A 'Coup' in Honduras? Nonsense.
Don't believe the myth. The arrest of President Zelaya represents the triumph of the rule of law.
By Octavio Sánchez
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0702/p09s03-coop.htmlTegucigalpa, Honduras - Sometimes, the whole world prefers a lie to the truth. The White House, the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and much of the media have condemned the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya this past weekend as a coup d'état.
That is nonsense.
In fact, what happened here is nothing short of the triumph of the rule of law.
To understand recent events, you have to know a bit about Honduras's constitutional history. In 1982, my country adopted a new Constitution that enabled our orderly return to democracy after years of military rule. After more than a dozen previous constitutions, the current Constitution, at 27 years old, has endured the longest.
It has endured because it responds and adapts to changing political conditions: Of its original 379 articles, seven have been completely or partially repealed, 18 have been interpreted, and 121 have been reformed.
It also includes seven articles that cannot be repealed or amended because they address issues that are critical for us. Those unchangeable articles include the form of government; the extent of our borders; the number of years of the presidential term; two prohibitions – one with respect to reelection of presidents, the other concerning eligibility for the presidency; and one article that penalizes the abrogation of the Constitution.
During these 27 years, Honduras has dealt with its problems within the rule of law. Every successful democratic country has lived through similar periods of trial and error until they were able to forge legal frameworks that adapt to their reality. France crafted more than a dozen constitutions between 1789 and the adoption of the current one in 1958. The US Constitution has been amended 27 times since 1789. And the British – pragmatic as they are – in 900 years have made so many changes that they have never bothered to compile their Constitution into a single body of law.
Under our Constitution, what happened in Honduras this past Sunday? Soldiers arrested and sent out of the country a Honduran citizen who, the day before, through his own actions had stripped himself of the presidency.
These are the facts: On June 26, President Zelaya issued a decree ordering all government employees to take part in the "Public Opinion Poll to convene a National Constitutional Assembly." In doing so, Zelaya triggered a constitutional provision that automatically removed him from office.
Constitutional assemblies are convened to write new constitutions. When Zelaya published that decree to initiate an "opinion poll" about the possibility of convening a national assembly, he contravened the unchangeable articles of the Constitution that deal with the prohibition of reelecting a president and of extending his term. His actions showed intent.
Our Constitution takes such intent seriously. According to Article 239: "No citizen who has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President. Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform [emphasis added], as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years."
Notice that the article speaks about intent and that it also says "immediately" – as in "instant," as in "no trial required," as in "no impeachment needed."
Continuismo – the tendency of heads of state to extend their rule indefinitely – has been the lifeblood of Latin America's authoritarian tradition. The Constitution's provision of instant sanction might sound draconian, but every Latin American democrat knows how much of a threat to our fragile democracies continuismo presents. In Latin America, chiefs of state have often been above the law. The instant sanction of the supreme law has successfully prevented the possibility of a new Honduran continuismo.
The Supreme Court and the attorney general ordered Zelaya's arrest for disobeying several court orders compelling him to obey the Constitution. He was detained and taken to Costa Rica. Why? Congress needed time to convene and remove him from office. With him inside the country that would have been impossible. This decision was taken by the 123 (of the 128) members of Congress present that day.
Don't believe the coup myth. The Honduran military acted entirely within the bounds of the Constitution. The military gained nothing but the respect of the nation by its actions.
I am extremely proud of my compatriots. Finally, we have decided to stand up and become a country of laws, not men. From now on, here in Honduras, no one will be above the law.
Octavio Sánchez, a lawyer, is a former presidential adviser (2002-05) and minister of culture (2005-06) of the Republic of Honduras.
Banana Democrats
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=331168876783926During his campaign, President Obama made a big deal of criticizing leaders who are elected democratically but don't govern democratically. He's had a chance to show that it mattered in Honduras. He didn't.
That's the sorry story as Honduras' now ex-president, Mel Zelaya, last Thursday defied a Supreme Court ruling and tried to hold a "survey" to rewrite the constitution for his permanent re-election. It's the same blueprint for a rigged political system that's made former democracies like Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador into shells of free countries.
Zelaya's operatives did their dirt all the way through. First they got signatures to launch the "citizen's power" survey through threats — warning those who didn't sign that they'd be denied medical care and worse. Zelaya then had the ballots flown to Tegucigalpa on Venezuelan planes. After his move was declared illegal by the Supreme Court, he tried to do it anyway.
As a result of his brazen disregard for the law, Zelaya found himself escorted from office by the military Sunday morning, and into exile. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro rushed to blame the U.S., calling it a "yanqui coup."
President Obama on Monday called the action "not legal," and claimed that Zelaya is still the legitimate president.
