The United States has given the lawfully deposed President of Honduras full support, after giving meager support to the Iranian protesters.
Over the weekend, Honduras was about to hold a referendum on whether its Constitutional prohibition against a sitting president running for a second term should be modified. The referendum was proposed by President Zelaya, whose term in office expires next year; an election is to be held in November.…
Article comments
— go to most recent comments26 - Clavos
If I were Obama, I would restore full and complete diplomatic relations with Cuba in the interim.
I wouldn't stop there. I would also take all the grain and other foodstuffs we buy from our farmers to prop up prices, load it on US flag ships, and take it to Cuba to distribute free of charge. Publicize it widely here in Miami first, and all the people will be at dockside when the ships arrive.
Fidel will have a heart attack and Raúl will commit suicide.
27 - Clavos
But I'm glad to note that you're not expending any energy on thinking about these things, when stating and re-stating the obvious will apparently do just fine.
Just tailoring my message to the audience, Earl.
28 - Earl
@ the new 21
Like hell, Zelaya was removed in keeping with the laws of his country. There isn't any law in Honduras that allows the military to arrest and forcibly remove its own Commander-in-Chief from the country. If that happened in the U.S. we'd sure as shit call it a coup d'etat, and that's what it was in Honduras too.
It's hard to feel sympathy for Zelaya, considering that what he did was way outside the country's constitution and law. But so was his removal. Two wrongs don't make a right. And pretending that his removal was legally (or otherwise) justified is a flaming sack of shit, and what's more you know it.
29 - zingzing
clavos: "Zelaya was removed entirely in keeping with the laws of his country, so it's more than incongruous that the Obama Administration would call it a "coup," and seemingly stand against the lawful actors in the incident."
he called for a public referendum in violation of a certain portion of the constitution, punishable by removal from office, but the process of punishment for violation of said portion is not spelled out. impeachment would seem like the best option to me, but taking him from his home and plopping him two nations over seems a bit much.
to me, this looks like an opportunity taken by someone to oust someone from office in a particularly easy manner.
if things were as simple as you say, i don't think the situation would be as heated as it has become. so i'm not one to believe that the army is totally in the right here. either way, we now have a sitting president in latin america beholden to the army for his current position. and i'm sure you'll agree with me that that doesn't work out to well most of the time.
30 - Ruvy
American officials did not believe that Mr. Zelaya’s plans for the referendum were in line with the Constitution, and were worried that it would further inflame tensions with the military and other political factions, administration officials said.
Even so, one administration official said that while the United States thought the referendum was a bad idea, it did not justify a coup.
This is the Grey Lady talking, showing how the Obama administration views a country enforcing its own laws as a coup d'etat. Given that Obama has never really produced a birth certificate to demonstrate that hew is a natural born citizen, given that the Obama administration illegally appointed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, it is no suirprise that it should view another nation as being law-abiding as a surprise.
This man has no trouble contemplating stealing another country's territory. Why should anyone be surprised that a Chicago thief views the legitimate operation of law as illegal?
31 - Arch Conservative
Birds of a feather flock together right?
Then why is anyone suprised that Barry is sympathizing with his fellow left wing, fascist, dictators Chavez and Zalaya, both of whom have tried to circumvent their nation's laws to make them president for life.
We should start a pool on how long it will be before Barry (indirectly through one of his operatives of course) tried to make himself president for life.
32 - roger nowosielski
zing - I wasn't being conciliatory on the issues - read my comment on this piece up the thread. I was talking about bedside manners - you know, the kind of things I do lots people here detest.
33 - zingzing
archie: "We should start a pool on how long it will be before Barry (indirectly through one of his operatives of course) tried to make himself president for life."
yay! if i say never, and he never does, do i win?
34 - Bliffle
Anyway, Dan, thanks for grasping the nettle and laying out the outline of the Honduras affair.
35 - ma rk
Earl, you note: One wonders if Obama can win with you, Dan...
Read the bio. Parenthetical Dan is a Yale graduate...duh.
36 - roger nowosielski
But zing. Give Archie credit for being honest. What he's objecting to is left-leaning on the part of Obama, which seems to be the main beef in Miller's article. Of course, Miller didn't have to balls to state it outright, hiding as usual behind his smooth rhetoric and high-sounding phrases. So we do need Archie, if only to bring Miller's Olympic theses down to the gutter - which is where it really belongs.
Thanks, Archie, for your invaluable service to the BC community.
37 - roger nowosielski
#35:
So?
