Much of the Western world was outraged by the supposedly unconstitutional ouster in June of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya.
But this kind of political convulsion is pretty much normal in Honduras, where a popular YouTube video purports to show Zelaya aides carting the equivalent of $2-million out of the Central Bank a few days prior to his expulsion by the army.
What is – or should be – equally outrageous is the fact that during the past decade, rich nations, including Canada, lent Honduras vast sums of money, which created little benefit for anybody, since lenders recently ended up forgiving close to $4-billion of debt, without Latin America's second-poorest country getting perceptibly richer.
A better solution is to lend Honduras even more money, but this time along the lines of a modern Marshall Plan, in which lenders and borrowers jointly control the way in which the cash will be spent.
Honduras's most recent crisis happened because Mr. Zelaya wanted to be re-elected. But the country's 1982 constitution prohibits re-election, as well as any attempt to change the constitution in this area.
It's reasonable to think that a joint group of legal experts might have pointed out that a country that has an inflexible basic document will have to choose, at some point, between constitution and revolution, which is what Honduras got.
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