Coup in Honduras

The President of Honduras, Zelaya, has been kicked out by the army (sent into exile in Costa Rica) because he tried to extend his term of office; he was an ally of the President of Venezuala, Hugo Chavez, who is saying that he will overthrow any government that takes the place of the dethroned president.

 

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Wealthier Hondurans protest in favor of the coup and feel that the military coup is "democracy" while a majority of Hondurans probably oppose the coup but are intimidated by military violence. At least one killed. The poor tended to support President Manuel Zelaya.

Obama condemned the coup but it is believed that the US government had been coordinating with the coup plotters prior to the coup.

 

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He probably wouldn't have been able to pull it off, anyway

That attempt came in the form of a referendum submitted to the people. The Honduran Supreme Court ruled against it as unconstitutional, so Zelaya pushed forward with a nonbinding referendum. He was overthrown on the eve of the vote.

He angered the courts, army, congress and his own party by trying to hold a non-binding referendum which may have paved the way for him to change the constitution to run again when his term expired.

(Carroll)​

Honduran presidents are allowed only one term. To the other, I'm not sure Zelaya would have succeeded even if the referendum had passed and the Constitution appropriately tailored. His approval rating was down around 30%.

Interesingly, Zelaya plans to return to Honduras with several Central American "dignitaries" in tow; some suggest Argentinean President Cristina Kirchner will accompany him.
____________________

Notes:

Carroll, Rory. "Zelaya plans to return to Honduras to reverse coup". The Guardian. June 30, 2009. Guardian.co.uk. June 30, 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/30/honduras-manuel-zelaya-military-coup

 

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I know just how he feels, been the victim of many coups. I hope Zelaya has a safe and enjoyable vacation.

 

If Manuel Zelaya goes back to Honduras, he'd better be wearing a kevlar vest. The soldiers will be using him for target practice the moment he turns up on the street...

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The coup forces have shut down all or almost all media not aligned with the coup. Freedom to assemble has also been eliminated.

 

Zelaya has crossed back into Honduras backed by mobs of thousands of mostlty poorer Hondurans. Although accurate information does not exist and their are dueling domestic and international propaganda campaigns running in all probability a strong majority of Hondurans back Zelaya and believe that a coup has taken place while a strong majority of the rich/ the English speakers and the military oppose Zelaya and have at least half convinced themselves that the coup was constitutional. Will a civil war follow? Neither side wants a civil war but compromise is difficult when there are such different versions of reality.

It will be difficulty for Zelaya backers to accept the coup and it will be difficult for Zelaya oponents to allow Zelaya to become president again which would almost mean that they would have to admit to themselves that they backed a coup and that the coup accomplished nothing.

This unbridgeable huge gap between the interests of wealthier people and the interests of the poorer 70% of people is a serious tension everywhere in Central and South America. I hope the USA never gets this problem but the path the USA is on with it's idiotic trade policy is pushing the USA in the direction of becoming like the nations of Central and South America.

PS

That was BS propaganda disinformation.

 

From The Field:

The question that was to be poised to voters – it bears repeating - was this one:

"Do you think that the November 2009 general elections should include a fourth ballot box in order to make a decision about the creation of a National Constitutional Assembly that would approve a new Constitution?"

And the coup plotters’ justification for the military putsch included the repeated claims that can be summed up as, “we had to do it this way because the constitution didn’t give us a clear enough path to remove the president legally.”

Got that? It translates as: “Yes, our Constitution is flawed, so flawed that we had to burn it, but any attempt to change it by democratic means is a threat that requires us to violate it in order to save it.”

The subsequent debates over the interpretation of many of the Honduran Constitution’s 375 articles and how they may or not may not apply to the situation – a loud discussion that has not, after 23 days, convinced a single nation of the world to recognize the coup regime as a somehow legitimate government, because the pro-coup arguments are that specious – have been intended to obscure the central point: that the entire reason for the timing of the coup was to prevent the Honduran people from speaking as a nation.

The popular demand for a new constitution has not gone away. Indeed, it remains a central requirement from the highly informed and increasingly politicized working and poor majority in Honduras.

