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June 29, 2009

I don't think this qualifies as a coup

Coup d'état, a sudden and decisive action in politics, esp. one resulting in a change of government illegally or by force.

According to the WSJ:

That Mr. Zelaya (Honduran President) acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.

Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court's order.

The attorney general had already made clear that the referendum was illegal, and he further announced that he would prosecute anyone involved in carrying it out. Yesterday, Mr. Zelaya was arrested by the military and is now in exile in Costa Rica.

The NY Times essentially agrees with these facts, and yet gives the headline Honduran President Is Ousted in Coup. If the congress impeaches the president and he won't go and so they have to call in the military, would they call that a coup? I doubt it. But when the supreme court does the same thing the NY Times seems to think that is a coup.

Reminds me of the famous quote of Andrew Jackson about the Supreme Court's holding that the state of Georgia could not impose its state laws upon Cherokee tribal lands, "John Marshall has made his decision; let him enforce it now if he can." Was that a coup too?

Mr. Zelaya is surely naive if he believes this:

“They are creating a monster they will not be able to contain,” he told a local television station in San José. “A usurper government, that emerges by force, cannot be accepted, will not be accepted by any country.”

PS
I think David Bernstein at Volokh agrees.

Posted by OneEyedMan at June 29, 2009 7:46 AM

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Posted by: Jess H at June 29, 2009 10:47 AM

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