Zelaya’s ouster: good for Honduras’s democracy

JAMES - I would like to simply ask for a link to anyplace quoting Zelaya concerning his desire to be re-elected. To my knowledge, it does not exist; and I would love to be shown otherwise.

XIOMARA - You go James one better, and admit Zelaya did not say "I want to stay in power", but go on to assert that intention to break the law as the same as breaking the law. We do not know what if Zelaya would have like to remain in office or not, but the fact is he did not propose that, and the law cannot go farther than actions. Otherwise I could accuse you of all manner of crimes asserting my perception that you indeed "intended" to committ these crimes at some point in the future. That is not how the law works.

Furthermore, Mr. Zelaya did publish his intention to run a non-binding opinion poll in the June 26 La Gaceta. This non-binding poll was never ruled upon by the Supreme Court and hence was never determined to be Illegal. The text of the Referendum read:

Esta usted de acuerdo que en las elecciones generales de noviembre de 2009 se instale una cuarta urna para decidir sobre la convocatoria a una Asamblea Nacional Constituyente que emita una nueva Constitución de la República?

It is obvious that, even if Mr. Zelaya had gotten yes votes all the way through the bifurcated process, and convoked a an assembly the day after the elections, he still could not have achieved re-election, simply because the new president would already have been elected.

The Velezuelan thing is a non-sequiter; it doesn't matter if they were printed in Venezuela, Danli, Miami or Anchorage, Alaska. As for the prefilled ballots, you are asserting (unproven) poll fraud before the poll even took place.

AL - If there was was an impeachment process, I did not hear about it. Either the Tribuna forgot to do a write up, or I missed something. Please send me a link. Albeit 'Crude', I'm sure it must have shown up somewhere in the papers. It is a somewhat lengthy process. In the 1982 constitution, the legal path to do so was via Articles 205, 218 and 319,
but currently the Nuevo Código Procesal Penal, Decreto 9-99-E (2002) outlines the process to impeach high officials. In 2004, the relevant section was amended and regulations finalized in Decreto 195-2004 published December 30, 2004. In Chapter III of the New Penal Trial Code are found Articles 414 to 417 which establish the procedures to follow.
Step 1 was Article 415: 'The Supreme Court receives accusation from the competent authority along with any evidence. Step 2: That's it, no more legal process. On June 28, the Armed Forces short circuit Article 416 and 417.

As far as your examples go, these are unproven charges. Since no trial was ever carried out, they are simply that, unproven charges.

JAMES - I would like to simply ask for a link to anyplace quoting Zelaya concerning his desire to be re-elected. To my knowledge, it does not exist; and I would love to be shown otherwise.

XIOMARA - You go James one better, and admit Zelaya did not say "I want to stay in power", but go on to assert that intention to break the law as the same as breaking the law. We do not know what if Zelaya would have like to remain in office or not, but the fact is he did not propose that, and the law cannot go farther than actions. Otherwise I could accuse you of all manner of crimes asserting my perception that you indeed "intended" to committ these crimes at some point in the future. That is not how the law works.

Furthermore, Mr. Zelaya did publish his intention to run a non-binding opinion poll in the June 26 La Gaceta. This non-binding poll was never ruled upon by the Supreme Court and hence was never determined to be Illegal. The text of the Referendum read:

Esta usted de acuerdo que en las elecciones generales de noviembre de 2009 se instale una cuarta urna para decidir sobre la convocatoria a una Asamblea Nacional Constituyente que emita una nueva Constitución de la República?

It is obvious that, even if Mr. Zelaya had gotten yes votes all the way through the bifurcated process, and convoked a an assembly the day after the elections, he still could not have achieved re-election, simply because the new president would already have been elected.

The Velezuelan thing is a non-sequiter; it doesn't matter if they were printed in Venezuela, Danli, Miami or Anchorage, Alaska. As for the prefilled ballots, you are asserting (unproven) poll fraud before the poll even took place.

