Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution reads
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, as well as those who 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.
In consideration of past dictators who want to cling to power forever, the Honduran Constitution prohibits any proposal to abolish term limits for President or Vice President. The penalty for a public official who proposes abolishing term limits is to immediately be removed from office and be prohibited from serving in public office for 10 years.
Zelaya directly violated Article 239 by ordering an election to "reform" the Constitution in order to keep himself in power beyond his term of office. He was then removed from office as the Constitution of his country calls for.
Was Zelaya’s removal from office unlawful? No, it is exactly what the Constitution of Honduras requires, given his crime. Obama should be praising Honduras for following its own Constitution and peacefully removing a president from power. Instead, he demands that Honduras violate its own Constitution by bringing Zelaya back.
The New York Times, which supposedly publishes all the news that's fit to print, doesn't see fit to write about Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution and how Zelaya's removal was consistent with Honduran law.
— Half Sigma, The news politics of common sense. www.halfstigma.com
MARTES 30 DE JUNIO DE 2009
Honduras "Coup" the True Story
Zelaya´s plot to break the constitutional order and the rule of law in our country has led us into a profound social and political crisis, on which he has bet all of his success on the generation of hatred between classes. His actions have been marked by dividing and confusing Honduran people by adopting the style, advice and funding from left-wing leaders such as Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa and Daniel Ortega.
He has been leading the country without having submitted a budget of revenues and expenditures for the current year so that he can not be made accountable for diverting government funds on the so-called project "Cuarta Urna" (poll or survey) and he also has been able to intimidate the legislature and courts by limiting the legal transfer of resources so that they can not operate normally, to the extent that they have had to dismiss employees.
He tried to buy the loyalty of the Armed Forces by offering more than 200 million Lempiras in order to build the first phase of the Palmerola airport without the military having to make the normal procurements by calling this an emergency measure...but Thank God! That the Armed Forces kept faithful to the Constitution.
In the attachment you will find the "drop that spilled the cup", since after a court declared the "not binding" poll illegal and another jurisdictional court rejected a claim ...he chose to say that the bourgeoisie, power groups and oligarchies were behind this proclamation. Is it possible that laws should be respected or disregarded at his convenience?
It also demonstrates that the ex-president was not seeking for a mere opinion through his so-called consultation, since the decree included a last-minute change. After months of declaring it as a harmless poll and ensuring he would only ask: Do you agree to install a Fourth Urn in the general elections of 2009?; he changed the question substantially at the time of its publication in the Official Gazette dated June 25 reading: Do you agree to install a Fourth Urn in which the people decide the convocation of a National Constituent Assembly in the general elections of 2009?
June 25 was last Thursday...the decree was issued in the Journal until late Friday 26...the rest of the government acknowledged this until Saturday 27 and the survey was to be held on Sunday 28...Can deduct his true intentions?
Now he is trying to appear as a martyr and seeks to destabilize our country with the incursion of people through the Nicaraguan border that will act like Hondurans while they create chaos and disorder. Too bad you were not witnesses of the authoritarianism with which he has been leading the other two branches of government, referring to the church (to Christ), journalists and "bourgeois" citizens (the US Ambassador Hugo Llorens can verify all of this). He reacts harshly to anyone who does not approve his proceedings and declares them incompetent, superficial and bribed (court and prosecutors) who established the illegality of such a consultation.
On the other hand, he fills his mouth by saying that he managed to gather more than 420,000 signatures in support of it, but he did it by threatening public employees with their dismissal, by bribing the most humble sectors of our society, by conditioning treatment to sick people that attended public hospitals and by union leaders of the worst sort.
I personally would have preferred to declare him unable to govern, arrest him and condemn him; but the other two branches of government had to act promptly because of the circumstances mentioned before in order to stop him from reporting the results of the poll; since it became imminent Honduras has going to succumb under the type of government that today preaches in Venezuela.
In addition, results were going to be announced through the National Institute of Statistics, a government body completely under his control and that under Honduran law is by no way the correct government body to announce a consultation or whatever it was (another abuse of authority). This action by no means guaranteed the veracity of the results of the survey. He also made it mandatory for public employees to assist.