There was a coup all right, but it wasn't committed by the U.S. or the Honduran court. It was committed by Zelaya himself. He brazenly defied the law, and Hondurans overwhelmingly supported his removal (a pro-Zelaya rally Monday drew a mere 200 acolytes).
Yet the U.S. administration stood with Chavez and Castro, calling Zelaya's lawful removal "a coup." Obama called the action a "terrible precedent," and said Zelaya remains president.
In doing this, the U.S. condemned democrats who stood up to save their democracy, a move that should have been hailed as a historic turning of the tide against the false democracies of the region.
The U.S. response has been disgraceful. "We recognize Zelaya as the duly elected and constitutional president of Honduras. We see no other," a State Department official told reporters.
Worse, the U.S. now contemplates sanctions on the tiny drug-plagued, dirt-poor country of 7 million, threatening to halt its $200 million in U.S. aid, immigration accords and a free-trade treaty if it doesn't put the criminal Zelaya back into office.
Not even Nicaragua, a country the State Department said committed a truly fraudulent election, got that. Nor has murderous Iran gotten such punishment, even as it slaughters Iranian democrats in the streets. But tiny Honduras must be made to pay.
We understand why the White House is so quick to call this a "coup" and to jump to the side of Hugo Chavez. The Venezuelan despot has made political hay against the U.S. over its premature recognition of the Venezuelan coup leaders who tried to overthrow Chavez in 2002. Obama wants to avoid that this time.
The White House also wants to mollify the morally corrupted Organization of American States, which, by admitting Cuba, is no longer an organization of democracies and now, through its radical membership, tries to dictate how other countries run themselves.
Such a response says that democracy effectively ends with elections. It says rule of law is irrelevant and that rulers have rights, not responsibilities. But if leaders can't be held accountable, they should be removed, as happened in Honduras.
If the U.S. does hit Honduras with sanctions, it will earn ill will in the country lasting for years. It will further erode U.S. moral authority and cost us influence in the region — becoming an embarrassing footnote in the history of U.S.-Latin American relations.
Is that what the U.S. wants? It's time for a more sophisticated definition of democracy — one that includes the rule of law and the will of the people.
Honduran Congress: Not a Coup, Former President Broke and Ignored Laws
Jason Poblete
http://jasonpoblete.com/2009/06/29/honduran-congress-not-a-coup-former-president-broke-and-ignored-laws/The Obama Administration yesterday was quick to call the events in Honduras a coup. What has gone underreported, or not reported at all in the media or recognized by the Obama Administration, is that the democratically-elected Congress unanimously approved the change in leadership and subsequent impeachment of the former Honduran President. If this was a constitutionally correct action, why has the Obama Administration been so quick to judge and condemn?
According to senior Congressional officials, this was not a coup, but a “constitutional succession” based on the Honduran Constitution and the laws. The new leaders stated that there will be scheduled elections in January 2010 and that they have no intent to stay in power “one minute more” than the constitutionally required time. The former President, Manuel Zelaya, says he has done nothing wrong. Yet the Congressional resolution impeaching him makes some rather serious allegations including violating the rule of law.
As if things were not complicated enough, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, an ally of the impeached president, is threatening to attack the current government of Honduras with military force if the former President is not restored to power. If Chavez were to do that, in theory, he would be violating several Organization of American States (OAS) Charter tenets including Article 28, “Every act of aggression by a State against the territorial integrity or the inviolability of the territory or against the sovereignty or political independence of an American State shall be considered an act of aggression against the other American States”. It would put the U.S. and the Obama Administration in an interesting geopolitical predicament.
Rather than rush to judgment, U.S. and OAS officials should take a close and hard look at all of the events that have transpired in the past few days and ascertain whether the Honduran Congress was acting consistent with its power and mandate. Honduras is a democratic state with an elected Congress and a Supreme Court.
No doubt this is a complicated diplomatic matter, but folks should not lose sight that the Honduran people understand first-hand the many hardships foisted on the country by the socialists and Cubans during the Cold War. They do not want a repeat performance. As long as the Congress and Attorney General are following the laws, they deserve the benefit of the doubt. And, for the moment, a majority of the citizens of the country seem to support their leaders in Congress.
The Honduran people need to work this out, on their own, without outside interference from any power. The OAS should, frankly, butt out. It does not seem as if it were invited to meddle. It is this outside interference from the likes of the OAS, Venezuela and other Bolivarian Axis countries, that may have been a major contributing factor to these events. Maybe the U.S. and the OAS, in addition to insisting on rule of law and peaceful actions by Honduran officials, should also focus that same passion on Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia; and advise them to stop interfering in Honduran affairs.
For a somewhat related piece on recent events in Latin America, and how issues in other regions of the world many impact in the Western Hemisphere, be sure to read the following item: Iran Will Use Latin America to Attack US & Israel – IICC. This study was prepared by the The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Israel.
