A generation ago the spectacle of a president being bundled out of a Latin American banana republic by his generals would barely have raised an eyebrow. Military coups were so common that they had almost become the normal way of changing governments. How times have changed. The Organisation of American States (OAS) yesterday gave Honduras 72 hours to return Manuel Zelaya to power or face suspension from the 34-nation body. President Obama has said that he regards Mr Zelaya as the legitimate President still. Spain and France have withdrawn their ambassadors and the EU announced that it would have no contact with the post-coup leaders in Honduras.

There has not been a military coup in Central America since soon after the end of the Cold War. The last was in Guatemala in 1993; the last in Honduras was more than 20 years ago. It is a measure of the extraordinary advance of democracy across a region once caricatured as the realm of strutting generals moving straight from their barracks to the presidential palace.

There is, nevertheless, irony in the universal condemnation of the dawn raid on Sunday that bundled Mr Zelaya out of his palace while still in pyjamas. He himself was largely responsible for the rising tensions beforehand. Defying the country’s ban on a second presidential term, he had announced that he proposed to stand for a further four years in November. His plan was ruled unconstitutional by the country’s highest court. Ignoring the ruling, he announced a referendum, counting on leftwingers and the poor, whose backing he sought as he moved his policies ever closer to those of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. He then dismissed the army chief when commanders refused to distribute ballot boxes. The coup leaders argued that they were acting only in support of the Honduran Congress, which voted unanimously to remove Mr Zelaya for “apparent misconduct” and violations of the Constitution.

An element of hypocrisy also runs through the condemnation of some Latin American leaders. President Chávez, who threatened to “bring down” any successor government in Tegucigalpa, himself seized power unconstitutionally, was briefly deposed by an abortive coup in 2002 and has since tried to change the Constitution to remain in office indefinitely. Daniel Ortega, the President in neighbouring Nicaragua, was a committed Marxist when he first came to power, determined to change the Constitution — and became the target of a guerrilla movement financed by the Reagan Administration to overthrow him.

Angry politicians in Honduras have promised to arrest Mr Zelaya if he returns. They are unlikely to stop him. The presidents of Argentina and Ecuador have already promised to accompany him. The White House, despite its distaste for the populist leftism that Mr Zelaya now espouses, is determined to break the old US habit of siding only with rightwingers who qualify as “our son of a bitch”. And Mr Zelaya, shrewdly, has now announced that he will not, after all, seek a second term. Whatever Hondurans’ quarrel with him, a military coup cannot be used to abrogate a democratic election — a stand pioneered years ago by the Commonwealth. The World Bank, the OAS and neighbouring states know that the age of the junta is over. It is time that the generals in Tegucigalpa understood this also.