And it’s a sign of the density and dishonesty of so many international media correspondents that they repeatedly boil down a concept as sweeping as a Constitutional Convention for Honduras and all it would entail – the democratic reformation of a government in each of its branches – to the sideshow possibility that it might or might not include an end to the single-term limit on the country’s presidents, depending on what the elected citizens decide and whether voters then ratify it.

They’ve tried to make it seem like the conflict is about whether Zelaya himself could run for reelection, even though the proposed Constitutional Convention – if approved on November 29 to happen sometime after that date, the same day a new president w ould be elected, and if it permitted reelection of presidents – would nonetheless happen too late to allow Zelaya himself to pursue it. See how badly they’ve mangled the real story out of Honduras?

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/democra-phobia-fear-citizen-power-honduras

 

The Honduran constitution was written with specific prohibitions against the executive proposing or petitioning the government to amend the constitution with the purpose of extending the presidential term. Even fomenting a political movement, outside the government, with the intention of extending the term of the presidency is explicitly prohibited on the penalty of being immediately removed from office, banned from office and subject to imprisonment. He got off lucky. It's black and white and I can provide the specific quotes to the articles that state this (and have done this before).

It's patently ridiculous to assume that he didn't want to extend his term (or alter the constitution allowing his term to be extended) because his "non binding referendum" would not have carried the weight of law. The Honduran CEO doesn't have that power and is explicitly forbidden from trying to utilize that power. It would be like the president of the USA proposing and submitting to the people of the USA a non-binding amendment to our constitution. He doesn't have that power and such an attempt would be completely outside the amendment process and totally illegal. For doing so, any US president would be subject to our legal proceedings (impeachment and trial) for even attempting it. While the US president isn't barred from petitioning the people or the Congress to do so, the fact still remains that the Honduran constitution was written with full knowledge of Latin America's history of tyrants and sought to remove any possibility of allowing another one to come to power.

~String

 

His non binding referendum makes no mention of any specific changes to the constitution. Why would anyone who believes in democracy fear finding out if the majority of the people of Honduras would like to have a constitutional convention?

The Honduran Supreme Court of Justice, Attorney General, National Congress, Armed Forces and Supreme Electoral Tribunal have all falsely accused Manuel Zelaya of attempting a referendum to extend his term in office.

According to Honduran law, this attempt would be illegal. Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution clearly states that persons, who have served as presidents, cannot be presidential candidates again. The same article also states that public officials who breach this article, as well as those that help them, directly or indirectly, will automatically lose their immunity and are subject to persecution by law. Additionally, articles 374 and 5 of the Honduran Constitution of 1982 (with amendments of 2005), clearly state that: “it is not possible to reform the Constitution regarding matters about the form of government, presidential periods, re-election and Honduran territory”, and that “reforms to article 374 of this Constitution are not subject to referendum.”

Nevertheless, this is far from what President Zelaya attempted to do in Honduras the past Sunday and which the Honduran political/military elites disliked so much. President Zelaya intended to perform a non-binding public consultation, about the conformation of an elected National Constituent Assembly. To do this, he invoked article 5 of the Honduran “Civil Participation Act” of 2006. According to this act, all public functionaries can perform non-binding public consultations to inquire what the population thinks about policy measures. This act was approved by the National Congress and it was not contested by the Supreme Court of Justice, when it was published in the Official Paper of 2006. That is, until the president of the republic employed it in a manner that was not amicable to the interests of the members of these institutions.
http://counterpunch.com/thorensen07012009.html

 

Zelaya had no right to create a non-binding referendum. None. Only the legislature has that right. His actions were ruled unconstitutional by the first court. In their ruling they stated that only the legislature had that power. He broke with the court (and broke the law) and was going to go forward with the referendum regardless of their ruling.

~String

 

So you agree that the non binding referendum was not intended to allow Zelaya to run for re-election?

So, it was little more than an official poll. You're comfortable with the idea of a serving president being removed from office for this "offense"? Even though the military officers involved admitted what they did was against the law? Where is the law that says the president of Honduras cannot use the provisions of the Civil Participation Act of 2006?

The military officers who rushed deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya out of the country Sunday committed a crime but will be exonerated for saving the country from mob violence, the army's top lawyer said.