Mary O’Grady’s piece at the Wall Street Joural, also worth a read: Honduras Defends Its Democracy: Fidel Castro and Hillary Clinton Object.
Honduras Defends Its Democracy Fidel Castro and Hillary Clinton object.
Mary O'Grady
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124623220955866301.htmlHugo 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.
The Wages of Chavismo
The Honduran coup is a reaction to Chávez's rule by the mob.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124640649700876791.html#mod=djemEditorialPage
As military "coups" go, the one this weekend in Honduras was strangely, well, democratic. The military didn't oust President Manuel Zelaya on its own but instead followed an order of the Supreme Court. It also quickly turned power over to the president of the Honduran Congress, a man from the same party as Mr. Zelaya. The legislature and legal authorities all remain intact.
We mention these not so small details because they are being overlooked as the world, including the U.S. President, denounces tiny Honduras in a way that it never has, say, Iran. President Obama is joining the U.N., Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and other model democrats in demanding that Mr. Zelaya be allowed to return from exile and restored to power. Maybe it's time to sort the real from the phony Latin American democrats.
The situation is messy, and we think the Hondurans would have been smarter -- and better off -- not sending Mr. Zelaya into exile at dawn. Mr. Zelaya was pressing ahead with a nonbinding referendum to demand a constitutional rewrite to let him seek a second four-year term. The attorney general and Honduran courts declared the vote illegal and warned he'd be prosecuted if he followed through. Mr. Zelaya persisted, even leading a violent mob last week to seize and distribute ballots imported from Venezuela. However, the proper constitutional route was to impeach Mr. Zelaya and then arrest him for violating the law.
Yet the events in Honduras also need to be understood in the context of Latin America's decade of chavismo. Venezuela's Hugo Chávez was democratically elected in 1998, but he has since used every lever of power, legal and extralegal, to subvert democracy. He first ordered a rewrite of the constitution that allowed his simple majority in the national assembly grant him the power to rule by decree for one year and to control the judiciary.
In 2004 he packed the Supreme Court with 32 justices from 20. Any judge who rules against his interests can be fired. He made the electoral tribunal that oversees elections his own political tool, denying opposition requests to inspect voter rolls and oversee vote counts. The once politically independent oil company now hires only Chávez allies, and independent television stations have had their licenses revoked.
Mr. Chávez has also exported this brand of one-man-one-vote-once democracy throughout the region. He's succeeded to varying degrees in Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina and Nicaragua, where his allies have stretched the law and tried to dominate the media and the courts. Mexico escaped in 2006 when Felipe Calderón linked his leftwing opponent to chavismo and barely won the presidency.
In Honduras Mr. Chávez funneled Veneuzelan oil money to help Mr. Zelaya win in 2005, and Mr. Zelaya has veered increasingly left in his four-year term. The Honduran constitution limits presidents to a single term, which is scheduled to end in January. Mr. Zelaya was using the extralegal referendum as an act of political intimidation to force the Congress to allow a rewrite of the constitution so he could retain power. The opposition had pledged to boycott the vote, which meant that Mr. Zelaya would have won by a landslide.
Such populist intimidation has worked elsewhere in the region, and Hondurans are understandably afraid that, backed by Chávez agents and money, it could lead to similar antidemocratic subversion there. In Tegucigalpa yesterday, thousands demonstrated against Mr. Zelaya, and new deputy foreign minister Marta Lorena Casco told the crowd that "Chávez consumed Venezuela, then Bolivia, after that Ecuador and Nicaragua, but in Honduras that didn't happen."
It's no accident that Mr. Chávez is now leading the charge to have Mr. Zelaya reinstated, and on Monday the Honduran traveled to a leftwing summit in Managua in one of Mr. Chávez's planes. The U.N. and Organization of American States are also threatening the tiny nation with ostracism and other punishment if it doesn't readmit him. Meanwhile, the new Honduran government is saying it will arrest Mr. Zelaya if he returns. This may be the best legal outcome, but it also runs the risk of destabilizing the country. We recall when the Clinton Administration restored Bertrand Aristide to Haiti, only to have the country descend into anarchy.
As for the Obama Administration, it seems eager to "meddle" in Honduras in a way Mr. Obama claimed was counterproductive in Iran. Yet the stolen election in Iran was a far clearer subversion of democracy than the coup in Honduras. As a candidate, Mr. Obama often scored George W. Bush's foreign policy by saying democracy requires more than an election -- a free press, for example, civil society and the rule of law rather than rule by the mob. It's a point worth recalling before Mr. Obama hands a political victory to the forces of chavismo in Latin America.
Honduras at the Tipping Point
Why is the U.S. not supporting the rule of law?
Mary O'Grady
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124683595220397927.htmlHundreds of emails from Hondurans flooded my in-box last week after I reported on the military's arrest of President Manuel Zelaya, as ordered by the Supreme Court, and his subsequent banishment from the country.
