President Zelaya Arrested and Exiled to Costa Rica

President Manuel Zelaya was arrested early on Sunday, June 28 by a 12-member Honduran military team. Some 200 soldiers, supported by tanks, arrived at Mr. Zelaya’s residence at dawn and surrounded the presidential palace amidst hundreds of protesters. Police used tear gas to disperse the crowd, and Mr. Zelaya was transported to an air force base on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa and flown into exile to San Jose, Costa Rica.

The arrest came following a series of developments during the past week in which Mr. Zelaya defied rulings by Honduras’ Congress, Supreme Court, Attorney General, and Human Rights Commissioner, as well as his own Liberal party and opposition Nationalist party, to refrain from proceeding with a controversial and divisive referendum on Sunday designed to seek the public’s consent for another referendum in November on whether or not to elect a National Constituent Assembly to re-write the country’s Constitution.

The referendums have been widely viewed within Honduran society as an attempt by Mr. Zelaya to change the Constitution to allow for his re-election, which is currently prohibited. Mr. Zelaya has also long voiced his desire to re-write the Constitution to transform Honduras into a participatory democracy (also known as “direct democracy”) and theoretically give the majority of Honduras’ people more of a voice in the governing of the country. Honduras is a representative democracy, with three branches of government. More than three-quarters of the population is poor, and half of it "indigent", living on less than one dollar a day.

During the past few weeks, Mr. Zelaya has increasingly isolated himself from his party and all the other governing institutions of Honduras, the business community, and much of civil society, including the Catholic and Evangelical churches. Last week, he abruptly fired the head of the Joint Chiefs of the armed forces, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, for refusing to support the referendum, which both the Congress and Supreme Court have pronounced to be illegal. Rallies of as many as 100,000 people have amassed in city streets opposing Mr. Zelaya’s polarizing strategy for breaking the status quo in the country.