For those who don't know:

The democratically elected president, Jose Manuel 'Mel' Zelaya, scheduled a non-binding referendum to see if the people wanted to change the constitution to allow for his reelection in December (It is his first term, there is no reelection in Honduras.)

A General refused to distribute the electoral materials because it was "against the law".

Zelaya fired him in the spot. The Minister of Defense resigned.

The military attacked his house, and he was forced to retreat into Costa Rica.

Today, the congress named a new President in the place of Zelaya.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/06/28/world/international-us-honduras-president.html?_r=2&hp

hmm..honduras.

ahh well, stuff like that happens often enough. who knows, maybe we are lucky and the ones who usurped the throne are the good ones ?

Yeah, I guess democracy is only good when the people elects the good guys.

That makes sense.

Geez... He wants to give the people a chance to vote to keep him, and the military kicks him out... Were they afraid he might win a second term? I get that the current system doesn't allow for a second term in Honduras, but still. It's not like he tried to do away with the elections. He just wanted a constitutional convention to amend Honduras' constitution to allow for a second term.

Pretty much, except the vote was non-binding. This means that even if they voted that they wanted to be able to reelect him, there still had to be a number of reforms made for that to actually be possible.

Well, I can add too much beyond what I have researched since seeing this thread. You must know more about it thaan the rest of us, Xapi. I know he was unpopular with the US cause he wanted drugs legalized, but that was because he felt it would put the drug lords our of business and possibly save lives within the populace of Honduras.

oops out, not our

and I CAN'T add... Geez

Not quite a coup d'etat, they just removed him.They didn't seize power.

A little more research shows it has been a peaceful coup with the backing of the Honduran Supreme Court and Congress. He was grabbed in the night and sent to Costa Rica. There have been no reported incidents of violence and, except for a brief communications outage, which has been restored, everything is business as usual. does that sound about right Xapi?

True, Burg, but a new person was instillied in his place. The key is, it wasn't just the military. It seems his attempts to get the second term are actual hard and fast in their constitution and cannot be changed. He was just ousted and replaced with someone who has the rest of the government's backing.

There have been many demonstrations of support towards him in the past few days.

The military did not act with a mandate from the Congress, but the Congress did remove him from power after he had been taken out of the country.

The Supreme court also made an ex post facto ruling that endorsed the military.

I find this to be a shameful act by the Congress, above all. They can't remove a President without some serious proof of wrong doing, and even then, allowing the military to take act upon it in the way they did makes you wonder why the Hell they have a democracy in the first place.

As I said, you know more about it than any of us. Lay it all out for us so we can understand it better.

Zelaya is a political ally of Chavez, so any news you receive about him is likely to be tainted with the usual bad press Chavez has in the northern hemisphere.

The information is all there, you just have to read between the lines. The military acted on their own, and the other powers took the opportunity to take an 'uncomfortable' President out of his office.

It should be noted that Honduras, one of the poorest countries in Latin America, had a 7% growth under Zelaya's first two years in office, and a 4% growth in the last, due to the global crisis.

His logic for wanting drugs legalized made sense from the Honduran point of view. I don't listen to the US media on much because it is always biased towards US only interests and not what is good for the world at large.

I wouldn't know about the drug issue, I haven't read anything on it.

As coups go, this seems like a pretty good one. This Zelaya guy WAS breaking the law and defying the Supreme Court by pushing for another term. Constitutions shouldn't be amended due to personalities.

The President was breaking the law. They ought to have impeached him instead, but the likely crisis that would have come if the election had happened meant that the Congress and military had to act fast to protect the constitution.

Can you imagine the chaos if he had been allowed to have that election? Only his supporters would have voted in it since the rest of the government called it invalid, so he would have won a landslide and been in a position to demand to stay in power after the real presidential elections. In a tough situation the military took out the president who was breaking the law and preserved civilian rule.

Isn't Honduras a US state?

Invictus -

If Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton (I'm dropping both names so no one can say this is a 'partisan' example) started trying two years before the end of their second terms to amend the constitution so they could run for a third term (which they both would've won handily in their days), would you've been okay with the military kidnapping the President of the United States in the middle of the night and flying him to Mongolia?

