The forcible overthrow of a government, or coup d’état, is not an uncommon pattern in the historical tapestry of Latin America. Though less common since the end of the Cold War, coups (not all successful) have occurred in recent history in Haiti (1991, 2004), Venezuela (1992, 2002), Peru (1992), Guatemala (1993), Paraguay (1996), Ecuador (2000) and most recently in Honduras on June 29 of this year. However, the events preceding the recent removal from power of President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya by the Honduran Supreme Court and military, set this coup apart from those of the past. In order to understand this event, it is important to go over the steps that led to the coup and followed it.

Since December 2008, Zelaya had been petitioning for a cuarta urna, or fourth ballot box, to be employed in the November 2009 elections as a referendum on whether a constituent assembly should be convened in order to rewrite Honduras’s constitution. While Zelaya has claimed the new constitution was intended to better represent the interests of his country’s poor, Zelaya’s critics worried that his true goal was to do away with the current constitution’s term strict limits. These term limits bar Honduran presidents from serving more than one 4-year term. Thus, if the referendum was approved, Zelaya would have paved the way for his possible re-election. After the Honduran Supreme Court ruled the referendum illegal, Zelaya issued a presidential decree to hold a non-binding public survey, or encuesta, on June 28, asking people if they approved of a proposal to change the constitution.

Honduras’ Supreme Court again ruled this survey unconstitutional in a unanimous vote on the grounds that only Congress may call a referendum. The Honduran Attorney General, Human Rights Ombudsman, Supreme Electoral Tribunal and military also opposed the measure.

Without the support of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, Zelaya obtained ballots and ballot boxes from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to implement this referendum. In addition, Zelaya fired the head of the armed forces on July 29 when he refused to provide logistical support for Zelaya’s survey. In response, the Supreme Court overruled the president, insisting upon the reinstatement of the military chief. At the same time, Congress initiated a special investigation of the President’s actions to provide a legal basis for his removal from office.

In order to further prevent the June 28 referendum, Honduras’ Attorney General petitioned the Supreme Court to order the armed forces to seize all ballot boxes and polling materials around the country. Due to the President’s continued insistence that the survey would go on despite the Supreme Court’s rulings, the Court ordered the military to arrest Zelaya in preparation for criminal proceedings to be initiated against him.

With the Supreme Court order in hand, military personnel entered the presidential residence just before dawn on June 28, detained Zelaya, and shortly thereafter flew him into exile in Costa Rica. On the same day, Congress voted to remove Zelaya from power, citing “repeated violations of the constitution and the law,” and, as specified by the constitution’s order of succession, swore in the Speaker of the House, Roberto Micheletti as interim president. In addition, Congress concluded its investigation of the president’s actions and charged him with some 18 crimes against the nation.

To describe the events of June 28 as nothing more than a modern version of the old-style coup d’état is misguided. The coups that came to characterize much of 20th century Latin American history generally followed a common script in which the military declares martial law, discards the constitution, deposes the executive, shutters congress and the courts, and installs military officers to govern in their stead. However, in Honduras, the military acted on orders from the Supreme Court to detain a president intent on thumbing his nose at the court’s constitutional authority. And following Zelaya’s removal from power, Honduras’s democratic institutions-its legislature, judiciary, and other government institutions-continued to function as normal. The constitution remained in force and an interim president succeeded Zelaya as the constitution mandated.

However, although the Supreme Court ordered the military to detain the president, it had not ordered his expulsion from the country. The military has since argued that it shuttled Zelaya to Costa Rica because it feared that his supporters would engage in violent protests to secure his release if Zelaya were held for trial in Honduras. In doing so the military violated the president’s right to due process and denied the country’s civilian authorities the opportunity to try Zelaya for his repeated refusals to respect the authority of his country’s legislature and Supreme Court. Zelaya should have been held in Honduras to stand trial according to proper due process. The military’s choice to forcibly expel Zelaya has unfortunately added fuel to the crisis, turning it from a domestic constitutional crisis to a larger, international one, and, at the same time, turned the unpopular lame-duck (polls just prior to the coup placed Zelaya’s approval rating among Hondurans in the 25-30 percent range) into an international celebrity.

There were many contributing factors to the political drama in Honduras - a president intent on exercising unchecked executive power, the lack of a clear constitutional impeachment process, bitter enmity between the country’s elites and the involvement of Venezuela’s polarizing President Hugo Chavez, to name but a few. The political drama became a crisis due to an attempt at an illegal electoral process, and therefore will now need a legal electoral process to end it. International efforts to broker negotiated solutions notwithstanding, it will be Hondurans themselves who will close the door on this crisis when they elect a new government later this year in free, open and transparent elections.