Too bad this hasn’t happened in Venezuela, too.
Hugo Chávez’s coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation’s constitution.
It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.
But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya’s abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.
That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.
But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.
The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.
Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court’s order.
The attorney general had already made clear that the referendum was illegal, and he further announced that he would prosecute anyone involved in carrying it out. Yesterday, Mr. Zelaya was arrested by the military and is now in exile in Costa Rica.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124623220955866301.html
The Hildabeast comments:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday the United States believes the unrest in Honduras “has evolved into a coup” but is not demanding that deposed President Manuel Zelaya be restored in office.
She also said the military coup has not triggered an automatic cutoff of U.S. aid to Honduras.
Clinton told reporters at the State Department that a delegation from the Organization of American States will be heading to Honduras as early as Tuesday “to begin working with the parties” on restoration of constitutional order.She stopped short of saying the Obama administration would demand the return to power of the deposed president, who was forcibly removed from the country on Sunday morning by the Honduran military.
A reporter asked whether the administration would insist that Zelaya be restored to power.
“We haven’t laid out any demands that we’re insisting on, because we’re working with others on behalf of our ultimate objectives, which are shared broadly,” Clinton replied.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/29/clinton-unrest-honduras-evolved-coup/
And what objectives are those, Hillary? Forcing Hondruras to knuckle under a dictator who violates their Constitution…like the current occupant of the White House?
THE ONE as it turns out, is “meddling” in Iran by secretly communicating with muslim terroist thugs, he bows to the Saudi king, and now he’s probably going to finagle his friend Zelaya back into power.
This is all part of his New World Order. Democracy just took another blow.