In an interview with The Miami Herald and El Salvador's elfaro.net, army attorney Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza acknowledged that top military brass made the call to forcibly remove Zelaya -- and they circumvented laws when they did it.

It was the first time any participant in Sunday's overthrow admitted committing an offense and the first time a Honduran authority revealed who made the decision that has been denounced worldwide.

''We know there was a crime there,'' said Inestroza, the top legal advisor for the Honduran armed forces. ``In the moment that we took him out of the country, in the way that he was taken out, there is a crime. Because of the circumstances of the moment this crime occurred, there is going to be a justification and cause for acquittal that will protect us.''

Zelaya was ousted in a predawn raid at his house Sunday after he vowed to defy a court order that ruled a nonbinding referendum to be held that day illegal. The leftist wealthy rancher had clashed with the attorney general, the Supreme Court, Congress and the military he commanded.

http://www.miamiherald.com/honduras/v-print/story/1125872.html

 

Actually, I don't.

I think it was the start of a long Machiavellian process to create a new constitution that would, ultimately, put him in the executive spot for longer than one term (a la: his idols, Chaves & Morales). Since the current constitution cannot be amended to accomplish this, he knew that he had to create a new one. Thus his actions as they were.

Are you actually debating with me this part of the issue? Did you also conveniently forget that the court system ruled it illegal? Or is this fact just inconvenient to your argument?

Absolutely. Read the WSJ article I posted: Honduran Political Crisis Continues

I couldn't care less what the military leaders said. Two full branches of the Honduran government ruled his actions illegal and ordered him removed.

Where's the tyranny? Have elections been canceled? Has a military junta taken over?

It was probably negated by the court ruling stating that his actions were illegal. But lets ignore that the Honduran court system has similar powers to the American one, as in, they are binding, legal and considered to be the supreme law of the land.

~String

 

The stated justification for his removal from power was that he was seeking to modify term limits. That justification apparently relies on the ability to read minds, since nothing he actually did would have done so directly.

The courts rulings were as clear as mud.

When the justice system and election authorities ruled that Zelaya could not ask voters whether or not they wanted to elect a constituent assembly, he said he would hold a ”non-binding survey” and that the National Institute of Statistics would be in charge of the poll.

”Do you think the November 2009 general elections should include a fourth ballot box in order to make a decision about the creation of a National Constituent Assembly that would approve a new constitution? Yes or No” the ballot read.

To do this, he invoked article 5 of the Honduran ”Civil Participation Act” of 2006. Under this law, all public employees have the right to call non-binding public consultations to inquire what the population thinks about policy measures.

If the ”yes” vote had won in the informal poll, which was to be held Jun. 28, a fourth ballot box (alongside the three for electing the president, lawmakers and local governments) would have been set up in the November elections for voters to elect delegates to a constituent assembly.

But the president found himself increasingly isolated in the endeavour. In the week leading up to the coup, the military refused to distribute the ballot boxes and provide security for the poll, in the first act of defiance towards their commander-in-chief. Zelaya then sacked the head of the armed forces, the Supreme Court ordered that he be reinstated, and the president refused to do so.

The legislature then reached a decision that appeared to address the crisis through democratic channels: in the early hours of Jun. 26 it created a special commission to investigate the conduct of the president, who was accused of ”failing to pay due attention to questions of national interest and of failing to comply with judicial rulings to the detriment of the rule of law.”

This process was based on article 42 of the constitution, which allows Hondurans to be stripped of their citizenship if they undermine the freedom to vote, falsify or forge electoral documents, or use fraudulent means to manipulate the people's will, and also forbids inciting, encouraging or supporting the reelection of a president.

The lawmakers also invoked article 205, which says the legislature has the authority to decide whether charges can be brought against the president, to approve or disapprove of the administrative conduct of the executive branch, and to name a special commission to investigate matters of national interest.

The commission asked for time to carry out its investigation. In the meantime, the Attorney General's Office and the Supreme Electoral Court warned that if the president went ahead with the Sunday, Jun. 28 poll, he would be violating the constitution on the above mentioned grounds, which would be sufficient reason for his removal.
http://www.australia.to/index.php?o...-coup-de-grace&catid=71:world-news&Itemid=201

These appear to be nothing but the desperate flailings of a governing elite determined to avoid even the possibility of a constitutional convention.

