Call to arms?

Jul 15, 2009 Editorial

In a report carried by this newspaper on Monday (“Honduras situation a lesson to Guyana – Corbin”) Opposition Leader, Mr Robert Corbin weighed in on the army coup in Honduras.
Claiming that the situation that led to the coup was very similar to that existing in Guyana, the report stated: “Corbin cautioned that he was not of the opinion that it (the coup) was the right way to go but sometimes as has happened in Honduras, when people’s backs are against the wall they take action into their own hands.”
Earlier in the month, the caption of our editorial “No Coup Accepted” succinctly summarised our take on the June 28 coup by the Honduran army. We concluded: “We in Guyana, faced with many adventurists that are interpreting “democracy” expediently to match their aims to seize power like the Honduran military, must be in the forefront to ensure that President Zeyala is restored into office.” We reiterate that position.
While it may appear that Mr Corbin is saying that he is not in favour of an army coup in Guyana his justification of coups in certain situations (“when people’s backs are against the wall”) is extremely troubling in the context of maintaining democracy here. The situation in Honduras, as well as Mr Corbin’s statement, has to be considered within the history of the two countries.
In Honduras, the archetypical “Banana Republic”, army coups were the order of the day and their army brutally denied the democratic rights of the Honduran people for many decades.
When democratic rule was finally ushered in a couple of decades ago, the constitution instituted a single-term presidency of only four years because of the fear that the army would manoeuvre behind the scene to capture the Presidency and rule, as in the old days, indefinitely. The army’s role in Honduras (as that of the two old guard parties) has been reduced in the new democratic order and this has, not surprisingly, not sat well with their top brass.
The bottom line is that in the development of Honduran democracy, there has been a solid grass root movement for its widening so as to allow Presidential candidates to emerge outside the two old elitist parties that had worked out a modus vivendi with the army.
President Zelaya is a product of the old order but he has stepped on their toes by acting outside the cosy parameters of that order. His major “transgression” was to have Honduras sign on to the PetroCaribe and ALBA initiatives of Venezuela under the avowedly leftist Chavez. The final straw evidently was to float the idea that the one-term Presidency was maybe not appropriate for Honduras any longer.
However, in contradistinction to what the conservative forces, led by the army, in Honduras claimed – that Zelaya was imitating Chavez and going for an indefinite Presidency – no specific constitutional change was made in the proposed non-binding referendum that even the US defined as a “poll”. Further, the need for extending the term limits for the presidency had been broached by two of Zelaya’s predecessors as well as the widespread grass root movement.
It is evident that the referendum was the occasion for the army’s war against Zelaya and not the cause.
And this was the fear behind our earlier call for the Honduran coup to be denounced by all parties in Guyana. After all, we have our own history where the army has been called to buttress anti-democratic behaviour by the political classes.
In 1970, our own Mr Burnham had instructed the army that it should only be loyal to his government and could decide on its own what its position would be to “any other government”.
Our army, of course, was (fatally) involved in the 1973 elections. His successor, Mr Hoyte, spoke about “kith and kin” in the armed forces in a clear plea for the army to take sides in our ethnically divided politics.
Mr Corbin’s justification of the Honduran coup (“but” has aptly been called an “eraser word” that wipes out all that preceded it in a sentence) sends an ominous message for our fledgling democracy.
We hope that he will unequivocally denounce the coup, as all other countries up to now have done, as being fundamentally antithetical to democracy.

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