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Roberto Micheletti was sworn in as provisional president of Honduras after the Honduran military kidnapped and threw President Jose Manuel Zelaya into a helicopter to Costa Rica on Sunday June 28, 2009. President Obama declared that he was “deeply concerned” and he calls “on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter.” See Obama’s reaction here.
The Organization of American States signed a resolution demanding for the Honduran government to reinstate the President Zelaya within 72 hours, but President Zelaya declared that he will not return within that time frame.
The Honduran Coup took place on the night of a referendum asking the Honduran people if the term of the recently ousted President Jose Manuel Zelaya should be extended. Zelaya is a leftist that has often not gotten along with the military and supreme court. The congress had attempted to forbid his term extension referendum and the Honduran judiciary had declared it illegal.
One important piece that deepens the coup puzzle is how the United States has provided Honduras with a lot of these arms that are now being used to by the military controlling this coup.
To know more about US involvement with providing weapons, check out this Huffington post article.
To know more about OAS involvement read this CNN article.
In Brazil, President Lula also condemned the coup, scared that it will lead to precedent for another Latin America ruled by dictatorships. See story here.
Doesn’t sound too far off: This is a coup d’etat led by a right wing member controlling the military using weapons supplied by the United States. Has this hemisphere not learned its lesson? US shouldn’t be helping countries buy arms (I’m not sure this will ever stop, unfortuneatly) and dictatorships are not going to solve the country’s problems. I just hope that this gets resolved in a way that nips the coup fad in the bud.
