How Obama Got His Groove Back: President Declares Honduras Action "Illegal" Coup, Declares Chavez Thug Zelaya Still the Rightful President

What, me meddle?

Odd that Obama's rich, nuanced concerns over perceived "meddling" fly out the window when he has the chance to support a leftist thug.

According to Fausta (and most others, apart from Obama and Hugo Chavez), Zelaya was the one attempting to illegally engineer a coup, attempting to re-write the Constitution through ballot initiative despite the fact that the Constitution disallows such maneuvers six months before a scheduled election. Like Chavev, he sought to erase term limits on himself and become, per the bad old Latin American tradition, El Jefe for Life.

Who opposed him? Well, the military, for one, which refused to distribute his ballots, because they were illegal. The courts, which ruled the ballots were illegal and the attempt to rewrite the constitution so close to an upcoming election impermissible. His own party, which similarly felt Zelaya was breaking the law, executing a "self-coup."

On the other hand, there's Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez.

The military acted pursuant to a court order.

Honduras's Supreme Court gave the order for the military to detain the president, according to a former Supreme Court official who is in touch with the court.

Later, Honduras's Congress formally removed Mr. Zelaya from the presidency and named congressional leader Roberto Micheletti as his successor until the end of Mr. Zelaya's term in January. Mr. Micheletti and others said they were the defenders, not opponents, of democratic rule.

"What was done here was a democratic act," Mr. Micheletti, who was sworn in as president Sunday afternoon, said to an ovation. "Our constitution continues to be valid, our democracy continues to live."

Mr. Micheletti is a member of Mr. Zelaya's Liberal party. But he had opposed his plans for a referendum that could have led to overturning the constitution's ban on re-election, allowing Mr. Zelaya to potentially stay in power past January, when his term ends.

Mr. Zelaya, a frequent critic of the U.S., has been locked in a growing confrontation with his country's Congress, courts, and military over his plans for the referendum -- planned for Sunday -- that would have asked voters whether they want to scrap the constitution, which the president says benefits the country's elites.

The Supreme Court had ruled the vote was illegal because it flouted the constitution's own ban on such referendums within six months of elections. The military had refused to take its usual role of distributing ballots. But Mr. Zelaya fired the chief of the army last week and pledged to press ahead.

Gee, I wonder what makes Obama suddenly pipe up with such enthusiasm and so few cares about being perceived as "meddling" in this case.

Whoops: I see Drew just posted this. Well, I'll leave it up, just for the additional quotes and links.

posted by Ace at 03:43 PM

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