AL - If there was was an impeachment process, I did not hear about it. Either the Tribuna forgot to do a write up, or I missed something. Please send me a link. Albeit 'Crude', I'm sure it must have shown up somewhere in the papers. It is a somewhat lengthy process. In the 1982 constitution, the legal path to do so was via Articles 205, 218 and 319,
but currently the Nuevo Código Procesal Penal, Decreto 9-99-E (2002) outlines the process to impeach high officials. In 2004, the relevant section was amended and regulations finalized in Decreto 195-2004 published December 30, 2004. In Chapter III of the New Penal Trial Code are found Articles 414 to 417 which establish the procedures to follow.
Step 1 was Article 415: 'The Supreme Court receives accusation from the competent authority along with any evidence. Step 2: That's it, no more legal process. On June 28, the Armed Forces short circuit Article 416 and 417.

As far as your examples go, these are unproven charges. Since no trial was ever carried out, they are simply that, unproven charges.

I am Honduran and versed in Honduran law and politics. I know many of the actors in this drama.

The removal of Mr. Zelaya was legal. It was a crude impeachment process but it was constitutional. to be frank, his removal should have happened months before as he showed gross negligence in discharging the duties of his office. Let me give you some examples:
1) The Honduran Constitution mandates that the President submits a budget for the following fiscal year in September. Mr. Zelaya didn't submit the budget and centralized the management of funds forcing the Congress to borrow funds from banks to operate. It's now clear that Mr. Zelaya and his government misused funds in many ways. One example of such abuse is that his Chief of Staff walked out of the Central Bank with an amount roughly equal to US$2 Million which are unaccounted for.
2) Mr. Zelaya also indulged in foreign trips to the tune of $150 Million over the three and a half years of his government.
3) 300 projects that had been funded were abandoned by Mr. Zelaya's government and the funds diverted for purposes that were not authorized by the Congress.

Honduras has had its fair share of corrupt governments and yet Mr. Zelaya's government makes previous governments pale in comparison with the highest levels of corruption in Honduran history.

But most baffling of all is the international community's refusal to recognize the upcoming elections. This is egregious and reflects how ignorant they are about the election's process in Honduras.

The interim President cannot run for election in fact, by being interim President he has effectively ended his opportunity of ever running for President again as the Constitution forbids that any citizen who holds the office of President for even one day can be President again and this is the reason why the former Vice-President resigned from office and coincidentally he, the former Vice-President is the candidate for Mr. Zelaya's party.

In Honduras, the elections don't depend upon the President. The Electoral Tribunal calls for elections and the process started a long time before Mr. Zelaya's removal. The candidates were elected in internal primaries and their selection was not vitiated by Mr. Zelaya's removal. It should be noted that Honduras remains under full democracy as the Congress, Supreme Court, Electoral Tribunal and all other democratic authorities, most of whom are from Mr. Zelaya's party.

There is only one acceptable path to move forward and that is to have the elections and let the people elect their new President. Anything else runs contrary to the wishes of the vast majority of Hondurans.

You do your readers a great disservice by basing your article on the oft-repeated, but nonetheless, totally false claim that Zelaya tried to "pass a referendum that would allow him to serve as president beyond the single term prescribed by the Honduran constitution." Nowhere did Mr. Zelaya ever state that he wished to be re-elected or that he was pursuing a second term by means of the proposed Constitutional Assembly. Neither you nor anyone who claims that he violated article 239 have ever shown an instance where he said he wished that; he had always specifically said that his term ended in January 2010 and that he did not seek to extend it beyond that. Even the Honduran Supreme Court, in its list of charges produced post-coup against Zelaya, never charged him with violation of Article 239, but rather limited itself to technical violations of election law, such as whether the Executive Branch has the constitutional right to undertake Opinion Polls and Referendum, a question that was never resolved because he was violently removed from his home at 6:00 am on June 28 and deported to Costa Rica, without a legal hearing or impeachment process untertaken against him.

The Constitutional Assembly that Zelaya wished to organize, was slated to take place in 2010-11, long after he his term would have been over. Its purpose was to gather members from all sides of Honduran society, not simply the rich and powerful who put together the original in 1982, and let the document be amended and reconstructed in accord with the needs of all voices, all groups, both ethnic and socio-economic, with the goal of producing a more just and prosperous nation for all Hondurans.

Doug Zylstra
Chicago, IL