It marked a clear break from the coups and subsequent dictatorships installed to defend economic elites that had cast a long shadow across Latin America.
As had already been the case after the military coups in Brazil in 1964 and then in Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentina, and as was to be the case latterly in modern Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, the military and police torturers were ready with their electrodes, thumbscrews and waterboarding equipment to defend "western Christian civilisation".
After leaving the judiciary, he moved with his family to New Zealand, later returning to Fiji, his experience of relocation mirroring that of many families torn from Fiji since its several coups.
In reality, the real anti-democratic menace comes from the US's own allies, who launched abortive coups against both Chávez and Correa – and successful ones in Honduras in 2009 and Paraguay last year.
Since I moved to Ghana in February as west Africa correspondent for the Guardian and Observer, there have been two military coups.
We used to have military coups every 10 years and Erdoğan pushed back 70 years of military domination".
All they seem to have done, so far, is drag the country back to its old cycle of intermittent coups and torn-up constitutions.Malaysia, Singapore and Cambodia are, nominally, multi-party democracies.
Until 1999 military coups were more prevalent than ballots.
Warning Mr Obasanjo against imposing a state of emergency, Mr Tinubu suggested that students of history would see parallels with the 1960s, when the federal government's declaration of an emergency in the south-west led to military coups and civil war.
It was the latest in a series of coups for UKIP.
There are elections, coups, wars, bankruptcies and tsunamis.
