Coups and Elections: Honduras’s Parallels with Thailand

Coup-makers around the world seem to have several things in common. Apart from the lust for power, the obsession with some vaguely-defined “national interests” and the total disregard for liberal democratic values, they also share a need for an ‘exit strategy’. And what would be better than holding an election under the rules that they themselves have set? The Economist has a story on the post-coup presidential election in Honduras. Key excerpts:

THE members of a conservative coalition behind the toppling of Manuel Zelaya as president of Honduras, on June 28th, have since been betting that presidential elections would serve to legitimise their military coup. Despite intense pressure from abroad, the de facto regime that has been running the country in recent months was convinced that foreign leaders would in the end refuse to punish a successor government for earlier sins. The test came on Sunday November 29th with the completion of a relatively peaceful vote, which the centre-right candidate Porfirio Lobo Sosa won comfortably. To the great chagrin of observers across the hemisphere, it seems the result will be respected and the strategy of the coup-plotters will be rewarded.

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One way or another, Honduras’s new government is likely to pick up diplomatic recognition, even though the coup is unlikely to be reversed. The great worry, however, is whether a dangerous precedent has been set.

As long as coup-plotters can get away with using an election to legitimise their regime and escape responsibility for their crime, military rule seems to be an inevitable fact of life for the people of Honduras and, of course, Thailand.

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