Mr. Zelaya's violations of the rule of law in recent months were numerous. But the tipping point came 10 days ago, when he led a violent mob that stormed a military base to seize and distribute Venezuelan-printed ballots for an illegal referendum.
All but a handful of my letters pleaded for international understanding of the threat to the constitutional democracy that Mr. Zelaya presented. One phrase occurred again and again: "Please pray for us."
Hondurans have good cause for calling on divine intervention: Reason has gone AWOL in places like Turtle Bay and Foggy Bottom. Ruling the debate on Mr. Zelaya's behavior is Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, who is now the reigning international authority on "democracy."
Mr. Chávez is demanding that Mr. Zelaya be reinstated and is even threatening to overthrow the new Honduran president, Roberto Micheletti. He's leading the charge from the Organization of American States (OAS). The United Nations and the Obama administration are falling in line.
Is this insane? You bet. We have fallen through the looking glass and it's time to review how hemispheric relations came to such a sad state.
The story begins in 2004, when Mr. Chávez was still an aspiring despot and the U.S. pursued a policy of appeasement toward him. Not surprisingly, that only heightened his appetite for power.
Mr. Chávez had already rewritten the Venezuelan Constitution, taken over the judiciary and the national electoral council (CNE), militarized the government, and staked out an aggressive, anti-American foreign policy promising to spread his revolution around the hemisphere.
Many Venezuelans were alarmed, and the opposition had labored to collect signatures for a presidential recall referendum permitted under the constitution. As voting day drew near, Mr. Chávez behaved as if he knew his days were numbered. The European Union refused to send an observer team, citing lack of transparency. The OAS did send observers, and in the months and weeks ahead of the vote mission chief Fernando Jaramillo complained bitterly about the state's intimidation tactics against the population. Mr. Chávez gave OAS Secretary General César Gaviria an ultimatum: Either get Mr. Jaramillo out of the country or the referendum would be quashed. Mr. Chávez was appeased. Mr. Jaramillo was withdrawn.
The Carter Center was also invited to "observe," and former President Jimmy Carter was welcomed warmly by Mr. Chávez upon his arrival in Venezuela.
A key problem, beyond the corrupted voter rolls and government intimidation, was that Mr. Chávez did not allow an audit of his electronic voting machines. Exit polls showed him losing the vote decisively. But in the middle of the night, the minority members of the CNE were kicked out of the election command center. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Chávez claimed victory. There was never a credible audit of the paper ballots against the tallies in the voting machines.
Mr. Carter's approval notwithstanding, the proper U.S. and OAS response was obvious: The process had been shrouded in state secrets and therefore it was impossible to endorse or reject the results. Venezuelan patriots begged for help from the outside world. Instead, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, Roger Noriega, and the OAS blessed the charade.
There was never any explanation for the blind endorsement, but behind the scenes there were claims that Mr. Chávez threatened to call his militia to the streets and spill blood. The oil fields were to be burned. To this day, the opposition contends that the U.S. and Mr. Gaviria made a cold calculation that caving in to Mr. Chávez would avoid violence.
Predictably, Washington's endorsement of the flawed electoral process was a green light. Mr. Chávez grew more aggressive, emboldened by his "legitimate" status. He set about using his oil money to destabilize the Bolivian and Ecuadorean democracies and to help Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and Argentina's Cristina Kirchner get elected. Soviet-backed Fidel Castro was able to intimidate his neighbors in the 1960s and '70s, and Mr. Chávez has done the same thing in the new millennium. This has given him vast power at the OAS.
Hondurans had the courage to push back. Now Chávez-supported agitators are trying to stir up violence. Yesterday afternoon airline service was suspended in Tegucigalpa when Mr. Zelaya tried to return to the country and his plane was not permitted to land. There were reports of violence between his backers and troops.
This is a moment when the U.S. ought to be on the side of the rule of law, which the Honduran court and Congress upheld. If Washington does not reverse course, it will be one more act of appeasement toward an ambitious and increasingly dangerous dictator.
Honduras Supreme Court Judge Defends President Ouster
By Joshua Goodman and Blake Schmidt
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=axGENUiy9yKsHonduras’s military acted under judicial orders in deposing President Manuel Zelaya, Supreme Court Justice Rosalinda Cruz said, rejecting the view of President Barack Obama and other leaders that he was toppled in a coup.
“The only thing the armed forces did was carry out an arrest order,” Cruz, 55, said in a telephone interview from the capital, Tegucigalpa. “There’s no doubt he was preparing his own coup by conspiring to shut down the congress and courts.”
Cruz said the court issued a sealed arrest order for Zelaya on June 26, charging him with treason and abuse of power, among other offenses. Zelaya had repeatedly breached the constitution by pushing ahead with a vote about rewriting the nation’s charter that the court ruled illegal, and which opponents contend would have paved the way for a prohibited second term.
