El Universal on the Honduras Coup

Today's editorial focuses a little less on the injustice of Zelaya's removal and more on Zelaya's actions to provoke it than I'd expected:

Just when it seemed as though military coups against democratically elected governments were a thing of the past in Latin America, another one occurred yesterday in Honduras. This regression from our neighborhood, as well as nations with similar features in the region, reminds us that two decades of democratic experimentation aren't enough to bury the shadow of dictatorships in our countries.

In a strategy that included the participation of the parliament and the Honduran army, as well as the endorsement of the Catholic Church, Manuel Zelaya, constitutional president, was arrested and taken by military force to Costa Rica. The authors of the coup respond that Zelaya resigned because of the "polarized political situation" and "health problems"; nevertheless, every country on the continent*, from the United States to Venezuela, condemned the military kidnapping.

It must be said, to explain the event, that Zelaya had his share of the responsibility. He took his country to a political crisis by insisting in reelecting himself, even against the willingness of the Honduran Supreme Court, Congress, Supreme Electoral Tribunal, and Justice Department. The military coup, absolutely unjustifiable, came within this context.

When a president seeks to perpetuate himself indefinitely in power, the different interest groups --armed, religious, or business-- acquire the perfect pretext for taking over civil control through force. It's the same risk that, though to different degrees, Hugo Chávez has taken in Venezuela and that Evo Morales in Bolivia and Álvaro Uribe in Colombia are on the verge of taking.

Reelection in and of itself isn't harmful, it's part of democracy because it ratifies the service of good governors, but when the pact between the diverse actors in a democracy is violated by acts seeking to perpetuate one of them in power, the fragile institutional balance is broken. And in the chaos, it is the force of arms that has the greatest possibility to impose itself.

*Mexico typically views North and South American as one continent.