President of Honduras
The President of Honduras () officially known as the President of the Republic of Honduras (Spanish: "Presidente de la República de Honduras"), is the head of state and head of government of Honduras, and the Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. According to the 1982 Constitution of Honduras, the Government of Honduras consists of three branches: Executive, Legislative and Judicial. The President is the head of the Executive branch, their primary duty being to "Execute and enforce the Constitution, treaties and conventions, laws and other legal dispositions." The President is directly elected for a four year term.
2009 Honduran coup d'état
Soon after the coup, U.S. President Barack Obama stated: "We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there." He stated: "It would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, however, equivocated, saying that "We do think that this has evolved into a coup" and noting that under U.S. law, officially declaring a coup would oblige the U.S. to cut off most foreign aid to Honduras." Cutting off aid was seen as a possibility in the days after the coup, and State Department Director of Policy Planning Anne-Marie Slaughter urged Clinton to "take bold action" and to "find that [the] coup was a 'military coup' under U.S. law." Nevertheless, Clinton did not do so, and the U.S. never formally declared that a coup had occurred. By November 2009, the U.S. "focused on pushing for elections" in the country. In September 2009, the Board of the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation, headed by Clinton, cut off $11 million in aid to the Honduran government in the wake of the coup, and suspended another $4 million in planned contributions to a road project. From 2009 to mid-2016, however, the U.S. provided about $200 million in military and police aid to Honduras, a controversial decision given the violence in Honduras and the government's human rights violations.