Military Coup Against Democratically Elected President of Honduras

Kwame,
Don't have a dog in this fight, but you clearly started this thread with your mind made up about the feelings of your interwebz "enemies." It's just not very interesting...

 

With all due respect, what the hell are you babbling about? You give the distinct impression that you couldn't care less about Honduras and are only interested with starting a "fight" with god knows who. Why on earth would you honestly believe no one would care about a coup in Honduras? It just happened. It is being condemned from all sides of the political spectrum, from the government of the US, along with other governments throughout this hemisphere, all the way to the government of Cuba.

What is your point? I don't see one, except a desire for a needless argument about... what?

(insert a few "roll-eyes" into my post at random locations. I don't use the stupid things, but you make it damned tempting.)

 

The fact that you've already decided our stance for your little internetz tantrum is what's sad. You don't give two craps what any of us think of Honduras. Buh-bye.

 

Kwame -- this thread has nothing to do with Honduras and you know it. Conquistador has been the only one to add any insight to the Honduran situation. And I haven't seen anyone support the coup. Either here -- or politically.

So...do YOU support the coup? Yes or No. See how silly that is.

 

Well I don't support it.

I have to wonder whether the US suported it, but at this point I'll take Obama's denouncement as a "no" wrt to US support.

Conquistador, though we always agree on Latin American politics and theology, I think you might be being a bit too optimistic about the coup and the replacement guy they put in. Any more info on this?

 

I don't know enough about it, sometimes coups are a good thing, like they need one in Iran right now.

DD

 

I couldn't care less about Honduras and I doubt many other Americans care either.

Are they sitting on huge reserves of oil or natural gas? No
Do they have the power to change the price of oil and send our economy further down the gutter? No
Are they developing nuclear weapons? No
Are they threatening to wipe any of their neighbors off the face of the earth? No
Are they supporting terrorist organizations? No
Do they have the power to destabilize one of the most important regions in the world? No
Are they repressing millions of beautiful women? No

It should be fairly obvious as to why there isn't any public outrage or widespread media coverage on the coup. The public might start caring more if the price of bananas start to skyrocket.

 

And if your wondering if I support the coup or not. I SUPPORT IT.

[rquoter]Honduras Defends Its Democracy
Fidel Castro and Hillary Clinton object.
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

Hugo Chávez's coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation's constitution.

It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.

But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya's abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.

That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.

Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court's order.

The attorney general had already made clear that the referendum was illegal, and he further announced that he would prosecute anyone involved in carrying it out. Yesterday, Mr. Zelaya was arrested by the military and is now in exile in Costa Rica.

It remains to be seen what Mr. Zelaya's next move will be. It's not surprising that chavistas throughout the region are claiming that he was victim of a military coup. They want to hide the fact that the military was acting on a court order to defend the rule of law and the constitution, and that the Congress asserted itself for that purpose, too.

Mrs. Clinton has piled on as well. Yesterday she accused Honduras of violating "the precepts of the Interamerican Democratic Charter" and said it "should be condemned by all." Fidel Castro did just that. Mr. Chávez pledged to overthrow the new government.

Honduras is fighting back by strictly following the constitution. The Honduran Congress met in emergency session yesterday and designated its president as the interim executive as stipulated in Honduran law. It also said that presidential elections set for November will go forward. The Supreme Court later said that the military acted on its orders. It also said that when Mr. Zelaya realized that he was going to be prosecuted for his illegal behavior, he agreed to an offer to resign in exchange for safe passage out of the country. Mr. Zelaya denies it.

Many Hondurans are going to be celebrating Mr. Zelaya's foreign excursion. Street protests against his heavy-handed tactics had already begun last week. On Friday a large number of military reservists took their turn. "We won't go backwards," one sign said. "We want to live in peace, freedom and development."

Besides opposition from the Congress, the Supreme Court, the electoral tribunal and the attorney general, the president had also become persona non grata with the Catholic Church and numerous evangelical church leaders. On Thursday evening his own party in Congress sponsored a resolution to investigate whether he is mentally unfit to remain in office.

