounds for yet another coup. Democratic institutions require permanent military rule. This is too vulgar even for Orwell.

3.
Since you dismiss constitutions, and - since any recognizable version of democracy means playing by the rules of the game even if you don't like the winners - you are no democrat, what is the justification for the coup? Since you don't provide anything concrete, let's be charitable and give an answer for you. I think what you are saying is that term limits are important in themselves, and without them even democratically elected presidents can have dictatorial powers. This is a genuine argument, at least. But term limits alone (to say nothing of being punctuated by military coups) are neither inherently democratic nor inherently liberal. They can also (though obviously not always) be perfectly consistent with authoritarianism. Remember the PRI governed Mexico for most of the 20th century and rigorously observed term limits.
In any case, I can't imagine what kinds of rights and institutions you think you are defending, if rights - if they mean anything at all - are rights against the state's means of violence, and your argument is that the state, represented by the military, is free to use totally illegal violence at its own discretion.

So please at least have the courage to call your position what it is: anti-democratic, anti-constitutional and anti-liberal military dictatorship. Let's remember what a beautiful legacy T is defending here: Why don't you ask 30,000 disappeared argentines, or the 200,000 killed, tortured or exiled Chileans how much they enjoyed their democratic rights? Aren't they relieved to have gotten their rogue democratically elected leaders out of the country? Wasn't all the torture, the kidnapping, the terror and the broken lives a nice price to pay for not being troubled by populist leaders we don't like? And we could go on and on throughout the region.

I only hope the total unanimity in every American country condemning this coup suggests that the brutal repressive legacy celebrated here by T is as politically isolated as it is morally repulsive.

[xavier]

Ian and Randy:
I suggest that you read this article from Francisco Toro
Of the Caracas Chronicles blog.
I concour with him about fetishizing the presidency and that Zelaya was attempting to perpetuate a macrocephalic presidency.
Coups are pernicious but so is presidency for life. Do we really want to see Latin American presidents emulate Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia and others who thought themselves so indispensible that they stagnated all aspects of life?

xavier

[Tambopaxi]

comment

[J.Gajardo]

Some people think that poverty condition is a natural one in many countries in L.America.In this line are military that thinks that is correct make politic with as biased right wing to "preserves" order
and "values".
A Honduras is a clasic in coup the etat and golpist used force to overthrew a president
elected in ballotage.
Other reasons are only cosmetics thinking that poverty is sinonim of stupidy the reverse widsom and poverty asociation is more real

[Erik]

Yeah, I really feel that a lot of people are off their bearings on this issue. What Zelaya did is beside the point--it´s the long-term effect on democracy in Latin America that is at stake here. Military coups are just not acceptable.