I concur: there is plenty of blame to go around. I would argue, however, that of the wrongs on the table, the coup was the worst of the grievances. It certainly ramped up the crisis to stratospheric levels!

Happy 4th to you as well and good luck with the fam!

S

I’d link, but this coming from an iPhone in Miami listening to my relatives discuss health care reform and the proper way to cultivate cannabis plants. Don’t ask. The link should be somewhere on my blog.

Once again, Happy Fourth! The explosions are already starting down here.

There’s still lots of room to argue that the Supreme Court was stupid to order his arrest, or, conversely, that the military prevented violence by exiling him. (You read my blog, so you know my position, and yes, I’ve changed my mind.).

But that deposing Zelaya was legal and that exiling him was most certainly not are not things that we should still be debating at this point.

Happy Fourth!

What gives me pause about this situation is that both the legislative and judicial branches of government supported the arrest, if not the exile, of Zelaya.

His own party controls congress. His former vice president will be the party’s candidate in the November elections, and may very well win. In other words, this wasn’t an ideological shift in power, a la almost every Latin American coup/revolution I can think of.

So, let’s say that next week the Honduran supreme court officially rules that the exile was constitutional and legal. What then? Does the OAS overrule them? Or if the supreme court rules that Zelaya was illegally exiled and should be allowed to return to the country, as a citizen not as president, and tried for his “crimes”…what does the US or OAS do? Demand Zelaya be reinstated as president before being tried? Should the US claim that we are the final arbiters of Honduran constitutional disputes, not their supreme court? I was reading in La Nación (from Argentina) that Insulza, secretary general of the OAS, met with Honduran supreme court and they basically told him to pound sand.

Pragmatically speaking, at what point do we step back, let Micheletti serve as acting president (from same party as Zelaya, although not best of friends), make sure that international observers are allowed in November, and let elections run their course in four months?

I’m not sure. I’d be interested in your take, Steven. How far should the US/OAS push if we’re getting push-back from the other institutions inside Honduras? Are there analogous situations from the past that we can look back to for guidance?

And a quick thought/observation:

As for interpreting the Honduran constitution, from both sides of this debate…seriously? Give the US constitution to a Honduran lawyer and ask them to find a right to an abortion, a right to privacy, or where Miranda rights come from. Good luck with that. Unless they’ve studied US constitutional law I doubt they’d be able to. Perhaps I would lose money, but I’d wager that most of us, however well we speak Spanish or how long we’ve studied Latin America, are wasting our time rendering opinions as to what article XYZ means.

Maybe someone could provide link(s) where Honduran lawyers are arguing about these very issues?

And I have written far more than just this post. Just go to main page and scroll down or search on “Honduras”. I suspect I have written over a dozen, which include looking at various constitutional provisions.