So the military controls the supreme court and Zelaya’s own party in congress? It seems to me the constitution was written to safeguard against the kind of power grab that we are seeing in Venezuela. Zelaya violated the constitution and the other branches of government acted.
:rolleyes: “Power grab”? Whatever this “Bolivarian Revolution” is, “socialism” or something else, the Venezuelan people have made it very, very clear, several times now, after chances to re-evaluate in light of results on the ground, that they want it. Therefore, they should have it.
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
It would not surprise me to find family relatives on all the groups mentioned.
Point being that Latin American history shows that the military makes coups and election frauds knowing that many on the courts and in congress will rubber stamp all actions that will benefit them.
You fail at history forever.
Well, the Honduran constitution was made under the watchful eyes of the previous military dictatorships in Honduras and to me that is why there was virtually no good mechanism in it to impeach the president.
You are proposing here that pre-crimes should be a good reason to make a coup. The thing the right wingers in Honduras complained about was that Zelaya proposed a vote to call for a future constitutional convention to make changes.
Zelaya had no way to run again as president next November. At worst, he could had influenced the constitutional convention to remove the limitation to never run again and Zelaya would had to wait several years to run again.
It is clear to me that Zelaya had no guarantees that he could even pull that off. But Hondurans have realized that a resolution of this crisis and the future quest of justice in Honduras does **not **depend on Zelaya.
Those BTW are the black minorities in Honduras; but it shows that in Honduras, like in El Salvador, elites can control all branches of government and order coups À la carte.
One of the unfortunate side effects of democracy is to sometimes tell the majority that just because they rubber stamp a coup it does not mean that the rest of the word should stand back and do nothing.
Specially when doing noting will encourage other reactionaries in Latin America to order from the same menu.
Sorry, it isn’t that clear to me. In the last elections in 2008 over 300 candidates were disqualified from running by the comptroller general, who is very friendly toward Chavez. These candidates were overwhelmingly opposition figures. Additionally the PSUV and other aligned parties enjoyed access to state controlled media and openly bought votes using money from the state.
I take these facts from a country assessment provided by Freedom House. They classify the country as only partly free, and have downgraded the country’s freedom rankings in recent years. As for the question of democracy there, they sum it up thusly:
Now, this doesn’t contradict much of what I have read about Chavez in other places over the last few years.
I know your opinion of him has changed somewhat - you were once a strong Chavez booster and moderated your tone a bit. Be that as it may, I think you need to account for your characterization of Venezuela as a democracy. After all, our understanding of democracy generally involves protection of the rights of political minorities, and that protection in Venezuela is particularly weak.
Freedom House called the 1982 El Salvadorean elections free and fair while failing to note that the ruling party has indiscriminately slaughtered thousands of people who were expected to vote for the opposition. I think you’ll have to provide documentation from an actually independent NGO rather than a nominally independent one.
I would say the first is the answer and the third is just delicious lagniappe. As for the second, no; Zelaya himself, even if his planned nonbinding poll had gone forward and even if the measure (one of several therein) for eliminating presidential term limits had been approved, was not going to be in a position to run for re-election.