38 - Bliffle
Silas has a good idea:
"If I were Obama, I would restore full and complete diplomatic relations with Cuba in the interim. That act alone will send the Honduran establishment reeling not to mention disarm Venezuela and any other South American dictator."
That would outflank the problem.
39 - ma r k
Sorry you don't 'get it', Rog.
40 - roger nowosielski
You mean everyone from Yale is by definition obstructed and a moral enemy of all Harvard grads?
41 - Dan(Miller)
Silas says,in Comment # 23,
If the military feels that the President should be deposed, then it is incumbent upon the military regime to submit its case to the United Nations.(emphasis added)
If that had been what happened, I might agree with you. It wasn't and I don't.
As stated in the article, the Honduran Supreme Court held the proposed referendum to be violative of Article VII of the Honduran Constitution. The President ordered the top military guy to have the ballots distributed anyway. The Supreme Court ordered him not to do so. The military chief advised the President that he was bound by the decision of the Supreme Court and could not lawfully comply with the President's order to distribute the ballots. The President fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. The President refused. The Supreme Court reinstated him.
When the President, in patent violation of Article VII and contrary to the decision of the Supreme Court, proceeded to have his followers distribute the ballots, the Attorney General or the Supreme Court (it seems unclear which) ordered the military to arrest the President. The Legislature agreed, and that happened. No military, as a junta or otherwise, acted on its own; no military, as a junta or otherwise, assumed power.
Following the removal of the President, the Congress, unanimously as I understand it, followed the Constitution and the Honduran laws of succession and named the (civilian) President of the Congress as the interim president until a new President can be elected during the November elections. The Interim President, of the same party as the former President, has stated that he will not run in the Presidential election.
If this sequence of events is to be labeled a "coup," then it was a "coup," not by a military junta, but by the Supreme Court and the Congress with the military acting under their orders, against a President who was attempting a "coup" of his own by persisting in his violation of the law by trying to change the Constitution -- in a manner prohibited by the Constitution and to provide for something prohibited by Article VII of the Constitution.
I don't see that these events are any legitimate business of the United States Government or, for that matter, of the United Nations as Silas suggests.
In these circumstances, I consider the former President of Honduras to have been the "bad guy," and the Supreme Court, the Congress and the military to have been the "good guys." Any attempt by foreigners to undo the Constitutional actions of the Congress, the Supreme Court and the military acting under their orders would, in my opinion be an attempted "coup." That it may well be successful does not make it good.
President Obama came down forcefully and quickly on the side of the bad guy and against the good guys in Honduras.
Throughout much of Latin America, there has for many years been widespread fear of a democratically elected president who lusts for power and tries to remain in power despite what the country's Constitution provides.
Demagoguery has become a fine, if not subtle, art in this part of the world; when the people are sober they recognize it for what it is. They also know from sad experience that a leader, with all of the power of the State behind him, can threaten, bribe and repress in order to remain in power indefinitely as a "democratically" elected leader. Venezuela is a shining example of this sort of thing, and there is an almost palpable fear of it.
In the recent presidential elections in Panama, the candidate from the majority party, who greatly admires President Chvez of Venezuela and had been very chummy with Manuel Noriega, was soundly defeated by a 62 to 31 percent margin in a record popular turnout; no other candidate subsequent to Noriega's reign had received more than a plurality of the vote. One of the reasons she was so overwhelmingly defeated, I think, is that the then current President of Panama, of the defeated candidate's own party but no friend of Chvez or of Noreiga, campaigned for her only in a very lukewarm fashion. The new President of Panama will be inaugurated today, 1 July. The country as a whole seems to be greatly relieved. I suspect, but do not know, that the people of Honduras breathed a collective sigh of relief with the departure of former President Zelaya.
Here is a link to a blog written by a guy in Venezuela who has had some very pleasant things to say about President Obama. I think he puts the Honduran mess into proper perspective.
In Iran, I consider the protesters to have been the good guys and the theocracy to have been the bad guys. President Obama waited a long time (substantially longer than in the Honduran context) until he finally came down against the bad guys, but not really in favor of the good guys. In Honduras, he came down quickly and strongly for the bad guys and against the good guys. I consider that very unfortunate.
Dan(Miller)
42 - Dan(Miller)
Further to Comment #41 about President Obama's belated reaction to the situation in Iran,
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged President Obama for two days to toughen his language on Iran before he did so, and then was surprised when he condemned Iran's crackdown on demonstrators last week, administration officials say. . . . Behind the scenes, the officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing internal deliberations, said Mrs. Clinton had been advocating the stronger U.S. response, but the president resisted. When he finally took her advice, the aides said, he did so without informing her first.
