Trying to Follow Chavez
Following another bloodless coup in Honduras, Obama says:
We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there…
It would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections…
But, of course, you do. Because Zelaya had joined the:
leftist Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, an alliance led by Venezuela’s populist president, Hugo Chávez …
… who’s Obama’s “amigo” and, this was probably the only way his man Manuel Zelaya could be removed from office.
Manuel was planning to force his own re-election…
[Zelaya had] issued a decree for a consultative poll on Sunday, asking Hondurans whether they wanted presidential-election ballots in November to include a question about holding a constituent assembly. And he ordered the army to distribute ballot papers (which by one account came from Venezuela).
And the military leaders who removed him did so in order to prevent him from…
…organising a referendum to call a constituent assembly. He seemed to hope that this would enable him to remain in power, perhaps by changing the constitution to allow him to stand for a second term in an election due in November…
Zelaya said after he was ousted:
“I was brutally taken out of my house and kidnapped by hooded soldiers who pointed high-calibre rifles at me … But until the next elections, I will continue to be the president of Honduras. Only the people can remove me.”
But…
The Congress and the courts both rejected [Zelaya's planned] referendum…
…which would have allowed him to remain in power beyond this year’s elections. So, he wasn’t as popular as he claimed.
Obama, stop pretending that you support democracy in Honduras. You’re merely trying to protect your socialist friends’ interests.
