Honduras has been in crisis ever since President Manuel Zelaya was ousted by opponents who objected to his proposals for constitutional change.

The conflict reflects the battle between left and right that is raging throughout Latin America, argues George Philip, Professor of Comparative and Latin American Politics at the London School of Economics.

In Latin America, as elsewhere, constitutional conflicts tend to reflect battles for power.

The crisis in Honduras, triggered when Mr Zelaya sought to amend the constitution to allow presidential re-election, also appears to follow this pattern.

For some people, most prominently Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the conflict in Honduras is a battle between left and right.

According to this interpretation, the left, led by Mr Zelaya, is seeking a strong presidency able to lead a process of political and social transformation, while conservatives, like Roberto Micheletti, the interim president of Honduras, want a weaker executive, amply checked by the congress and the courts.

The conflict over presidential term limits, though not the only factor in making or inhibiting a strong presidency, at least partially reflects this difference of viewpoint.

The United States has a somewhat different perspective.

President Barack Obama is trying to show that his government is committed to democratic governance in Latin America whoever is involved.

He has pointedly been refusing to engage in a duel with Hugo Chavez, whether over Honduras or anything else.

For Mr Obama, the key issue is legitimation. He wants the US government to lose its historical reputation as a regional bully.

But Mr Obama wants to be a non-interventionist and a promoter of democracy as well as a good neighbour. Institutional conflicts within Latin America may make this more difficult.

Second terms

The issue of presidential re-election has recently become salient across the region.

Although all countries’ stories are different, there have already been a number of votes relating directly or indirectly to this issue.

"The slogan of the Mexican Revolution – ‘sufragio efectivo, no re-eleccion’ (an effective vote and no re-election) – was seen as democratising"

Historically, the idea of no re-election was intended to limit the advantages of presidential incumbency in countries where other forms of political accountability were weak.

Originally, presidents could do pretty much what they liked so long as they kept sufficient support within the military.

The slogan of the Mexican Revolution – ‘sufragio efectivo, no re-eleccion’ (an effective vote and no re-election) – was seen as democratising.

When democracy once again started to take root in Latin America in the 1980s, most national constitutions forbade immediate re-election, with second terms not permitted until after a waiting period, if at all.

The 1980s were a bad economic decade for Latin America and few incumbents had any prospect of re-election. The issue therefore tended to be put on hold.

In the 1990s, though, when the regional economy started to pick up, it returned with a vengeance.

Popular votes

Peru’s President Alberto Fujimori closed the national congress in 1992, organised elections for a new constituent assembly and had the new constitution approved by national plebiscite.

This new constitution, unlike the old, permitted a second consecutive election and Mr Fujimori stood again for election in 1995 and won.

His attempt to run for a third time, however, ended in disaster.

Constitutional changes during the 1990s also permitted a second consecutive presidential term in both Argentina and Brazil.

Argentine President Carlos Menem, once re-elected, considered running for a third term but then drew back.

In Colombia, the constitution has recently been changed to allow a second consecutive term and there are suggestions that President Alvaro Uribe is considering asking to be allowed to run yet again.

The issue of re-election became more politically polarising once Hugo Chavez was elected in Venezuela.

Mr Chavez used a series of plebiscites to bypass the existing congress and change the constitution.

The new constitution extended the presidential term from five years to six and permitted a single re-election.

Things changed further after Mr Chavez was successfully re-elected in 2006. He then called for a plebiscite on permitting a third presidential term.

He lost the initial vote in 2007 but then called a fresh vote on basically the same issue (there were a few differences) earlier this year, which he won.

The pattern of an incumbent president calling for a new constitution to strengthen the power of the presidency and permit a second term (or more) has also been adopted by Mr Chavez’s main South American allies – Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador.

Now we have the crisis in Honduras, and Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega has also just recently called for a change in the national constitution to permit presidential re-election.

It may seem anomalous that the re-election issue is so widely seen as important within Latin America.

There are, after all, ways of bypassing it. One is to use presidential relatives.

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was elected to the presidency of Argentina in 2007, following on immediately from her husband’s term.

Argentina’s Juan Peron was replaced as president by his wife Isabel upon his death in 1974, though her term was brief and disastrous.

However, Honduras’s particular conflict, while it has an institutional aspect, can also be seen as a further round in the conflict between Mr Chavez (and his supporters) and the region’s conservatives. </p

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