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Leaders from Obama to Chavez blast Honduras coup

By WILL WEISSERT and FREDDY CUEVAS, Associated Press Writers
1 hr 25 mins ago

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – Police and soldiers clashed with thousands of protesters outside Honduras' national palace Monday, leaving at least 15 people injured, as world leaders from Barack Obama to Hugo Chavez demanded the return of a president ousted in a military coup.
Leftist leaders pulled their ambassadors from Honduras and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala would cut trade with neighboring Honduras for at least 48 hours. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called for Hondurans to rise up against those who toppled his ally, Manuel Zelaya.
"We're ready to support the rebellion of the Honduran people," Chavez said, though he did not say what kind of support he was offering.
Protests outside the presidential palace grew from hundreds to thousands, and soldiers and police advanced behind riot shields, using tear gas to scatter the protesters. The demonstrators, many of them choking on the gas, hurled rocks and bottles as they retreated. At least 38 protesters were detained, according to human rights prosecutor Sandra Ponce.
Red Cross paramedic Cristian Vallejo said he had transported 10 protesters to hospitals, most of them with injuries from rubber bullets. An Associated Press photographer in another area saw protesters carrying away another five injured people. It was not clear how they were hurt.
In Washington, Obama said the United States will "stand on the side of democracy" and work with other nations and international groups to resolve the matter peacefully.
"We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the democratically elected president there," Obama said.
"It would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition rather than democratic elections," he added. "The region has made enormous progress over the last 20 years in establishing democratic traditions. ... We don't want to go back to a dark past."
The Organization of American States called an emergency meeting for Tuesday to consider suspending Honduras under an agreement meant to prevent the sort of coups that for generations made Latin America a tragic spawning ground of military dictatorships.
The new government, however, was defiant. Roberto Micheletti, named by Congress to serve out the final seven months of Zelaya's term, vowed to ignore foreign pressure.
"We respect everybody and we ask only that they respect us and leave us in peace because the country is headed toward free and transparent general elections in November," Micheletti told HRN radio.
He insisted Zelaya's ouster was legal and accused the former president himself of violating the constitution by sponsoring a referendum that was outlawed by the Supreme Court. Many saw the foiled vote as a step toward eliminating barriers to his re-election, as other Latin American leaders have done in recent years.
Despite the protests at the palace, daily life appeared normal in most of the capital, with nearly all businesses open. Some expressed relief at the departure of Zelaya, who alienated the courts, Congress, the military and even his own party in his tumultuous three years in power.
"A coup d'etat is undemocratic and you never want to support it, but in the case of this guy and his government, maybe so," said Roberto Cruz, a 61-year-old metalworker.
But Zelaya retains the loyalty of many of Honduras' poor, for having raised the minimum wage and blaming the country's problems on the rich — despite the considerable wealth he enjoys as a successful rancher.
Farmworker Jesus Almendares, 30, said he was skipping work to protest the coup.
"It's a tremendous shame, yet another proof that the armed forces control the country — they and the businessmen," he said.
Zelaya was arrested in his pajamas Sunday morning by soldiers who stormed his residence and flew him into exile. A day later, back in suit and tie, he sat beside Chavez and other allies at a Nicaragua meeting of the nine-nation ALBA alliance, which agreed to pull its ambassadors from Honduras and reject the replacement government's envoys.
While Obama said Zelaya is still president, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton hedged on that point at an earlier news conference, suggesting that both the ousted president and his foes should make compromises.
Asked if the administration would insist that Zelaya be restored to power, she said: "We haven't laid out any demands that we're insisting on, because we're working with others on behalf of our ultimate objectives."
Mexico's government, one of the most conservative in Latin America, joined leftists in denouncing the coup and offered protection to Zelaya's exiled foreign minister.
The president of Latin America's largest nation, Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said on his weekly radio program that his country will not recognize any Honduran government that doesn't have Zelaya as president "because he was directly elected by the vote, complying with the rules of democracy."
"We in Latin America can no longer accept someone trying to resolve his problem through the means of a coup," Silva said.
Coups were common in Central America until the 1980s, but Sunday's ouster was the first military power grab in Latin America since a brief, failed 2002 coup against Chavez.
It was the first military ouster of a Central American president since 1993, when Guatemalan military officials refused to accept President Jorge Serrano's attempt to seize absolute power and removed him.
Honduras had not seen a coup since 1978, when one military government overthrew another.

Quoted from Shadow

Is there any doubt what Obama really believes when he sides with known socialist dictators over freedom loving people.

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Honduras Defends Its Democracy
Fidel Castro and Hillary Clinton object.

Hugo Chávez's coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation's constitution.

It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.

But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya's abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.

That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.

Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court's order.

The attorney general had already made clear that the referendum was illegal, and he further announced that he would prosecute anyone involved in carrying it out. Yesterday, Mr. Zelaya was arrested by the military and is now in exile in Costa Rica.

It remains to be seen what Mr. Zelaya's next move will be. It's not surprising that chavistas throughout the region are claiming that he was victim of a military coup. They want to hide the fact that the military was acting on a court order to defend the rule of law and the constitution, and that the Congress asserted itself for that purpose, too.

Mrs. Clinton has piled on as well. Yesterday she accused Honduras of violating "the precepts of the Interamerican Democratic Charter" and said it "should be condemned by all." Fidel Castro did just that. Mr. Chávez pledged to overthrow the new government.

Honduras is fighting back by strictly following the constitution. The Honduran Congress met in emergency session yesterday and designated its president as the interim executive as stipulated in Honduran law. It also said that presidential elections set for November will go forward. The Supreme Court later said that the military acted on its orders. It also said that when Mr. Zelaya realized that he was going to be prosecuted for his illegal behavior, he agreed to an offer to resign in exchange for safe passage out of the country. Mr. Zelaya denies it.

Many Hondurans are going to be celebrating Mr. Zelaya's foreign excursion. Street protests against his heavy-handed tactics had already begun last week. On Friday a large number of military reservists took their turn. "We won't go backwards," one sign said. "We want to live in peace, freedom and development."

Besides opposition from the Congress, the Supreme Court, the electoral tribunal and the attorney general, the president had also become persona non grata with the Catholic Church and numerous evangelical church leaders. On Thursday evening his own party in Congress sponsored a resolution to investigate whether he is mentally unfit to remain in office.

For Hondurans who still remember military dictatorship, Mr. Zelaya also has another strike against him: He keeps rotten company. Earlier this month he hosted an OAS general assembly and led the effort, along side OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, to bring Cuba back into the supposedly democratic organization.

The OAS response is no surprise. Former Argentine Ambassador to the U.N. Emilio Cárdenas told me on Saturday that he was concerned that "the OAS under Insulza has not taken seriously the so-called 'democratic charter.' It seems to believe that only military 'coups' can challenge democracy. The truth is that democracy can be challenged from within, as the experiences of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and now Honduras, prove." A less-kind interpretation of Mr. Insulza's judgment is that he doesn't mind the Chávez-style coup.

The struggle against chavismo has never been about left-right politics. It is about defending the independence of institutions that keep presidents from becoming dictators. This crisis clearly delineates the problem. In failing to come to the aid of checks and balances, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Insulza expose their true colors.

Quoted from GrahamBonnet

For 2 weeks he didn't want to interfere when the shoe was on the other foot and his friend stole the election in Iran. Now it is different and he must establish a precedent so that when he tries to hold onto power for a third term he can say any move to stop him is "illegal."