It also appears that Secretary Clinton tried to get President Obama to soften his stance favoring the former President of Honduras. Evidently, she did not succeed.
Dan(Miller)
43 - roger nowosielski
Which goes to show that decisions emanating from the White House these days are subject to prior deliberations and extended discussions rather than being issued on the spur of the moment, in a Texas cowboy fashion, which was the trademark of the past administration.
And that's a change for the better.
44 - Earl
Since from the looks of things, nobody else here has actually read the fucking constitution of Honduras they're all so quick to defend and explain, I'll do the job.
Title V, Chapter 1, Article 205 gives the National Congress the right to approve or reject the administrative conduct of the President and build a case against him, which Chapter 12, Article 319 stipulates be brought before the Supreme Court.
What it does NOT do is give the Supreme Court any authority to issue orders to the Army, as happened in this case. The President is the Commander-in-Chief of the Army; the National Congress has the authority to fund it, declare war, and authorize its foreign deployment; and the Supreme Court pointedly has NO powers related to military action. Yet they ordered the army to arrest its own supreme commander. That wasn't a power grab? That wasn't a coup?
Zelaya acted against the constitution and the law, no question. And he should have been tried in accordance with that constitution and law. But he wasn't, and if you read the Honduran constitution you'd know that.
45 - Dan(Miller)
decisions emanating from the White House these days are subject to prior deliberations and extended discussions. . . Perhaps true, except in the case of Honduras.
Dan(Miller)
46 - roger nowosielski
Then you must regard that instance as a blurt.
47 - Earl
@41
There are no good guys in the Honduran situation. Whichever side Obama came down on was going to be bad guys.
48 - Dan(Miller)
According to Article 42.5 of the Honduran Constitution, the following action, among others, results in loss of citizenship: 5. Incite, encourage or support the continuity or re-election of President of the Republic. . . " Honduras apparently takes very seriously the notion that changing its Constitution to permit a president to serve more than one term is a bad thing. Article 205.15, which formerly provided for the impeachment of a sitting president, was repealed in 2003 without being replaced. I don't know why.
According to an article in the Latin American Herald Tribune,
the Congress voted unanimously to appoint a committee to analyze the situation and investigate President Zelaya for his refusal to respect the Constitution and the orders issued by other branches of government.
President Zelaya would have none of that, and persisted in his unlawful, unconstitutional, efforts to change the Honduran Constitution to permit him to serve a second term.
President Zelaya having taken the law into his own hands, in disregard of the Constitution, the Supreme Court and the Congress, the legitimate Government of Honduras took what it considered to be the best, and possibly the only, course in a Constitutional crisis to avoid very messy bloodshed. It did so despite substantial pressure from the United States Government.
Unless the United States Government, the Venezuelan Government or the government of some other foreign country has become the supreme interpreter of the Honduran Constitution, with plenary powers over Honduran governmental institutions, I think that Honduras did the right thing. With further meddling by the Governments of Venezuela, the United States and other countries, that bloodshed seems likely to be a very real problem.
Dan(Miller)
49 - Baronius
Earl's right, Dan. You're all over the place. First you favor the rule of law rather than totalitarianism in Iran, then you favor the rule of law rather than totalitarianism in Honduras. Such inconsistency discredits your arguments.
50 - Earl
@48
President Zelaya having taken the law into his own hands, in disregard of the Constitution, the Supreme Court and the Congress, the legitimate Government of Honduras took what it considered to be the best, and possibly the only, course
...also in disregard of the constitution.
Suppose, for example, that the National Congress had gone to the Supreme Court and asked them to rule on constitutional grounds that pursuant to 42.5, Zelaya had repudiated his citizenship and was therefore, pursuant to 238.3, no longer eligible to hold the office of President. They could then have voided his presidency, sworn in his successor, and allowed that successor (in his capacity as commander-in-chief) to determine whether to use the armed forces to forcibly remove Zelaya.
But they didn't do that at all. Instead, in the name of a "constitutional emergency," they usurped power that they did not have --- command of the armed forces --- and used it to force its own commander-in-chief out of office, then named his successor. That's not a military coup, but it's certainly a political one. And yes, it's a huge power grab.
Zelaya's violation of the constitution does not justify the National Congress and Supreme Court's violations of the constitution, no matter how hard you try.
51 - Earl
Dan doesn't favor the rule of law in Honduras, Baronius. I have no doubt that he THINKS that he does. But he actually favors one totalitarian faction over another.
