The Organization of American States was originally founded to defend democracy across our hemisphere. It has now instead become a refuge for elected presidents who choose to abuse their power.

This syndicate is now in the misguided business of defending victimized presidents from supposed ‘gorillas’, instead of preventing them from becoming elected tyrants in the first place. These elected tyrants conveniently forget that ‘the majority’ is not their sole constituency, and thus should be specially subjected to the limits that the constitution and other institutional checks and balances place on them. In other words, the OAS is reacting to the symptoms instead of understanding the disease.

It is the respect for the laws, above the will of men (and in particular the will of the governing class), that makes us free. Democracy gets put through its strongest trial not during elections, but shortly after them. Democracy is preserved through checks and balances that guarantee not only the rights of the majority, but even more importantly of the minorities. There is no greater danger to freedom than providing extraordinary powers to a leader in defense of the majority that elected him. The greatest crimes against humanity have risen from this dynamic. Even the Greeks, who invented the concept of democracy, understood the risk in it turning into a tyranny of the majority. Political scientists throughout history have battled with allocating authority to the monarch without jeopardizing a people’s freedom.

Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and Zelaya’s current attempt in Honduras, justifies the concerns of these thinkers. These Latin-American neo-totalitarians use elections to reach power and then entrench themselves through one unconstitutional referendum after another, changing the constitution in their favor in the name of the majority. A change to allow indefinite reelection is one of the most common and dangerous. These plebiscites are a malign aberration that has weakened democracies throughout history. Let’s not forget Hitler abused the most fundamental human rights ‘democratically’. A similarly perverse doctrine popularized by Hugo Chavez endangers the freedom and democracy of the continent.

It is against this danger that the OAS should be taking a stand, not defending the “rights” of these elected tyrants who solely wish to remain in power indefinitely. It reflects the weaknesses in the system that Chavez, Morales, and Zelaya can violate Democratic principles without a reaction from the OAS to stop these abuses. Instead, it erroneously, or egotistically, responds when the attacks are on the presidential figure instead of the people or institutions that seek to balance power.

Thus, when I witness the raucous indignation from presidents about Zelaya’s circumstance, I can’t but ask myself whether they seek to protect us, or themselves. We need an OAS that disciplines standing presidents in defense of the people, but instead it leaves us at the mercy of the totalitarian tendencies spreading throughout the continent. For example, it is time to seriously discuss the use of referendums by presidents who want to be reelected indefinitely. No wonder that in defending the neo-totalitarianism of Zelaya, Uribe and Chavez have found their only point of concurrence.

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