She compared Zelaya’s tactics, including his dismissal of the armed forces chief for obeying a court order to impound ballots to be used in the vote, with those of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
“Some say it was not Zelaya but Chavez governing,” she said.
Arrest Order
The arrest order she cited, approved unanimously by the court’s 15 justices, was released this afternoon along with documents pertaining to a secret investigation that went on for weeks under the high court’s supervision.
Zelaya said yesterday he had no plans to seek re-election when his four-year term ends in January. In an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais the day before his overthrow, he said the non-binding vote, which included a question on allowing re- election, would only benefit his successor.
Cruz acknowledged that the interim government faced a “very difficult” task trying to sway the U.S. and other countries to recognize its authority.
“But as a sovereign and independent nation, we have the right to freely decide to remove a president who was violating our laws,” she said. “Unfortunately our voice hasn’t been heard.”
The United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution yesterday calling for Zelaya’s reinstatement and asking that no government recognize the interim replacement appointed by congress, Roberto Micheletti. The U.S. was a co-sponsor of the measure.
OAS Demand
The U.S. also joined 33 other countries in an emergency session of the Organization of American States yesterday to demand Honduras reinstate Zelaya within 72 hours or face suspension from the Washington-based group. Zelaya said he will return to the country this week, with OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza and Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez.
Cruz said the military decided to shuttle Zelaya out of the country for his safety and that of other Hondurans because riots would’ve erupted had he been held for trial.
“If he had been allowed to stay in the country, there would’ve been blood on the streets,” she said.
Although lawmakers were moving toward impeachment proceedings against Zelaya for trying to conduct the poll, the ouster allows him to portray himself as a “victim,” said Rafael Lopez, a senior Honduras adviser to the Washington-based International Foundation for Electoral Systems.
Forced Exile
“No country on earth” can legally force an elected official into exile without a formal proceeding, he added. “The Honduran government can’t just take any citizen to an airport and kick them out, let alone a president.”
David Matamoros, a member of Honduras’ Supreme Electoral Tribunal, also defended the military’s action.
He said Zelaya originally called the vote a plebiscite, then, when that was barred, shifted to describing it as a poll, creating uncertainty as to its legal standing and his intent. No government agency was willing to conduct the vote, he said. All the ballots and equipment for the illegal poll were flown in on a Venezuelan plane, he said. The court ordered the materials confiscated.
Still, he acknowledged the interim government’s hold on power was tenuous.
“Now we have the international problem,” he said in a phone interview from Tegucigalpa. “How do we convince people this was in our best interest after the president was kicked out of the country in his pajamas?”
Clinton's high-wire act on Honduras
US backs Costa Rica's Arias to mediate the crisis, wary of being seen as interfering in the region – as it has in the past.
By Howard LaFranchi
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0708/p02s01-usfp.htmlThe Obama administration waded deeper into the political crisis in Honduras Tuesday, anxious to see the hemisphere's latest conflict resolved – but wary of appearing like the hegemonic power of old that imposed its will on smaller neighbors.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with ousted Honduran President Miguel Zelaya in Washington Tuesday, signaling unequivocal US support for Mr. Zelaya's return to office.
But Mrs. Clinton also announced that Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his role in brokering an end to Central America's civil wars, will serve as international mediator for resolving the Honduran crisis. Both Zelaya and interim president Roberto Micheletti accept Arias's mediation role, Clinton said.
The naming of Mr. Arias brings a respected and seemingly neutral force into the picture while keeping the US profile low, some regional analysts say. But it also raises questions about what mandate he will have to resolve the 10-day-old standoff.
"It was a great idea to turn to Oscar Arias, but a lot still depends on who asked him, and what authority and discretion he will have to mediate," says Robert Pastor, a Latin America expert at American University in Washington who was national security adviser on Latin America and the Caribbean to President Carter.
Clinton's meeting with Zelaya took place hours after President Obama, in a speech in Moscow, cited the Honduran case as an example of American support for popularly elected leaders – even when those leaders have views the US opposes.
Zelaya was ousted on June 28 when a constitutional crisis pitting the president against the other branches of government boiled over, prompting the Honduran military to step in. The military put Zelaya on a plane to Costa Rica, and the Honduran Congress elected an interim president, Roberto Micheletti.
Clinton found herself meeting with an ousted leader who had moved closer in recent months to Venezuelan President – American bête noire – Hugo Chavez. Zelaya sought the same end to presidential term limits that Chavez had engineered in Venezuela.
It was Zelaya's insistence on holding a referendum on the issue – something both the Honduran Congress and the Supreme Court considered unconstitutional – that precipitated the June 28 coup.
