American Pressure To Bring Dictatorship To Honduras

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The Wall Street Journal ran an article on Sunday by Mary Anastasia O'Grady on what is happening in Honduras.  The current acting president of Honduras, Roberto Micheletti, became president when the former president, Manuel Zelaya, was deposed and exiled from the country. 

This was not a coup.  Honduras has a law imposing term limits on its presidency.  Mr. Zelaya had asked for a referendum to override this law so that he could continue as president.  The courts and the legislature had denied this request.  Ignoring that, Mr. Zelaya had gotten ballots for the referendum from that bastion of democracy Hugo Chavez and was going to proceed with the referendum.  At that point the courts and legislature ordered the military to remove him from office.  They did not want Mr. Zelaya to become 'president for life' following the example of his friend Hugo Chavez.

The United States, for whatever reason, has not supported the ousting of Mr. Zelaya.  Our current administration and state department have sided with Hugo Chavez in seeking the reinstatement of Mr. Zelaya.  We have begun to put some very strong pressure on Honduras to do this.  According to the Wall Street Journal article:

"The most recent example of the Obama-style Good Neighbor Policy was the announcement last week that visa services for Hondurans are suspended indefinitely, and that some $135 million in bilateral aid might be cut. But these are only the public examples of its hardball tactics. Much nastier stuff is going on behind the scenes, practiced by a presidency that once promised the American people greater transparency and a less interventionist foreign policy.

"To recap, the Honduran military in June executed a Supreme Court arrest warrant against Mr. Zelaya for trying to hold a referendum on whether he should be able to run for a second term. Article 239 of the Honduran constitution states that any president who tries for a second term automatically loses the privilege of his office. By insisting that Mr. Zelaya be returned to power, the U.S. is trying to force Honduras to violate its own constitution."

America is working against democracy in this case.  We are in essence trying to stop another country from following its own consitution.  I hope someone in the administration or the state department will reverse course on this.  We are wrong. 

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This page contains a single entry by Granny G published on September 1, 2009 9:16 AM.

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