Tuesday, June 30, 2009
By Tom Palmer in Latin America
Imagine that George Bush, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan or some other American president had decided to overturn the Constitution so that he could stay in power beyond the constitutionally limited time. To do that, he orders a nationwide referendum that is not constitutionally authorized and blatantly illegal.
The media discussion of events in Honduras is remarkably confused. Here’s CNN:
The president of the U.N. General Assembly scheduled a noon session Monday to discuss the situation in Honduras, following a military-led coup that ousted the sitting president.
and
Micheletti, the head of Congress, became president after lawmakers
voted by a show of hands to strip Zelaya of his powers, with a
resolution stating that Zelaya “provoked confrontations and divisions”
within the country.
The coup came on the same day that he had vowed to follow through
with a nonbinding referendum that the Honduran Supreme Court had ruled
illegal.
Imagine that George Bush, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan
or some other American president had decided to overturn the
Constitution so that he could stay in power beyond the constitutionally
limited time. To do that, he orders a nationwide referendum that is not
constitutionally authorized and blatantly illegal. The Federal Election
Commission rules that it is illegal. The Supreme Court rules that it is
illegal. The Congress votes to strip the president of his powers and,
as members of Congress are not that good at overcoming the president’s
personally loyal and handpicked bodyguards, they send police and
military to arrest the president. Now, which party is guilty of leading
a coup?
This is another example of populist, dictatorial, anti-democratic
thought parading as “democratic.” I discussed the issue recently in my recent lecture on enduring democracy for the Julian L. Simon Memorial Lecture at the Liberty Institute in New Delhi.
This post was originally published on Tom Palmer’s personal blog .