Honduras: Term limits apply when governments benefit people
Wednesday, 22 July 2009 11:09 Share | .By Saul Landau and Nelson P. Valdes
~snip~
In 2006, Manuel Zelaya won the presidency. He made the UNDP Report a central part of his agenda for change. His social program, not an ambiguous Constitutional interpretation, became the root of his "issue" with the governing oligarchy -- a dozen families who control economics and social, cultural and political institutions. They also dominate the media. A 2008 State Department Human Rights Report acknowledged: "A small number of powerful business magnates with intersecting commercial, political, and family ties owned most of the country's news media. Powerful magnates strongly influenced the news agenda and thereby elections and political decisions."
(U.S. Department of State, 2008 Human Rights Report: Honduras. February 25, 2009.
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/wha/119164.htm )
Until Zelaya tried to bring real democracy into the governing equation, Honduras' elite, with U.S. banking and corporate backing, had found a seemingly perfect recipe: people vote but don’t change anything. Congress and Courts belong to the educated (rich and powerful) who also control the military in cooperation with the U.S. government. Washington provided aid; the School of the Americas trains Honduran officers in proper conduct -- torturing enemies and making coups. "Since the 1980s, the Honduran army breathes through the noses of its U.S. advisers." (ALAI AMLATINA, July 10, 2009)
For Zelaya, the UNDP Report coincided with a brutal fact. Switzerland and Honduras each have 7 million people. Swiss yearly average income is $53,000; Hondurans $2,000. This upper class President saw an obligation to meet peoples' needs. Uttering such a subversive thought provoked panic among the rich in Tegucigalpa and the powerful of Washington. They reverted to a historical pattern.
In the 1980s, the CIA and U.S. military used Honduras to attack Nicaragua's leftist government. The CIA had Honduran officers selling drugs -- to support the surrogate Contras, which Congress forbade. In 1988, Rev. Joe Eldridge, the husband of Maria Otero, Obama's Undersecretary of State for Democracy, wrote about this drug link; then the Honduran military issued death threats against the family. The Honduran army also repressed internal opposition. The local elite supplied officers with perks and status, but Central American armies have spent little time defending their country and much time attacking their citizens.
The Honduran invented a “reason” to oust Zelaya: his unconstitutional intent to consult the people in a non-binding vote. Yet, the Constitution allows for referenda and plebiscites. Washington representatives now claim they advised against a coup. But, reasoned the oligarchs and officers, encouraged by some well-known anti-Castro Cuban Americans, how could Washington abandon its friends and clients? So, they kidnapped Zelaya, and flew him to Costa Rica under a justification thinner than the most undernourished model.
One hundred and ninety two countries rejected this equivalent of a political “Brooklyn Bridge for sale.” The coup’s defenders, Canada's conservative government, the U.S. mass media, the Honduran Catholic and Protestant hierarchy and right wing anti-Castroites of Miami, approved of previous Latin American coups, in the name of democracy, anti-communism, or whatever. This time the coup makers were “rescuing Honduras from the claws of Chavism."
The drama descended toward farce, however, when Zelaya's abductors ditched him in Costa Rica. President Oscar Arias received him -- and the snatchers. No high official or mainstream reporter has suggested Arias aided and abetted a kidnapping and coup. Shouldn’t he have arrested the kidnappers, impounded their plane and demanded the illegitimate thugs in Tegucigalpa surrender?
Instead, collaborator Arias became mediator Arias. Twenty years ago, Arias refused to allow U.S. bases in Costa Rica for its illicit war against Nicaragua. Today, he stars in the good cop bad cop show. His one act of "disobedience" won him a Nobel Prize. Since then, he has shown loyalty to Washington's economic consensus, meaning free trade and corporate well being.
After Arias served as President (1986-1990), he changed the constitution in order to run for a second term (2006-2010). In June, another U.S. ally, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe changed his Constitution to allow for his third re-election. Neither Washington nor the mass media objected. Anti-Castro Miami moguls hailed this "democratic" move.
