Richard Lord

Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Bas­deo Pan­day says the mil­i­tary coup in Hon­duras should be seen as a warn­ing for T&T. Pan­day said this in re­sponse to ques­tions on Sun­day's blood­less coup, in which the mil­i­tary seized pow­er from Manuel Ze­laya, the de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly-elect­ed Pres­i­dent of the Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­try. He was tak­en to Cos­ta Ri­ca, and new in­ter­im leader, Rober­to Macheelet­ti, has im­posed a cur­few.

Pan­day said such de­vel­op­ments would oc­cur in any coun­try when the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic means of change were blocked.

"I have been say­ing that when you block the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic chan­nels for change, peo­ple are go­ing to re­sort to vi­o­lence. What has hap­pened in Hon­duras is a warn­ing for Trinidad. "Mr Man­ning is lucky he did not get his jet," Pan­day said. Asked if he was con­don­ing the coup, Pan­day said it was not a mat­ter for him to con­done or not to con­done. "That was a pe­riph­er­al is­sue." Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, in a state­ment hours af­ter the coup, had called for the im­me­di­ate resti­tu­tion of Ze­laya.

Mean­while, the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean States (ACS) has joined an in­creas­ing list of in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions which have con­demned the mil­i­tary coup on Sun­day morn­ing.

Hon­duran Pres­i­dent Manuel Ze­laya was oust­ed from pow­er by the mil­i­tary in a blood­less coup and tak­en to Cos­ta Ri­ca be­cause he was pro­ceed­ing with a ref­er­en­dum in de­fi­ance of the Supreme Court there, which ruled the ini­tia­tive to be il­le­gal. The ACS, which is head­quar­t­ed in Port-of-Spain, said it ad­hered to the po­si­tion of the Cen­tral Amer­i­can In­te­gra­tion Sys­tem (CISA), the Rio Group and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions that have con­demned "the vi­o­la­tion of the con­sti­tu­tion­al and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic or­der in Hon­duras."

The ACS added that it al­so con­demned the way the Hon­duras mil­i­tary per­son­nel treat­ed the coun­try's For­eign Min­is­ter, Pa­tri­cia Ro­das, and the Am­bas­sadors of Cu­ba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. "The sit­u­a­tion is a se­ri­ous vi­o­la­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al law, and the Vi­en­na Con­ven­tion on Diplo­mat­ic Re­la­tions. "This rup­ture of the con­sti­tu­tion­al or­der is un­ac­cept­able, and the ACS re­it­er­ates and de­mands his resti­tu­tion as pres­i­dent of the re­pub­lic."