Understanding Honduras
Honduras was much in the news for a while, and now it seems to have faded from the interests of the major news outlets.
There was a coup in Honduras. Or not, depending on your perspective and who you listen to…
MoJo wrote a short piece they tagged as "Honduras for dummies." They seem to think it was a coup. The President allegedly tried to enact some constitutional changes that would have allowed him to stay in office longer – to be reelected. The accusation is that he tried to change permanent sections of the Honduran constitution. Evidently an effort to make those changes constitutes a criminal act in Honduras. So the legislature there and the court system got involved and he was eventually arrested and removed from office. By the military.
Was it a coup? The Campaign for Liberty has an excellent (and detailed) description of the situation. It looks like a coup partly because the military was involved. Honduras doesn't have an version of our Posse Comitatus in place; but neither did we for the first 102 years of our existence as a country.
It will be an interesting story to follow.
© U.S. Department of State
July 14th, 2009 at 7:52 am
I hope the problems in Honduras will be solved soon.