52 - roger nowosielski
I'll raise you one, Earl. What Dan really seems to favor is whatever Obama does not. It's that simple, really.
53 - Baronius
Could someone translate the following?
ARTICULO 306.- Los órganos jurisdiccionales requerirán en caso necesario el auxilio de la Fuerza Pública para el cumplimiento de sus resoluciones; si les fuere negado o no lo hubiere disponible, lo exigirán de los ciudadanos.
54 - Dan(Miller)
re Comment #47, There are no good guys in the Honduran situation. Whichever side Obama came down on was going to be bad guys.
I disagree and, as stated, think that the Honduran Congress, Supreme Court, and the military acting pursuant to their direction, were the good guys, trying to protect the Constitution and the country from the sort of stuff which has happened in Venezuela and which former President Zelaya was trying to implement in Honduras.
However, accepting for the sake of discussion the premise that there are only bad guys and that there are no good guys, I simply don't understand why the Government of the United States intervened, dramatically, on behalf of one set of bad guys. Looking only at legitimate United States interests, I don't think that a Venezuelan style permanent President in Honduras would be good for the United States.
Dan(Miller)
55 - Earl
well that's what I said at first, Roger - that Dan seems to define wrong as "Whatever Obama does." But in my last comment I was just being situation-specific.
56 - zingzing
obama: "i hate maple syrup."
dan: "obama hates vermont!"
obama: "i do not!"
dan: "i do!"
obama: "what?"
dan: "i hate vermont!"
obama: "i like you, you're silly."
dan: "i hate myself."
obama: "poor baby... we'll find you a nice cup of milk, ok?"
dan: "milk is mean."
obama: "how about some tasty orange juice?"
dan: "tasty? that shit is bland to my tongue."
obama: "well, what would you like then?"
dan: "what is it that you hate most in the world."
obama: "injustice."
dan: "then i'll have a big cup of injustice."
obama: "fuck you, man."
dan: "do you want to? cause then i don't! but if you don't want to, i'm game."
57 - Earl
Looking only at legitimate United States interests, I don't think that a Venezuelan style permanent President in Honduras would be good for the United States.
Nor would a legislature and judiciary that illegally commandeers the military and ousts the executive whenever it deems it necessary.
Having Zelaya reinstated as president does not necessarily mean that he would be the permanent president. Perhaps he's reinstated and the government then goes through the proper and legal channels to remove him. Or, less desirable but possible, perhaps he's reinstated, the referendum is thwarted, and he limps through the remainder of his term as a politically impotent lame duck. What's important is that these things are done as legally provided for.
58 - roger nowosielski
I understand. I would give so much more credence to Dan's arguments if just once they were divorced from all-too-obvious partisanship and couched in a more or less neutral light - how about "What's good for America."
Has it really become impossible to talk about what's good for America without resorting to slurs and innuendos? I don't think so. It's just that, what can I say, some folks can't help it. So perhaps I'm being unfair to dismiss the substantive argument, but how can I do otherwise when there's a conflation of motives.
59 - roger nowosielski
That's terrific, zing. It's like a picture that's worth a thousand words.
60 - Dan(Miller)
Baronius, here is a Google translation of Article 306. Thank you for calling to article to my attention.
ARTICLE 306 .- The courts if necessary require the help of the security forces to fulfill their resolutions, if they refused or were not any available, as required of citizens.
My Spanish is not adequate to do much more than review the original and a machine translation to see whether the machine translation appears to be correct. I had to do that when I was writing the article, since the machine translation left out an important word: "Not."
Earl, Dan seems to define wrong as "Whatever Obama does." Not true, see, e.g., my recent articles on the nomination of Judge Sotomayor. They are listed here. However, much that President Obama does does seem wrong to me; I am often amused by the comments, occasionally substantively responsive, of those who seem to define right as "Whatever Obama does."
Dan(Miller)
61 - Earl
Article 306 affirms that the court may require help from the military. The provision of that help is provided for in 245.10:
"[The President of the Republic shall] Give the legislature, judiciary and National Electoral Court the assistance and force needed to implement its resolutions."
Note that that does not give the Supreme Court the power to commandeer the military from the President.
62 - Dan(Miller)
Here is an article about the current situation in Honduras, with the UN, the OAS et al demanding the restoration to power of former President Zelaya and the World Bank freezing loans.
