Honduras' Coup a Setback, not so the Americas' Response

Just seven years ago, the U.S. government would not acknowledge that forcefully removing a democratically elected president at gunpoint constituted a coup. In April 2002, the White House referred to the military-led toppling of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as merely a "change of government" and failed to condemn the act.

In fact, the administration gave tacit approval to the coup because it didn't like Chavez's close ties to Fidel Castro. The coup was short-lived, and its supporters soon had to explain why they had seemed so eager to recognize an interim civilian government installed by the military.

The Bush administration had chosen expediency over principle and it backfired, seriously damaging U.S. clout in the region.

The military ouster of Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya on June 28 was a painful setback for the Americas. But the response that elicited was not. The same day that Zelaya was dragged from his bedroom, forced onto a plane and stranded at an airport in Costa Rica, the United States joined the rest of the countries in the hemisphere to condemn the coup and demanded Zelaya's "immediate and unconditional return."

No doubt some in Washington were tempted to endorse the coup. After running for president as a conservative candidate in 2005, Zelaya abruptly moved to the left once in office. He joined Petrocaribe, which gave Honduras access to Venezuelan oil at a preferential rate, and the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, a leftist economic group led by Chavez. These decisions unsettled Honduras' business and political elite and severely polarized the public.

As Joaquin Villalobos, a former Salvadoran guerrilla leader, recently observed in the Spanish newspaper El Pais, Chavez's petrodollars have -- as much as narco dollars -- fomented internal divisions and destroyed institutions.

Eventually Zelaya angered too many people. His enemies saw his insistence on calling a referendum to reform the constitution as an attempt to sidestep democracy and perpetuate his rule. Honduras' Supreme Court, congress and attorney general argued that the referendum was illegal, as was Zelaya's decision to fire the head of the armed forces. According to military leaders, those acts justified the coup.

Fortunately Obama, along with other world leaders, resisted a knee-jerk reaction and stood by principle: "We always want to stand with democracy," Obama said the day after Zelaya's ouster, "even if the results don't always mean that the leaders of those countries are favorable toward the United States."

That principled stance positions the Organization of American States to mediate between Zelaya and the de facto government of Roberto Micheletti. On Friday, a diplomatic mission headed by OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza issued Micheletti a 72-hour ultimatum to step aside or make Honduras the first country in the hemisphere to be suspended from the OAS for democratic violations.

To convince coup leaders to accept Zelaya’s return, the OAS will have to ensure that he governs within his “constitutional functions”—something that has failed to do with several regional leaders in recent years. If the mission succeeds, the OAS, as much as Honduran democracy, will win.

This situation has for now strengthened the OAS Inter-American Democratic Charter. In recent days, leaders -- who had ridiculed the Charter throughout its seven-year existence -- have used it to defend democratic order.

Even Chavez himself may have decided to support the very things he once belittled. In one draft of the OAS resolution, his government proposed that the organization "condemn the closing of radio and television stations."

According to Jennifer McCoy, the director of the Carter Center's Americas Program, this places the Venezuelan government in the ironic position of defending the very rights that many have criticized Chavez for limiting in his own country. Defending them in the abstract should make these rights more difficult to attack selectively, she added.

We can only hope. But it is a hope made possible now that the United States has opted to stand up for principle over expediency.