For Hondurans who still remember military dictatorship, Mr. Zelaya also has another strike against him: He keeps rotten company. Earlier this month he hosted an OAS general assembly and led the effort, along side OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, to bring Cuba back into the supposedly democratic organization.

The OAS response is no surprise. Former Argentine Ambassador to the U.N. Emilio Cárdenas told me on Saturday that he was concerned that "the OAS under Insulza has not taken seriously the so-called 'democratic charter.' It seems to believe that only military 'coups' can challenge democracy. The truth is that democracy can be challenged from within, as the experiences of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and now Honduras, prove." A less-kind interpretation of Mr. Insulza's judgment is that he doesn't mind the Chávez-style coup.

The struggle against chavismo has never been about left-right politics. It is about defending the independence of institutions that keep presidents from becoming dictators. This crisis clearly delineates the problem. In failing to come to the aid of checks and balances, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Insulza expose their true colors.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124623220955866301.html

[/rquoter]

 

Hey, Honduras is still worth cruelly exploiting. Perhaps for its bananas. Certainly the WSJ still thinks so, based on the biased article above.

 

I think Kwame might really be As'ad AbuKalil. If not, he at least shares a lot with AbuKalil, who is posessed with remarkable ability to sniff out all hypocrisy in the world but his own. As one individual described AbuKalil (AKA "The Angry Arab"),

[rquoter]
I suppose when your schtick is being Angry®, it’s not that important to be correct.

[/rquoter]

What I see in Honduras looks exactly like what Kwame has portrayed the situation to be in Iran, and vice versa. And the great individual hypocrisy? I see it too, but perhaps not in the same place that Kwame sees it.

 

When I first heard the coup on the radio on Monday, I thought "Uh Oh". At that point, I was really against it. And I saw the famous video of the unyielding soldiers marching in the streets and I was more sure it was horrible and evil.

Then I started reading things from committed Latin American leftists like Conquistador #11, and about 1,000 things like it from Guatemalans and other Latin Americans who are certainly no friend of American imperialism, and I said, "Hm..."

Then I read statements about what the supreme court and the legislatures have to say about the removal being legal and a result of Mel Zelya's illegalities, and I don't think that it can be 100% true but I do wonder.

Amd then I see the handful of people in the streets of Tegucigalpa and compare them to the hundreds of thousands all over Iran who are marching, and I wonder if it is somehow the photos are doctored, but I don't think so.

And right now I am pretty confused about the whole thing. I will say that I think the removal was illegal, which is necessarily bad. I also do think based on the qualitative and quantitative information I've seen, the people of Guatemala are for the whole not exactly pissed off about it (with the exception of a small minority), which confuses me and makes me wonder.

And I am still hopeful that Mel Zelaya will strike a deal where he will be able to return, and even if not I'm reasonable comfortable with the general belief that going forward the next scheduled election will occur and be relatively transparent. So to answer your question, I do condemn it, but I am confused that most of the Guatemalans don't and this in turn weakens my resolve in condemning it and confuses my thoughts.

If I saw several million people marching on the street, demanding Mel Zelaya's return or at least a new election so they could vote him back into power, and the Guatemalan version of the Basij beating the crap out of people, shooting them, and stabbing them, en masse I think I would be a lot less confused.

 

You're like of of the engines on Thomas the Tank Engine, but one of the minor characters. One that is constantly huffin' and puffin', trying to get the attention of the big engines.

 

Ottomaton, everyone makes mistakes. The coup happened in Honduras, not Guatemala.

We are really not getting enough info to know exactly what happened. Given the history of the region I tend to think that it is just another example of one of these countries run by a small group of wealthy families who don't want to share with the vast majority.

 

Well we have had the WSJ editorial page which is pretty much hard right.

For some balance let's have counterpunch.

*********
In this respect, media coverage of the recent military coup in Honduras is often misleading; even when it is presenting a critical standpoint towards the events. Concentrating on which words are used to characterize the policies conducted by President Zelaya might seem trivial at first sight. But any familiarity to the notion of ‘manufacturing of consent’, and how slight semantic tricks can be used to manipulate public opinion and support, is enough to realize the magnitude of certain omissions. Such oversights rely on the public’s widespread ignorance about some apparently minor legal intricacies in the Honduran Constitution.