Young men wearing black T-shirts imprinted with the face of revolutionary icon Che Guevara used boulders, signposts and metal sheets yanked from fences to block all streets leading to the presidential palace on Wednesday, just hours after soldiers took down their own barricades and allowed traffic to flow.
The faces of the Zelaya supporters were covered by bandannas and they had armed themselves with tree branches, metal poles and glass bottles filled with gasoline.
Thousands of rival demonstrators supporting Micheletti packed the city's central plaza on Tuesday.
According to the acting President, If living in democracy implies living with fewer resources, Hondurans will adjust to the situation." Meanwhile,
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.
Dan(Miller)
63 - Silas Kain
You know all this Constitutional debate about Honduras and these bursts of indignation over Iran's elections crack me up. Folks, it took over 7 months to figure out who was Senator from Minnesota. It took SCOTUS to determine the outcome of the 2000 Presidential election. For the most technologically savvy country in the west, we suck when it comes to counting the votes of the people. Oh, I forgot, when the President of Diebold attended a GOP fundraiser in Ohio, he was quoted as saying that the GOP would be victorious. The problem? Diebold manufactures voting machines fort Ohio. So, before we start worrying about the other countries, fellow citizens, worry about what's happening in our backyard. Members of Congress are bought and paid for by lobbyists and it has NOTHING to do with representing you, me, your kids, your damn pets or cable tv.
IN the elections of 2012, I want independent International observers to supervise OUR elections. And let's get the first boatload of observers to come in from Venezuela, Honduras and Iran.
64 - Baronius
Earl, Article 306 seems broader than you're making it. It seems to go beyond telling the court to ask the president for help from the military. I'd love to have a Spanish lawyer interpret the phrase "en caso necesario" which appears only once in the Constitution. Why would it be worthwhile to mention the court's relationship to the military, if not for precisely those cases where the president isn't playing his proper role of using the military to enforce the law?
65 - Earl
Baronius, even if you're right, Article 306 says that the military can help the courts "fulfill their resolutions." Courts can only make resolutions to specific cases. No case for the removal of the president was brought to the Supreme Court, and thus they could make no resolution---and thus could not call the military in to assist them in implementing that resolution.
So even if you're correct in your interpretation of Article 306, the court still grabbed power that it had no rights to.
Talk about activist judges!
66 - Dan(Miller)
Article 245.10 provides (according to a Google translation) that among the powers of the President is to Give the legislature, judiciary and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, helps and forces that need to implement its resolutions;
Even if Article 306 were expressly dependent upon the grant of a request to the President for military assistance under Article 245.10, which it is not, the suggestion, implicit in Comment # 61, that the Supreme Court and the Congress should simply have asked the former President for military assistance to arrest him, and then failing the cooperative proffer of such assistance, sat on their collective thumbs, is somewhat difficult for me to take seriously.
Dan(Miller)
67 - roger nowosielski
There you go, Silas. Put an effective end to this specious debate.
68 - Earl
Dan, the proper resolution is clear, and it's the one I outlined in #50: Congress asks the court to rule that Zelaya forfeited his citizenship, his presidency is therefore voided, and the new president takes over.
But instead you seem intent on condemning one egregious (failed) attempt at a power grab, while using it to justify an equally egregious (successful) attempt at a power grab.
69 - Dan(Miller)
Earl, it seems as though the Supreme Court was fully aware of what was going on, and supported the decision to have the former President arrested. It had declared his actions unconstitutional, and evidently was behaving as it should. The former President was not cooperative.
I have difficulty understanding the laws of Panama, where I live, even with the guidance of a pretty good Panamanian attorney. Procedures seem a bit fuzzy, the doctrine of stare decisis is not applicable, and the courts have more latitude than in the United States. I suspect that Honduran law is rather similar.
Dan(Miller)
70 - zingzing
looks like the world is against you, dan, according to the news...
71 - Dan(Miller)
This specious debate is about to end, at least for awhile insofar as my participation is concerned, because we are now having a thunderstorm and I must turn off my computer.
Dan(Miller)
72 - Earl
Dan, they didn't SUPPORT the decision to have Zelaya arrested. They MADE the decision to have him arrested. I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe they had any power to do so, and plenty that leads me to believe that they didn't.
73 - Cindy
56 - i don't remember a better comment or when i laughed so hard, zing. but if i thought there should be a president, i'd vote for you. even if things didn't get any better they'd be hilarious and international communications would be like poetry (or something). i'm sure we'd likely get a better anthem out of the deal too.
74 - zingzing
people turn their computers off when sky go boom?
75 - Cindy
i don't. but i am a risk-taker. maybe i should.