The response of the countries of the hemisphere has been swift, and decisively negative, to the overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya Rosales by the military, in conjunction with the leadership of the Honduras Congress and the Honduras Supreme Court. The Secretary General of the OAS; the Rio Group; Prime Minister Patrick Manning indicating that he was speaking as the Chairperson of the Fifth Summit of the Americas; a number of governments – liberal, social democratic and radical – and the United States itself, have all condemned the coup, and asked for the return of Mr Zelaya to the presidential office.
This all-round response has been important, marking as it does – whatever the motivations of particular governments – a consensus that the military coup is no longer an acceptable mechanism of change in this hemisphere. It is a significant rejection of Cold War attitudes, and in the United States a change from a stance taken as late as 2002, when George W Bush’s administration was obviously not unhappy to see what they thought was the back of President Chávez. President Chávez and his co-radical Presidents of Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua have, in turn, been quick to denounce the coup, and to insist, after consultations with him, on the President’s return.
It is also a significant indicator of changing times that the attempt by the military, and the anti-Zelaya political forces, to legitimize the coup by seeking and obtaining the concurrence of the Speaker of the Honduras Congress and the Supreme Court, has been immediately rejected by the inter-American countries and institutions. This old oligarchical ruse, which has often succeeded, and indeed has had the approval of the United States in the past, has on this occasion found no support at all. Many leaders now in office in Central and South America would be hard put not to recall the long periods of dictatorship facilitated by this methodology, including the overthrow of the elected President Goulart by the Brazilian military in 1964, and the removal of President Allende in Chile. The climate in the United States has certainly changed, with the government of the United States not hesitating on this occasion to condemn the Honduran coup.
The coup took place in an atmosphere of rising political contention in Honduras, initiated in some large measure by the attempt of President Zelaya to hold a non-binding referendum on the constitution of the country, to permit himself to have another term of office. This was occurring in a country where a term limit of four years is the norm.
In Latin America, as in the United States, term limits have tended to be the norm for democratically elected governments, a consequence in Latin America of long years of military and personal dictatorship. Zelaya’s opponents, including the Speaker of the Congress who is a member of the President’s own Liberal Party of Honduras (PLH), have claimed that he was seeking to emulate President Chávez’s ultimately successful attempt to change the Constitution of Venezuela to permit him to extend the mandatory term of a Venezuelan President. But their sentiment in this regard is perceived to reflect a wider ideological concern that Zelaya may also wish to emulate President Chávez in adopting radical social reform policies. On the other hand, Congressional Speaker Roberto Micheletti, who led the opposition in that forum, could hardly be said to be acting from a position of objectivity, given that constitutionally he would have been, and indeed was, the one to succeed to the presidency.
The practice of term limits, constitutionally in place in Caricom only in Guyana, is not one widely understood or accepted in the English-speaking countries of the hemisphere. The exception, as we have noted, has been the United States where it was reinforced after President Franklin Roosevelt’s three terms, characterized by success both in conducting warfare and in coming to terms with the Great Depression. As far as we are aware, there has not been much discussion of the rationale for term limits when reform of Caricom constitutions has been discussed, except in St Lucia, during the long period of rule, up to 1996, of Prime Minister John Compton. Then the opposition St Lucia Labour Party placed a two-term limit on the holding of the leadership of the party, the political, if not strictly constitutional implication being that this would apply de facto to holding the prime ministership of the country. In fact, when the time came for the rule to become operative in the party, it was slightly amended to allow then Prime Minister and party leader Kenny Anthony to have a third term as party leader. Tradition dies hard.
It is true that, in the context of the Latin American principles relating to term limits, it cannot be said that President Zelaya is entirely blameless for the situation in which he has found himself. The situation at present, however, is that there is little willingness, particularly in the rest of the hemisphere, to accept that Zelaya’s attempt to change the constitution against strong opposition, is justification for a military coup. The ideological atmosphere has changed in the hemisphere as a whole. And many now believe that that change has been reinforced by the election of President Barack Obama in the United States.
But the main plank of principle – a legal one – of, in particular, liberal hemispheric opponents of the coup, rests on the hemispheric-wide adoption of the Inter-American Democratic Charter by the Organisation of American States. This provides a regional-cum-international legitimacy for opposition to coups against legally elected governments, no matter how politically legitimate the reasons of the coup proponents may appear to be. On these grounds it is to be fervently hoped that the coup against Zelaya does not succeed.
The charter now provides a multilateral basis for domestic adherence to legal principles of governance. And though it might have been thought by the United States to have been a mechanism for ensuring good governance in countries to which they were hostile, it has provided a wider basis for opposition to military or forceful attempts by coup leaders, regardless of their ideological stripe.
It is in that context that we can welcome the widespread acceptance in the inter-American fraternity of the non-legitimacy of what has happened over the weekend in Honduras. And this is so regardless of the terms on which President Zelaya return to office is renegotiated, once these are acceptable to the President, and correspond to the norms of Honduras’s present constitution.