For example, most reports have stated that Manuel Zelaya was ousted from his country’s presidency after he tried to carry out a non-binding referendum to extend his term in office. But this is not completely accurate. Such presentation of “facts” merely contributes to legitimizing the propaganda, which is being employed by the coup-makers in Honduras to justify their actions. This interpretation is widespread in US-American liberal environments, especially after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the coup is unacceptable, but that “all parties have a responsibility to address the underlying problems that led to [Sunday]’s events.” However, President Zelaya cannot be held responsible for this flagrant violation of the Honduran democratic institutions that he has tried to expand. This is what has actually happened:

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.

Furthermore, the Honduran Constitution says nothing against the conformation of an elected National Constituent Assembly, with the mandate to draw up a completely new constitution, which the Honduran public would need to approve. Such a popular participatory process would bypass the current liberal democratic one specified in article 373 of the current constitution, in which the National Congress has to approve with 2/3 of the votes, any reform to the 1982 Constitution, excluding reforms to articles 239 and 374. This means that a perfectly legal National Constituent Assembly would have a greater mandate and fewer limitations than the National Congress, because such a National Constituent Assembly would not be reforming the Constitution, but re-writing it. The National Constituent Assembly’s mandate would come directly from the Honduran people, who would have to approve the new draft for a constitution, unlike constitutional amendments that only need 2/3 of the votes in Congress. This popular constitution would be more democratic and it would contrast with the current 1982 Constitution, which was the product of a context characterized by counter-insurgency policies supported by the US-government, civil façade military governments and undemocratic policies. In opposition to other legal systems in the Central American region that (directly or indirectly) participated in the civil wars of the 1980s, the Honduran one has not been deeply affected by peace agreements and a subsequent reformation of the role played by the Armed Forces.

Recalling these observations, we can once again take a look at the widespread assumption that Zelaya was ousted as president after he tried to carry out a non-binding referendum to extend his term in office.

The poll was certainly non-binding, and therefore also not subject to prohibition. However it was not a referendum, as such public consultations are generally understood. Even if it had been, the objective was not to extend Zelaya’s term in office. In this sense, it is important to point out that Zelaya’s term concludes in January 2010. In line with article 239 of the Honduran Constitution of 1982, Zelaya is not participating in the presidential elections of November 2009, meaning that he could have not been reelected. Moreover, it is completely uncertain what the probable National Constituent Assembly would have suggested concerning matters of presidential periods and re-elections. These suggestions would have to be approved by all Hondurans and this would have happened at a time when Zelaya would have concluded his term. Likewise, even if the Honduran public had decided that earlier presidents could become presidential candidates again, this disposition would form a part of a completely new constitution. Therefore, it cannot be regarded as an amendment to the 1982 Constitution and it would not be in violation of articles 5, 239 and 374. The National Constituent Assembly, with a mandate from the people, would derogate the previous constitution before approving the new one. The people, not president Zelaya, who by that time would be ex-president Zelaya, would decide.

It is evident that the opposition had no legal case against President Zelaya. All they had was speculation about perfectly legal scenarios which they strongly disliked. Otherwise, they could have followed a legal procedure sheltered in article 205 nr. 22 of the 1982 Constitution, which states that public officials that are suspected to violate the law are subject to impeachment by the National Congress. As a result they helplessly unleashed a violent and barbaric preemptive strike, which has threatened civility, democracy and stability in the region.

It is fundamental that media channels do not fall into omissions that can delay the return of democracy to Honduras and can weaken the condemnation issued by strong institutions, like the United States government. It is also important that individuals are informed, so that they can have a critical attitude to media reports. Honduras needs democracy back now, and international society can play an important role in achieving this by not engaging in irresponsible oversimplifications.

Alberto Valiente Thoresen was born in San Salvador, El Salvador. He currently resides in Norway where he serves on the board of the Norwegian Solidarity Committee with Latin America. He wrote this column for Rebel Reports.


http://counterpunch.org/thorensen07012009.html

 

Sorry. Yes, Honduras, not Guatamala. To be honest, I've never been to any of the former states of the USCA, and all of those countries kind of blend together in my mind.