If Zelaya had the support of the military, he would still be in power. If he were corrupt, he could have easily gained the support of the military by sharing the spoils. As he did not have their support, he was doomed.

 

What don't you understand that even a attempt to hold any referendum to change the term of a Presidency by the President, is un-Constitutional and illegal under the Honduran Constitution, and that is what he tried orchestrate, and carry out.

 

What tortured logic do you use to get that out of the wording of the question "Do you think that the November 2009 general elections should include a fourth ballot box in order to make a decision about the creation of a National Constitutional Assembly that would approve a new Constitution?"

Your insistence that it was a black and white issue doesn't make it so. He was not a candidate for the upcoming election. The best he could have possibly have hoped for was that if the votes were in favor of allowing a vote on the formation of a National Constituent Assembly, and there were enough votes on the issue in November to allow the formation of said group to decide on a new constitution, they might have changed the number of terms a Honduran president would be allowed to serve. So he might have been allowed the chance to run again in the future. The Constituent Assembly might not have changed term limits, or they could have changed them, but written the law so that those who have served as president of Honduras were not eligible to run again under the new constitution. Hardly seems like a sure thing.

If the majority of the people of Honduras want a constitutional convention, they should get one. If nothing else, I think it is clear that the present constitution is wanting so far as the procedure for removing a sitting president is concerned

 

And your wanting it not to be a Black and White question doesn't make it so either, and for a fact I have the backing of the Honduran Constitution, and the vote of the Honduran Congress, and the Ruling of the Honduran Supreme Court, and they all disagree with you, it was a black and white Constitutional issue simple as that.

And as a fact the majority of the people don't want a constitutional convention, only Zelaya and his party.


String has posted that fact adnausim, and you dismiss it as irrelevant, the Law is the Law, and it must be answered to, and the Honduran Congress and the Supreme Court don't and didn't agree to said referendum, it didn't pass as a legslative bill, and did not recieve th emajority of support from the Constitutionally, and Democraticly elected represenitives of the People of Honduras.

 

Where in the Honduran constitution does it say the president cannot use the Civil Participation Act?

And you have poll results to back up this statement?

What String as posted is the contention that Zelaya was attempting to change term limits, and was ousted because that is illegal. All of the evidence I've found suggests that he called for a referendum on the possibility of a constitutional convention, was told that was illegal, so then decided to obey the letter of the law, and have a non binding vote on whether there should be a vote for having a Constituent Assembly. The grounds used to declare this illegal are far from clear, but Zelaya was warned that this too was considered illegal. The illegality of a non binding resolution pales in comparison to the illegal removal of a chief executive.

Not a single country in the world has yet recognized the post coup government as legitimate.

 

Christian Science Monitor, July 11:

Although Zelaya supporters have marched daily since his ouster, a CID-Gallup poll published Thursday showed that 41 percent of Hondurans found his ouster justifiable, compared to 28 percent who oppose the coup.

Wall Street Journal, July 10:

Complicating matters, Honduran media published a CID-Gallup poll that showed 41% of Hondurans said the coup was justified, while 28% were opposed. The survey, conducted between June 30 and July 4, supported anecdotal evidence of anger at Mr. Zelaya. While thousands of Hondurans take to the streets almost daily to protest the ouster, larger crowds often demonstrate in favor of the coup.

Washington Post, July 9:

According to results of a Gallup poll published here Thursday, 41 percent of Hondurans think the ouster was justified, with 28 opposed to it.

Reuters, July 9:

A CID-Gallup survey published in La Prensa newspaper on Thursday showed 41 percent of respondents considered his ouster justified versus 28 percent who were against it. The other 31 percent said they did not know.

 

None of those surveys asked the respondents if they thought there should be a constitutional convention. Edit: the pollsters were probably afraid to ask that question, since it seems to have the consequence of having the military hustle you out of the country by force.

A July 15 Gallup poll had slightly different results.

The nationwide survey — which was done after Zelaya was sent into forced exile in a military coup — shows Zelaya with 46 percent favorable opinion and 44 unfavorable, compared to 30 favorable and 49 unfavorable for Micheletti.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jQ47HikfV5jORm67rF1LxBSr0WswD99F5L601