The U.N. General Assembly voted by acclamation to demand Zelaya's immediate restoration, and the Organization of American States was meeting to consider suspending Honduras for straying from democracy.
With no international support but a significant following at home, the new Honduran leadership called thousands of flag-waving people into a downtown plaza. Soldiers fenced off the area around the presidential palace, where security forces used tear gas and water cannons Monday against Zelaya supporters, injuring and arresting dozens.
The interim president named by Congress, Roberto Micheletti, said Zelaya could be arrested for violating the constitution if he returns. Zelaya had defied the Supreme Court and called a referendum on constitutional change that opponents worried would lead to Zelaya prolonging his presidency.
When the sainted international community (including the recent inductee, the president of the United States) rush to judge the events in Honduras, you might want to double check the facts:
Here's a question for all these new-found defenders of Honduran democracy: Where were you last week? Perhaps if some of these warnings about sticking to the constitution had been addressed to President Zelaya, the Honduran army would still be in the barracks where it belongs.
A naked power grab
For weeks, Zelaya -- an erratic leftist who styles himself after his good pal Hugo Chávez of Venezuela -- has been engaged in a naked and illegal power grab, trying to rewrite the Honduran constitution to allow him to run for reelection in November.
First Zelaya scheduled a national vote on a constitutional convention. After the Honduran supreme court ruled that only the country's congress could call such an election, Zelaya ordered the army to help him stage it anyway. (It would be ''non-binding,'' he said.) When the head of the armed forces, acting on orders from the supreme court, refused, Zelaya fired him, then led a mob to break into a military base where the ballots were stored.
His actions have been repudiated by the country's supreme court, its congress, its attorney-general, its chief human-rights advocate, all its major churches, its main business association, his own political party (which recently began debating an inquiry into Zelaya's sanity) and most Hondurans: Recent polls have shown his approval rating down below 30 percent.
Read the whole thing. I'm neither a highly refined State Department diplomat nor a trained professional journalist, but all the press talk about a coup in Honduras seem to ignore that the real coup was the one that Zelaya planned--and not what happened in removing Zelaya.
There's more to the story, too:
Zelaya, last Thursday defied a Supreme Court ruling and tried to hold a "survey" to rewrite the constitution for his permanent re-election. It's the same blueprint for a rigged political system that's made former democracies like Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador into shells of free countries.
Zelaya's operatives did their dirt all the way through. First they got signatures to launch the "citizen's power" survey through threats — warning those who didn't sign that they'd be denied medical care and worse. Zelaya then had the ballots flown to Tegucigalpa on Venezuelan planes. After his move was declared illegal by the Supreme Court, he tried to do it anyway.
As a result of his brazen disregard for the law, Zelaya found himself escorted from office by the military Sunday morning, and into exile. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro rushed to blame the U.S., calling it a "yanqui coup."
President Obama on Monday called the action "not legal," and claimed that Zelaya is still the legitimate president.
Great, our president has joined with the Axis of El Vil in condemning what in fact was a defense of rule of law and democracy, as opposed to the sham types of voting that thugs like Chavez prefer.
The UN and the sainted international community it pretends to reperesent can't be roused to worry about Iran's nutjobs seeking nukes or fraudulant elections, but Honduras they're right on top of?
I hope the Hondurans tell the international community to bugger off. The Hondurans defended their democracy in the Zelaya Affair.
Actually, if the Hondurans are smart, they'll threaten Miami with nuclear destruction and announce they have a secret nuclear program. Then we'd suck up to them no matter what they do.
This is the way the international community works.
UPDATE: The Corner has an email reporting on views in Honduras:
The country is bewildered that the world, especially the United States, is not on their side. Zelaya was confident of his plans to convert Honduras into a Venezuelan satellite. The Honduran people are proud of their constitution and are proud to have a functioning democratic system. Zelaya was replaced by a member of his own party who vows to see that this November's presidential election takes place. What happened was not a "coup" but a bipartisan effort to save the nation.
It is heartbreaking for me to see President Obama throw Honduras under the bus. He did not speak out when Zelaya was attempting to stage a sham "constitutional referendum" with ballots printed in Venezuela.
In the American Left, which our president definitely resides, the only "authentic" voices in Third World countries are those voices that are anti-American. So for our president, of course Zelaya is the wronged party.
That is the way our Left works.