I hear Mongolia is great this time of year. So I would be ok with it.

Geez, it would be so convenient if the coup was simply to protect their Constitution. I have no doubt that many of those involved very personally benefited from this.

Nice example except for one thing, Tolstoy. Clinton was impeached and, even if it had been his first term, he could not run again. He's lucky he wasn't removed from office, but his actions mean he can never hold public office again. That's what the impeachment proceedings resulted in.

Tolstoy, where did you get that idea? There's certainly no chance Bill Clinton seriously thought he could have stayed in office. I know Reagan supported the repeal of the 22nd Amendment after he left office, but it wouldn't have applied to him if it had passed in his second term since the term he was elected for was still bound by the 22nd Amendment. It's like how Truman could have run in 1952 since the amendment was passed while he was in office.

The argument for not having term limits isn't to keep a certain man in, it's to give the President freedom of action in his second term. With a two term limit most of the second is just lame duck time. Since Honduras has a one term limit I'd assume the situation is like Mexico, where the president has a single term and seems to get things done just fine.

This was purely about one man being power hungry and wanting to stay in office the constitution be dammed.

Draugnar, Clinton was impeached but not convicted. If the whole thing had happened in his first term he could have run again, assuming the Democratic party just didn't feel like winning in 1996.

So,... a president is 'power hungry' when he seeks a second term?? As long as the referendum and election is conducted fairly, there should be no issue. I believe the U.S. Constitution has been amended a number of times, peacefully, without ousting the President and replacing him in the middle of the night.

You need to understand the situation. President Zelaya wanted to carry out this referendum after the Supreme Court told him it was unconstitutional to even try for a second term and the Congress passed a law making such a referendum illegal. The military apparently is in charge of elections in Honduras and refused to defy a court order by handing out ballots and such. The President tried to organize the referendum on his own and the military arrested him because he was breaking the law.

He was breaking the law, there's no question about that. He openly defied the rule of law. This referendum was a brilliant, Machiavellian power play to try to hold onto power. It's like a movie, really.

If memory serves, Clinton did indeed state on at least one occasion that he wished he could've served a third term, and I recall polling in 2000 suggesting he could've had it if it weren't for that pesky 22nd amendment - even after the Lewinsky scandal (it always amazes me that despite all of Clinton's crimes and misdemeanors the only thing they really went after him for was lying about screwing an intern. Just goes to show you that our political system is essentially a sham - but I digress).

@Draugnar - yes, he was impeached, but not convicted. The Clintons were just too good at collecting blackmail material to actually sink no matter how many hits they took. But an impeachment without a senate conviction is essentially meaningless - if Clinton had been impeached but not convicted in his first term, there's nothing that says he couldn't have run for a second.

@Invictus - if freedom of action is so important, why don't we elect Presidents for Life, like the Venetians did? Seemed to serve them very well. Most people also seemed to think if worked well for FDR - or do you think he should've been termed out in 1940, to be replaced by a corporate lawyer who'd never held political office before in his life?

I served on a government body for one year with 17 other people once. We spent the first 6 months figuring out what we were doing, three months doing it, and three months wrapping up and preparing the way for the next group of 18 people who had no idea what they were doing. It was the most compelling argument against Term Limits I could've ever imagined. And this was on a podunk county organization that had essentially been emasculated over the decades. Imagine what the Presidency of the United States is like. I can understand this Honduran what's-his-name guy being frustrated and wanting to run for another term, especially if someone he was particularly opposed to was lined up to win the election and be his successor already.

Tolstoy, argument about a second term President's inherent lame duck status isn't just mine. Eisenhower even thought so and there's a whole bunch of political science materials which will argue it. Political science is one of my majors so while I'm not an expert I'm also not just pulling this out of my ass.

Zelaya isn't a county board chairman who just wants to pass zoning ordinances. He's a man who wants to stay in power and doesn't care about flaunting the constitution to do it.