Here’s what Grandin says about the constitutional pretext for the coup:

“For those who presume to rule behind the scenes, Zelaya took a step too far when he began to push for the convocation of a constituent assembly in order to democratize Honduras’s notoriously exclusionary political system. Expectedly, these efforts were opposed by the national Congress and the Supreme Court, both of which are controlled by an inbred clique of career politicians and judges invested in keeping Honduran politics restricted–including members of Zelaya’s Liberal Party. For its part, the US media seem intent on reporting on events in Honduras through the prism of its obsession with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. The New York Times, for instance, ran an op-ed by free-market ideologue Alvaro Vargas Llosa, who claimed that the most unfortunate aspect of the coup is not that it derailed Honduran democracy but–wait for it–that it has allowed Chávez to defend democracy and thus claim the “moral high ground.” Vargas Llosa describes Zelaya as a man of privilege, an “heir to the family fortune” who had “devoted decades to his agriculture and forestry enterprises” and who had run for president on a conservative platform that included supporting CAFTA. Misleadingly, Vargas Llosa attributes Zelaya’s political turn not to the absolute failure of CAFTA and the fiasco of the “war on drugs” but to Chávez’s seductions. The US media have also falsely yet unanimously presented Zelaya’s moves as a power grab, an effort to end term limits to allow him to run for re-election. But the referendum Zelaya was pushing–which prompted the coup–asked citizens only if there should be a vote on “whether to hold a Constituent National Assembly that will approve a new political Constitution.” In other words, Hondurans weren’t being asked to vote on term limits or even on revising the Constitution. They were simply being asked to vote on whether or not to have a vote on revising the Constitution, with the terms of that revision being left to an elected assembly.”

Signing off. Thanks for the chat, Flash.

If you can find the entire terms of the referendum, I would like to see them, but as far as a know it was designed keep him in power and would have set up a new assembly to facilitate that.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/…..index.html

“..while many major news outlets in the US, including the Miami Herald, Wall St. Journal and Washington Post, said an impetus for the coup was specifically Zelaya’s plans for a vote to allow him to extend his term in office, the actual ballot question was to be: “Do you agree that, during the general elections of November 2009 there should be a fourth ballot to decide whether to hold a Constituent National Assembly that will approve a new political constitution?”

Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but the referendum that was halted by the military coup included a whole host of proposed constitutional changes. It wasn’t just about term limits,no?