THE HONDURAN president was ousted in a military coup after he took steps to lift term limits and extend himself in office -- and across the Pacific Ocean, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s loyalists fell over one another to assure us that the coup virus will not contaminate faraway Manila.

Speaker Prospero Nograles, Secretary to the Cabinet Silvestre Bello III and Press Secretary Cerge Remonde immediately distanced GMA from the fate of her Honduran counterpart.

At least for now, however, the six-day-old coup seems to have fallen out of grace internationally, though it’s too soon to tell for sure.

Meanwhile, Honduras may have just given Arroyo the benefit of a dress rehearsal on how best to stay in power or, failing that, how best to isolate the new rulers.

At 5 a.m. on Sunday, June 28, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was roused from his sleep, awakened by gunfire, shouts and screams, and hammering at the door of the presidential residence.

The soldiers disarmed his guards and broke down the front door. Zelaya ran downstairs in his pajamas, holding a cell phone in his hand. Eight soldiers pointed their rifles at their commander in chief, warned him to drop the phone, and then grabbed it from his hand. They pushed him into a waiting van that brought him to the airport.

In 15 minutes, he was on board a plane --not knowing where he was being taken (at this point, recall Ferdinand Marcos jetting to Paoay and then landing in Hawaii).

In another 45 minutes, still in his pajamas, he landed in Costa Rica.

Later that day, the Honduran Congress installed their speaker, Roberto Micheletti, as new president (thus Nograles doth protest too much).

This was merely the coup de grâce in a battle over Zelaya’s maneuvering to extend himself as president.

In 1982, Honduras ended 10 years of military dictatorship and adopted a constitution that provided a single four-year term for its president.

It specifically barred “any citizen who has occupied [the presidency] under any title” to serve for a subsequent term.

Moreover, it expressly prohibited “any amendment, in any case whatsoever” of the provisions on the form of government, the national territory and the term of the president.

Zelaya became president in 2006 and was scheduled to step down in January 2010. With the presidential election coming up in November,

Zelaya wanted a referendum nonbinding, he emphasized -- to ask the people whether they would like to vote on whether to lift these term limits. (Notice the similarity with the Charter change maneuver in the Philippines: Just like House Resolution 1109, Zelaya’s referendum would not itself amend the Constitution.)

However, his referendum, scheduled on June 28, was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

He proceeded nonetheless, and when the military refused to help organize the vote, he fired the armed forces commander, General Romeo Vasquez.

The Supreme Court invalidated the firing and reinstated the general.

Days before the scheduled vote, when the electoral tribunal confiscated ballots to be used in the illegal referendum, Zelaya led his supporters in raiding an Air Force camp to retrieve the ballots. The week before the referendum, the Congress likewise declared the referendum illegal. By Sunday, Zelaya was bundled off in his pajamas.

As of this writing, the Honduran Supreme Court has issued a statement saying the military had acted to defend the law against “those who had publicly spoken out and acted against the Constitution’s provisions.” So has the country’s human rights commission.

Internationally, however, the tide has turned in Zelaya’s favor. US President Barack Obama called on Honduran officials “to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic charter."

The influential Organization of American States has called for Zelaya’s return and refused to recognize the new regime. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has led a chorus withdrawing recognition for the current Honduran government.

The similarities to Arroyo’s Charter change maneuver are uncanny.

First, the Charter change maneuver to lift term-limits. Then the sneaky referendum that purported to be merely consultative and preliminary, but which nonetheless effectively lays the groundwork for Zelaya’s ambitions.

The similarities end there, however. If you look beyond the legal formalities, Zelaya’s ouster more closely parallels Erap’s in 2001.

Though Zelaya came from the landed oligarchy and came to power on a conservative platform, he had an ideological epiphany halfway through his term and embraced Hugo Chavez’s brand of socialist populism. He thus antagonized the middle class and business elites, and relied on the support of labor unions and the poor.

That was the same alignment of social classes that converged at Edsa in 2001 --against Erap (former president Joseph Estrada) in January, for Erap in May.

Indeed, reminiscent of that Edsa 2, the Honduran Congress, in swearing in the new president, similarly relied on a resignation later allegedly signed by Zelaya (which he now disowns).

Yet why did the world accept Erap’s ouster in 2001 but not Zelaya’s in 2009?

Because appearances matter. Erap was ousted underneath a veneer of constitutionality: a vacancy declared by the vice president, a swearing-in by the chief justice, a Supreme Court decision ratifying everything after the fact.

Zelaya’s pre-coup maneuvers were brazenly unconstitutional, yet that was all seemingly erased at 5 a.m. of a Sunday morning, when the outright assault on the constitution was committed by tanks and armed soldiers.

It is this rising trend in favor of constitutional form, and not its substance, that fuels the continuing fascination with mobilizing giant crowds at protest rallies.

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