Double standard? No. Arias and Uribe followed U.S. dictates: don't befriend Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro or any serious "change" talker. Zelaya’s disobedience -- to his own class and to Washington -- got him kidnapped.
In Washington, the response was “new elections.” U.S. presidents hail democratic elections -- when they benefit the United States. When elected governments help the poor and reduce U.S. interests, however, Washington officials plot coups, insist on term limits and enforcement of Constitutions they have not read.
http://progreso-weekly.com/2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1095:honduras-term-limits-apply-when-governments-benefit-people&catid=40:lastest-news&Itemid=59~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Excerpts from the Honduran Constitution:
Wednesday, 22 July 2009 11:15 Share | .ARTICLE 2. The Sovereignty belongs to the People, from whom emanate all the Powers of the State exercised by representation.
The People's sovereignty may also be exercised in a direct manner, through a Plebiscite and a Referendum.
The supplantation of the People's Sovereignty and the usurpation of the established powers are typified as crimes of Treason to the Motherland. The responsibility in such cases is imprescriptible and may not be deducted ex officio or at the petition of any citizen.
ARTICLE 3. No one owes obedience to a usurping government or to those who assume public functions or posts by force of arms or procedures that violate or ignore what this Constitution and the law establish. The acts carried out by such authorities are void. The people have the right to recur to insurrection in defense of the constitutional order.
ARTICLE 5. The government must stand on the principle of participatory democracy, from which derives the national integrity, which implies the participation of all political sectors in the public administration, for the purpose of ensuring and strengthening Honduras' progress on the basis of political stability and national conciliation.
For the purpose of strengthening and enabling participatory democracy, the referendum and the plebiscite are instituted as mechanisms of consultation for the citizens, regarding affairs of fundamental importance to national life.
A special law, approved by two thirds of the totality of deputies in the National Congress, shall determine the procedures, requirements and other aspects necessary to the exercise of the people's consultations. The referendum shall be convoked upon an Ordinary Law or a constitutional norm, or its reform approved for its ratification or disapproval by the citizenry.
The plebiscite shall be convoked by requesting from the citizens a pronouncement on constitutional, legislative or administrative aspects, upon which the Established Powers have not made any previous decision.
By initiative of at least ten (10) Deputies in the National Congress, the President of the Republic through a resolution by the Council of Secretaries of State, or six percent (6%) of the citizens inscribed in the National Electoral Census, enabled to vote after their signatures and fingerprints have been duly confirmed by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the National Congress will hear and discuss such petitions, and if it approves them by the affirmative vote of two thirds of the totality of its members, it shall approve a Decree that will determine the boundaries of the consultation, ordering the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to convoke, organize and direct the citizen consultations indicated in the previous paragraphs.
The exercise of the vote in citizen consultations is obligatory. The bills intended to reform Article 374 of this Constitution will not be the objects of a referendum or plebiscite.
Likewise, the aforementioned consultations may not be utilized for matters related to issues of taxation, public credit, amnesty, the national currency, budgets, international treaties and conventions and social achievements.
It is up to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to notify the National Congress, within a period no longer than ten (10) days, about the results of such consultations. The outcome of the citizen consultations will be obligatorily complied with
(a) if at least fifty-one percent (51%) of the citizens inscribed in the National Electoral Census at the time the consultation is held participate in it, and
(b) if the affirmative vote achieves a majority of valid votes.
If the result of the vote is not affirmative, a consultation on the same topics may not be held during the following period of the Government of the Republic. The National Congress shall order the enactment of the norms that may result as a consequence of the consultation, by means of constitutional procedures of the existing Law. A presidential veto is not allowed in cases of consultation through a referendum or plebiscite.
Consequently, the President of the Republic shall order the promulgation of the approved norms.
ARTICLE 45. Any act that prohibits or limits the participation of citizens in the political life of the country is declared to be punishable.
http://progreso-weekly.com/2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1097:excerpts-from-the-honduran-constitution&catid=40:lastest-news&Itemid=59
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