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INTERNATIONAL CONSENSUS: MILITARY COUP IN HONDURAS MUST NOT STAND.

Article Excerpt
The rigors of profound political change have challenged the institutional strength of many Latin American countries, and they have, without exception, withstood their transformations in a way that has allowed the region to take its place in the world with a degree of autonomy not seen before. After witnessing so many nations of the hemisphere cast off hegemonic influences with a minimum of violence and maximal accommodation to the call for change, observers could be pardoned for entertaining the proposition that the military coup had been kicked to history's curb as an improbable anachronism out of synch with current affairs.

But in the early hours of June 28, the Honduran Army proved that proposition wrong. At about five a.m. that Sunday morning, soldiers burst into the residence of President Manuel Zelaya Rosales, took him--still in his nightclothes--to the airport, and put him aboard a plane bound for Costa Rica. The military had pulled off the first golpe de estado to occur in the hemisphere in the 21st century and shattered the duly elected government. It was not immediately known if the coup was bloodless, but a confrontation between soldiers and presidential guards was reported.

What precipitated the coup was Zelaya's intention to hold a popular consultation on whether the people wanted a full-scale referendum on the question of changing the Constitution. If a majority voted affirmatively in the consultation, then the question would be formally presented to the people in the next regularly scheduled election in November. Among the contemplated changes to the Constitution, one would have allowed a second successive run for the presidency. The Constitution now prohibits that. The consultation, which was not a formal election, was to be held Sunday, June 28, but was aborted after the capture and exile of the president.

The consultation had only reached this point because, on June 25, Zelaya had led a convoy of supporters to Acosta Mejia Air Base to "rescue" the ballots...