The Honduras Truth and Reconciliation Commission has concluded that the removal from office of former President Manuel Zelaya was a coup.
It said the move was illegal and not a constitutional succession as some of Mr Zelaya's opponents said.
This is bull. Oh, the ouster of Zelaya was done outside the law, but only because Honduran law had no provisions to oust a president bent on his own coup. And the removal of Zelaya was done with the cooperation of the supreme court, their Congress, and the military acting to protect Honduras from a pro-communist or communist-leaning (Cuban, Venezuela, and Nicaragua) coup.
The article even says:
The Commission identified Mr Zelaya's decision to press ahead with the referendum on constitutional change as "a point of no return" in the crisis.
His critics said the move was aimed at removing the current one-term limit on serving as president, and paving the way for his possible re-election - a charge he repeatedly denied.
The consultation was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court and Congress.
When Mr Zelaya insisted the consultation go ahead, Congress voted to remove him for what it called "repeated violations of the constitution and the law".
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission said Mr Zelaya, 58, had manoeuvred himself into a corner, where he lacked the support of Congress, the Supreme Court, and even his own party.
The Commission said Mr Zelaya broke the law when he disregarded the Supreme Court ruling ordering him to cancel the referendum.
It said therefore both Mr Zelaya and those who ousted him bore responsibility for his forced removal from office.
Got that? Zelaya lacked the support of even his own party for his actions.
So while the removal of Zelaya was termed a "coup" by the report, it admits that both sides acted outside the law. But the motives of the Axis of El Vil wannabe Zelaya for his coup was to seize power like Chavez or Castro (and as Ortega is trying to do under color of law). The motives of the Congress, supreme court, and military in removing Zelaya was not to stage their own seizure of power, but to preserve Honduran democracy.
It was clear early on that the Zelaya Affair was a Zelaya coup attempt. And failure to recognize that an imperfect constitution is not a suicide pact leads many to wrongly call the removal of Zelaya a "coup."