The Honduran action "was no classic Latin America military coup," says American University's Mr. Pastor, but a "much more complicated struggle among the legitimate branches of government." He adds that the failure of the Organization of American States (OAS) to recognize the difference has "exacerbated this crisis to a point well beyond where it needed to go."
The OAS quickly labeled the military action in Honduras a "coup," and last Saturday voted to suspend Honduras's membership in the organization. A wide spectrum of Latin American governments – from conservatives in Mexico and Colombia to moderates in Brazil and Chile and leftists in Ecuador and Argentina – all condemned the action as a coup, notes Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a regional think tank in Washington.
State Department officials are starting to float compromises that could lead to a resolution of the crisis, including a pledge from Zelaya not to seek any revision of the ban on presidential reelecton, and moving the presidential election up from the scheduled November date.
But all these proposals include Zelaya's return to office, even if for a clipped presidency.
In the meantime, Pastor says the region is learning a "good lesson" from the crisis. "The OAS is rediscovering the importance of its own Inter-American Democratic Charter," he says. "They need to be engaged on the broader subject of what threatens democracy in the Americas, and how to remedy it."
Who cares about Honduras?
Erick Erickson
http://www.macon.com/203/story/766899.htmlBarack Obama has fundamentally shifted our foreign policy away from our own national interests in Honduras. He aligns us with the interests of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and a long list of South American drug cartels.
The Honduran people, wise to the ways of Latin American politics, adopted a constitution that prohibits any president from serving more than one term. Presidents in Latin American countries, like herpes, have a habit of never going away. Further, the Honduran constitution requires that any referenda put to the voters must be approved by the Honduran Congress.
The Hondurans are so concerned about potential despots, that Article 239 of their constitution states that any president who proposes extending his term in office is automatically removed from office. Article 313 of the Honduran constitution allows its Supreme Court to deputize the Honduran military to carry out its orders, including removing politicians from office who seek to extend a president’s term.
Ignoring the constitution, President Manuel Zelaya, a man less popular in Honduras than George Bush was when he left office in this country, ordered a “non-binding” referendum be put to the voters on extending his stay in office.
Glenn Garvin wrote in the Miami Herald, “After the Honduran supreme court ruled that only the country’s congress could call such an election, Zelaya ordered the army to help him stage it anyway. ... When the head of the armed forces, acting on orders from the supreme court, refused, Zelaya fired him, then led a mob to break into a military base where the ballots were stored.”
The Honduran Supreme Court, congress, attorney general and members of Zelaya’s cabinet opposed his move as unconstitutional. The supreme court ordered the military to remove Zelaya from office. Honduras has no impeachment process as we know it.
Last December, the Honduran vice president resigned. No replacement had been named. The Honduran constitution requires that in such circumstances the head of congress become provisional president, much like our speaker of the house would become president were both Joe Biden and Obama become incapacitated.
Now Roberto Micheletti, a member of Zelaya’s own political party, is president of Honduras. Despite protests from Zelaya’s supporters, the nation’s trade unions, business groups, Catholic Church, and most citizens supported Zelaya’s ouster — no one wanted a tyrant, let alone one propped up by drug lords and marxist thugs like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.
Nonetheless, Barack Obama declared the Honduran government’s actions a coup — never mind the government was preserving its democracy instead of overthrowing it. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “The action taken against Honduran President Mel Zelaya violates the precepts of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and thus should be condemned by all.” She called on Hondurans to uphold their constitutional processes, the very thing they were doing by ousting Zelaya.
On June 4, Barack Obama said from Egypt, “No system of government can or should be imposed on one nation by any other.” Two weeks ago, regarding the popular uprising in Iran, he said, “How that plays out over the next several days and several weeks is something ultimately for the Iranian people to decide.” As with his campaign promises, our president quickly forgets his own words.
For perspective, Obama more quickly condemned President Zelaya’s ouster by a democratic government than he condemned Iran for gunning down its citizens who had taken to the streets to demand freedom. Obama needed public pressure to even discuss Iran. Sadly, our president needs public pressure to align his moral compass toward freedom.
Nothing so shocking about this coup
BY GLENN GARVIN
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1120408.htmlThe greatest tourist attraction in Central America has always been politics. Diplomats stop by every few years, take a couple of snapshots of what's going on at the presidential palace, and then profoundly declare their opinions, devoid of context or history. This week's favorite diplotourism destination is Honduras, where the army Sunday arrested President Manuel Zelaya and booted him across the border to Costa Rica. In the Polaroid analysis, it's pretty clear what happened: ''A return to barbarism in our hemisphere,'' as Argentina's president Cristina Fernández put it.
She had plenty of company. ''The action taken against Honduran President Mel Zelaya violates the precepts of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and thus should be condemned by all,'' said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. ``We call on all parties in Honduras to respect the constitutional order and the rule of law.''
