John Fishel, lecturer of international and area studies, speaks Friday at the Oklahoma Memorial Union. Duke Lambert/The Daily.

On June 28, soldiers of the Honduran military stormed President Manuel Zelaya’s house and arrested him, exiling him to Costa Rica. Roberto Micheletti, former head of the Honduran Congress, was then installed as the interim president.

The international community condemned the event, with no country recognizing the government that succeeded Zelaya to power and most countries, save the United States, term Zelaya’s ouster as a military coup d’etat, according to the U.S. State Department’s Web site.

A panel of OU professors discussed the importance of the event and whether or not it should be labeled as a military coup d’etat Friday at the Oklahoma Memorial Union.

John Fishel, lecturer of international and area studies, said the ousting of Zelaya, except for his forced removal of the country, was legal and constitutional.

“Let me give you the bottom line of this whole talk,” said Fishel, a former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who spent much of his military career in Honduras. “It was not a coup, it was not even a non-military coup.”

Fishel said the event did not fit the definition of a coup d’etat, which he described as “the alteration of an existing government by a small group,” because four of the five branches of the constitutional government agreed to remove the president.

Fishel said Zelaya was removed from power because of his call for a constitutional referendum, which he said Zelaya was promoting in part to soften or ban term limits for presidents.

Fishel said the Honduran Constitution prohibits presidents from seeking re-election and that any politician who does so immediately loses the right to hold public office.

Fishel also said the constitution threatens loss of Honduran citizenship to anyone who incites, promotes or supports the continuation or re-election of a presidency. He also noted the final article of the constitution, which prevents the anti-repeat articles of the constitution from being repealed.

Charles Kenney, associate professor of political science, disagreed with Fishel’s stance, saying he believed the event to be a military coup d’etat and that both opposing forces of government acted outside of constitutional limits.

While Kenney agreed with Fishel that the constitution is clear in forbidding the extension of presidential term limits and that any politician who does so immediately loses the right to hold office, he noted it is not the only side of the problem.

“Of course Zelaya knew his own constitution,” Kenney said. “What we have, rather, is the proposal for a referendum, and it was actually around the proposal for the referendum that the crisis emerges.”

Kenney said the referendum mentioned nothing about extending term limits and would have asked the Honduran people if they wanted to have a constitutional convention.

Kenney said the problem lay in the fact that nothing in the Honduran Constitution explicitly stated the call for a referendum was illegal.

Kenney said while Zeleya’s call for a constitutional convention created a constitutional crisis, the actions that followed were unconstitutional. He said the Supreme Court did not have the authority to order the military to arrest Zelaya, and Congress could not remove him without an impeachment procedure.

Since Zelaya’s removal was not in accordance with the Honduran Constitution, his ouster should be termed a military coup d’etat, said Kenney.

Robin Grier, associate professor of economics and international and area studies, said if the U.S. declared the situation a military coup, all aid would be suspended to Honduras, which is a huge part of the nation’s gross domestic product.

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.