A Coup is a Coup is a Coup

[struggle4progress]

Justifications for the removal of the Honduran president ignore one crucial fact: there’s no such thing as a constitutional coup.
Maxwell Cameron, Professor of political science and international trade, University of British Columbia

A lesson of the forcible removal of President Zelaya from Honduras is that coups can still occur in Latin America. Make no mistake: what happened was a coup. It doesn’t matter that the military acted on a court order – courts were complicit with the coup in Chile in 1973. It doesn’t matter that the architects and beneficiaries were civilians, as was the case in Ecuador in 2000, or that the coup itself was a relatively gentile affair by historical standards. It doesn’t matter that the president has occasionally behaved idiotically.

What does matter is that nothing the president did justifies his removal by force without due process. It matters that Zelaya was sent into exile rather than arrested and brought before a judge, and that the de facto regime has not proven in a court of law that the president broke the law. (What is more, he did not break the law: at no time did Zelaya propose to change the re-election rule, nor could he have done so before leaving office.) And it matters that the actions of Micheletti and his cronies violated the letter and the spirit of the law and were also inconsistent with basic principles inherent in all constitutions.

And please, let us not fall into the trap of calling this a constitutional coup. What is a constitutional coup anyway? The concept, which has no place in law or scholarship, is at best a trope to designate a Machiavellian ruse whereby a constitution is changed by what appear to be constitutional means when, in fact, it is emasculated to perpetuate incumbents in power. A coup is, by definition, a change in the constitutional order by non-constitutional means. And that is exactly what happened in Honduras.

You might say, “But the constitution has not been changed, it has been upheld.” Wrong! The Honduran constitution has been interrupted and altered. The current de facto regime holds power by virtue of non-electoral and non-constitutional means. And a new rule has been added to Honduran politics: don’t even think about constitutional change or you’ll be exiled or arrested ...

http://www.themarknews.com/articles/568-a-coup-is-a-coup-is-a-coup

[Chulanowa]

1. And yet many here still defend it

I can't figure out why, really. But given how shitty the general knowledge of Latin American politics is around DU, I'm starting to wonder if some of the coup supporters might just be people who enjoy the nostalgia of banana republics.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. Hell, the courts were complicit in the coup in the US in 2000.

If Honduras was as powerful as the US is, nobody would be calling it a coup there, either.

[struggle4progress]

3. I've been idly wondering if the Nobel committee might have taken into account

the fact that Obama's election bloodlessly reversed the 2000 coup here

[tama]

4. It's a constitutional matter

The constitution - as in "we the people" - want's a constitutional change, in the general vein of constitutions rewriting themselves all over Latin America - and soon maybe in other places too?! The unconstitutional class of blood sucking vermins (not "we the people" but "you the slaves" attitude) of course oppose we the people rewriting ourselves constitutionally, orderly and peacefully and with a little help from our elected official servants. The class of blood sucking vermins accuse our elected official servants of what they themselves want to do, stay in power and keep on sucking our blood, and their media propaganda (that Goebbels would envy) spouts their lies.

It's that simple.