The OAS Permanent Council voted ''to condemn vehemently the coup d'etat staged this morning against the constitutionally established government of Honduras.'' U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon demanded ``the reinstatement of the democratically elected representatives of the country and full respect for human rights.''
Here's a question for all these new-found defenders of Honduran democracy: Where were you last week? Perhaps if some of these warnings about sticking to the constitution had been addressed to President Zelaya, the Honduran army would still be in the barracks where it belongs.
A naked power grab
For weeks, Zelaya -- an erratic leftist who styles himself after his good pal Hugo Chávez of Venezuela -- has been engaged in a naked and illegal power grab, trying to rewrite the Honduran constitution to allow him to run for reelection in November.
First Zelaya scheduled a national vote on a constitutional convention. After the Honduran supreme court ruled that only the country's congress could call such an election, Zelaya ordered the army to help him stage it anyway. (It would be ''non-binding,'' he said.) When the head of the armed forces, acting on orders from the supreme court, refused, Zelaya fired him, then led a mob to break into a military base where the ballots were stored.
His actions have been repudiated by the country's supreme court, its congress, its attorney-general, its chief human-rights advocate, all its major churches, its main business association, his own political party (which recently began debating an inquiry into Zelaya's sanity) and most Hondurans: Recent polls have shown his approval rating down below 30 percent.
In fact, about the only people who didn't condemn Zelaya's political gangsterism were the foreign leaders and diplomats who now primly lecture Hondurans about the importance of constitutional law. They're also strangely silent about the vicious stream of threats against Honduras spewing from Chávez since Zelaya was deposed.
Warning that he's already put his military on alert, Chávez on Monday flat-out threatened war against Honduras if Roberto Micheletti, named by the country's congress as interim president until elections in November, takes office.
''If they swear him in we'll overthrow him,'' Chávez blustered. ``Mark my words. Thugetti -- as I'm going to refer to him from now on -- you better pack your bags, because you're either going to jail or you're going into exile.''
Hey, Hillary: What does the Inter-American charter say about that?
The Honduran army clearly did not act on its own when it arrested Zelaya and sent him packing. The supreme court says the generals acted on its orders, and almost every Honduran politician of any note -- regardless of party -- has voiced approval.
Long, unpleasant history
They may come to regret their decision. Honduras had a long and unpleasant history of military government in the 20th century, and perhaps the army will not march back into Pandora's box and close the lid behind it so willingly.
But the initial signs are promising; the army, after getting rid of Zelaya, put congress in charge of choosing his replacement. Elections are still scheduled for November. Let's see if the OAS and the United Nations and the Obama administration come back to take another snapshot then.
Deposed Honduran prez accused of drug ties
By FRANK BAJAK
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hih1KZex0p7mOb8taC-77XDfj_KwD995ELKO0The regime that ousted Manuel Zelaya in Honduras claimed Tuesday that the deposed president allowed tons of cocaine to be flown into the Central American country on its way to the United States.
"Every night, three or four Venezuelan-registered planes land without the permission of appropriate authorities and bring thousands of pounds ... and packages of money that are the fruit of drug trafficking," its foreign minister, Enrique Ortez, told CNN en Espanol.
"We have proof of all of this. Neighboring governments have it. The DEA has it," he added.
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Rusty Payne in Washington said he could neither confirm nor deny a DEA investigation.
Zelaya was traveling from New York to Washington and could not immediately be reached to respond to the allegations.
In an interview Tuesday evening with The Associated Press in Tegucigalpa, interim Honduran President Roberto Micheletti was asked about Ortez's allegations and said only that it would be up to prosecutors to present any evidence.
Honduras and other Central American nations have become major transshipment points in recent years for Colombian cocaine, particularly as Mexico's government cracks down on cartels.
The drugs arrive in Honduras on noncommercial aircraft and, increasingly, in speedboats, from Venezuela and to a lesser extent Colombia, according to the Key West, Florida-based Joint Interagency Task Force-South, which coordinates drug interdiction in region. The boats tend to make short hops up Central America's coast.
In its most recent report on the illicit narcotics trade, the U.S. State Department said in February of Honduras that "official corruption continues to be an impediment to effective law enforcement and there are press reports of drug trafficking and associated criminal activity among current and former government and military officials."
The report did not name names.
Drug-related violence appears to be up in Honduras.
Homicides surged 25 percent from some 4,400 in 2007 to more than 7,000 in 2008 while more than 1,600 people were killed execution-style, suggesting drug gang involvement, according to the Central American Violence Observatory.
In October, Zelaya proposed legalizing drug use as a way of reducing the violence. He also had pledged to double the country's police force, which reached 13,500 last year, up from 7,000 in 2005, according to the State Department report.
