America might refuse to honor the upcoming election results of another democratic nation. But our State Department has taken this hostile posture not toward Venezuela or Iran — where dictatorships thrive through doubtful and fraudulent elections — but toward Honduras, which removed a usurping president this summer in an action supported by the letter of its own constitution. Nothing has changed about the upcoming election in Honduras. The candidates are the same ones who were running before President Manuel Zelaya was ousted, with the approval of the nation’s Congress and Supreme Court. The only difference now is the United States is demanding that the rapacious Zelaya be returned to power. This would punish self-governance and discourage free and credible elections.
Zelaya was not removed from power for his alleged corruption or his alliance with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez or his bullying of the Honduran news media. Rather, by simply campaigning in favor of presidential re-election in Honduras, Zelaya had committed a crime punishable under the constitution by loss of citizenship. A strange law, perhaps, but the law of the land nonetheless in a nation and a region that has suffered bad experiences under previous presidents-for-life like Chavez.
Roberto Micheletti, who replaced Zelaya for the waning months of his term, took power with a promise not to interfere with upcoming elections – a positive, constructive gesture that evinced respect for democratic institutions in Honduras. Unfortunately, our State Department does not share such respect. Spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters this week that “[a]t this moment, we would not be able to support the outcome of the scheduled elections.” In other words, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is forcing Honduras to choose between reinstalling a rogue leader or becoming a rogue nation.
Interestingly, Clinton still does not consider Zelaya’s ouster a “military coup” under U.S. law because it involved “the participation of both the legislative and judicial branches of government as well as the military,” as her spokesman put it. Despite this, Honduras is receiving the same funding cutoff from Washington that federal law requires for nations whose democracy is genuinely snuffed out. And Clinton is doing her own part to snuff it out, as well.
In The Audacity of Hope, President Obama recalls his own youthful outrage at bygone U.S. anti-communist policies in Latin America – of supporting Nicaraguan Contras, liberating Grenada from Fidel Castro’s clutches, and backing the Pinochet regime. Perhaps the president should take a page from his own book and stop interfering in Hondura’s business before he strikes a death-blow to the democracy and rule of law in a small, struggling nation.
