Word: referendums
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...presidential re-election. The Honduran crisis was sparked when Zelaya made noises about giving presidents a second term - a sign to many Hondurans that he wanted to take them down the path of his left-wing allies, like Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who recently won a referendum that allows indefinite re-election. When Zelaya last month defied a Supreme Court ban against a nonbinding plebiscite he'd called on constitutional change, the army whisked him away in his pajamas and flew him to forced exile in Costa Rica. (See pictures of the Honduras coup on LIFE.com...
...Hugo Chávez and quickly copied his formula for popularity: giving handouts to the poor and blaming all the country's problems on the rich. Amid rising crime and a spluttering economy, the establishment turned on Zelaya. The flashpoint came in June, when he called for a nonbinding referendum on changing the constitution to allow Presidents to stand for a second term. The Supreme Court ruled the vote illegal and soldiers whisked Zelaya away before it could take place, leaving Congressman Roberto Micheletti to be sworn in as the new President. (Read "Castro and Chávez: The Evil...
...Corrales says many Latin Presidents are feeling a similar sort of panic. Earlier this year, Chávez saw plummeting oil prices threaten to undermine his socialist revolution, which has enfranchised Venezuela's poor but has also raised fears about authoritarian rule. Chávez rushed through a constitutional referendum last February that lets him run for re-election indefinitely. Fernández's midterm defeat, says Corrales, may have leaders like Chávez "asking if they should ease up on their ideological hard line or ramp it up to neutralize opponents before it's too late." In Honduras...
...Politicos all over Latin America will be scrutinizing those mistakes as well. The Argentine poll was a referendum on Fernández's often confrontational leadership style - which voters and financial markets alike decided isn't all that well suited to rescuing South America's second-largest economy from the ravages of a global recession. The Fernández-Kirchner comeuppance may well be taken as a first sign that the economic downturn is reining in the region's increasingly powerful Presidents, especially the leftists who this decade have become a popular counter to U.S. political and economic hegemony...
Zelaya vowed to hold the referendum anyway, insisting that Honduras' grinding poverty stemmed from a constitution - written in 1982 at the height of that country's brutal repression of leftists - that rigs the game for the most powerful families and interests. When his military chief, citing the Supreme Court ruling, said last week that the armed forces opposed the vote, Zelaya had him fired. The Congress then began deliberations over whether Zelaya was still mentally fit to govern...