Interim Honduran Leader Vows Zelaya Will Not Return
By WILL WEISSERT
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jAkMGKIUDg_ngUiZboxQbYj5_DPwD995LQ800Honduras' interim leader warned that the only way his predecessor will return to office is through a foreign invasion — though a potential showdown was postponed Wednesday when the ousted president delayed plans to return.
A defiant Roberto Micheletti said in an interview with The Associated Press late Tuesday that "no one can make me resign," defying the United Nations, the OAS, the Obama administration and other leaders that have condemned the military coup that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya.
The U.N. General Assembly voted by acclamation Tuesday to demand Zelaya's immediate restoration, and the Organization of American States said Wednesday that coup leaders have three days to restore Zelaya to power before Honduras risks being suspended from the group.
That period for negotiation prompted Zelaya to announce he was putting off his plans to return home on Thursday until the weekend.
Micheletti vowed Zelaya would be arrested if he returns, even though the presidents of Argentina and Ecuador have signed on to accompany him along with the heads of the Organization of American States and the U.N. General Assembly.
Zelaya "has already committed crimes against the constitution and the law," said Micheletti, a member of Zelaya's Liberal Party who was named interim leader by Congress following the coup. "He can no longer return to the presidency of the republic unless a president from another Latin American country comes and imposes him using guns."
Soldiers stormed Zelaya's residence and flew him into exile early Sunday after he insisted on trying to hold a referendum asking Hondurans if they wanted to reform the constitution. The Supreme Court, Congress and the military all deemed his planned ballot illegal.
Zelaya, who is an ally of leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, backed down from the referendum Tuesday, saying at the United Nations that he would no longer push for the constitutional changes he wanted.
One of several clauses that cannot be legally altered in the Honduran constitution limits presidents to a single, 4-year term. Congress claims Zelaya, whose term ends in January, modified the ballot question at the last minute to help him eventually try to seek re-election. Chavez has used referendums in Venezuela to win the right to run repeatedly.
"I'm not going to hold a constitutional assembly," Zelaya said. "And if I'm offered the chance to stay in power, I won't. I'm going to serve my four years."
OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza delivered what he called "an ultimatum" during a marathon session in Washington. "We need to show clearly that military coups will not be accepted. We thought we were in an era when military coups were no longer possible in this hemisphere," he said.
France and Spain announced Wednesday they are recalling their ambassadors from Honduras as part of international efforts to reinstate Zelaya.
Zelaya's popularity has sagged at home in recent years, but his criticism of the wealthy and policies such as raising the minimum wage have earned him the loyalty of many poor Hondurans, and thousands have rallied to demand his return.
Thousands of others rallied in favor of Micheletti on Tuesday, accusing Zelaya of trying to bring Venezuelan-style socialism to Honduras. Yet beyond the demonstrations at the presidential palace and the capital's central square, there has been little sign of major disruption to daily life.
Micheletti said he would not resign no matter how intense the international pressure becomes. He insisted Honduras would be ready to defend itself against any invasion.
He did not name any specific countries, but Chavez has vowed to "overthrow" Micheletti and said earlier Tuesday that any aggression against Zelaya by Micheletti's government should prompt military intervention by the United Nations.
"No one can make me resign if I do not violate the laws of the country," Micheletti said. "If there is any invasion against our country, 7.5 million Hondurans will be ready to defend our territory and our laws and our homeland and our government."
Micheletti said it was too late for Zelaya to avoid arrest.
His foreign minister, Enrique Ortez, threw a wild card onto the table, telling CNN en Espanol that Zelaya had been letting drug traffickers ship U.S.-bound cocaine from Venezuela through Honduras. Ortez said the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration was aware of Zelaya's ties to organized crime.
DEA spokesman Rusty Payne could neither confirm nor deny a DEA investigation.
The U.S. government stood firmly by Zelaya, however. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Washington saw no acceptable solution other than Zelaya's return to power. He said the United States was considering cutting off aid to Honduras, which includes $215 million over four years from the U.S.-funded Millennium Challenge Corporation.
Micheletti said he had no contact with any U.S. official since assuming the presidency.
The interim leader, who now occupies the same office in the colonial-style presidential palace that Zelaya did, insisted he was getting on with the business of governing.
He and his newly appointed Cabinet ministers were settling in, even as soldiers wandered the ornate hallways and manned barricades outside to keep Zelaya's supporters away.
Micheletti, who promised he would step down in January and had no plans to ever run for president, said a key goal of his short term in office would be fixing the nation's finances. Zelaya never submitted the budget to Congress that was due last September, raising questions about what he was spending state money on.
Asked if Zelaya could one day return to power stronger than ever, Micheletti said that "it's not about sympathy, it's not about being a martyr, but simply that we are following the letter of the law which he did not respect."
Sal: And here is Zelaya with his good buddies Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez:
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