He refused to reconsider any of his proceedings and declared one time after another there was nothing to be done in order to stop this poll from taking place.
Ironically, apart from the international refusal to recognize we are only defending our democracy and the risk of being destabilized or overrun by extremists ...he is inheriting us a country that is completely bankrupt and we will have to devalue our currency and add new taxes to improve the heavily deteriorated public finances.
Our consolation is that at least we are truly defending our democracy as a whole and, most important, are keeping our freedoms intact.
He has been leading the country without having submitted a budget of revenues and expenditures for the current year so that he can not be made accountable for diverting government funds on the so-called project "Cuarta Urna" (poll or survey) and he also has been able to intimidate the legislature and courts by limiting the legal transfer of resources so that they can not operate normally, to the extent that they have had to dismiss employees.
He tried to buy the loyalty of the Armed Forces by offering more than 200 million Lempiras in order to build the first phase of the Palmerola airport without the military having to make the normal procurements by calling this an emergency measure...but Thank God! That the Armed Forces kept faithful to the Constitution.
In the attachment you will find the "drop that spilled the cup", since after a court declared the "not binding" poll illegal and another jurisdictional court rejected a claim ...he chose to say that the bourgeoisie, power groups and oligarchies were behind this proclamation. Is it possible that laws should be respected or disregarded at his convenience?
It also demonstrates that the ex-president was not seeking for a mere opinion through his so-called consultation, since the decree included a last-minute change. After months of declaring it as a harmless poll and ensuring he would only ask: Do you agree to install a Fourth Urn in the general elections of 2009?; he changed the question substantially at the time of its publication in the Official Gazette dated June 25 reading: Do you agree to install a Fourth Urn in which the people decide the convocation of a National Constituent Assembly in the general elections of 2009?
June 25 was last Thursday...the decree was issued in the Journal until late Friday 26...the rest of the government acknowledged this until Saturday 27 and the survey was to be held on Sunday 28...Can deduct his true intentions?
Now he is trying to appear as a martyr and seeks to destabilize our country with the incursion of people through the Nicaraguan border that will act like Hondurans while they create chaos and disorder. Too bad you were not witnesses of the authoritarianism with which he has been leading the other two branches of government, referring to the church (to Christ), journalists and "bourgeois" citizens (the US Ambassador Hugo Llorens can verify all of this). He reacts harshly to anyone who does not approve his proceedings and declares them incompetent, superficial and bribed (court and prosecutors) who established the illegality of such a consultation.
On the other hand, he fills his mouth by saying that he managed to gather more than 420,000 signatures in support of it, but he did it by threatening public employees with their dismissal, by bribing the most humble sectors of our society, by conditioning treatment to sick people that attended public hospitals and by union leaders of the worst sort.
I personally would have preferred to declare him unable to govern, arrest him and condemn him; but the other two branches of government had to act promptly because of the circumstances mentioned before in order to stop him from reporting the results of the poll; since it became imminent Honduras has going to succumb under the type of government that today preaches in Venezuela.
In addition, results were going to be announced through the National Institute of Statistics, a government body completely under his control and that under Honduran law is by no way the correct government body to announce a consultation or whatever it was (another abuse of authority). This action by no means guaranteed the veracity of the results of the survey. He also made it mandatory for public employees to assist.
He refused to reconsider any of his proceedings and declared one time after another there was nothing to be done in order to stop this poll from taking place.
Ironically, apart from the international refusal to recognize we are only defending our democracy and the risk of being destabilized or overrun by extremists ...he is inheriting us a country that is completely bankrupt and we will have to devalue our currency and add new taxes to improve the heavily deteriorated public finances.
Our consolation is that at least we are truly defending our democracy as a whole and, most important, are keeping our freedoms intact.
That is, if he does not return.
Article: What Really Happened Here?
If you are not familiar with the country’s history and the Honduran Constitution, it is almost impossible that you would understand what happened here this past weekend. In 1982, my country adopted a new Constitution to allow our ordered return to democracy. After 19 previous constitution — two Spanish ones, three as part of the Republic of Central America, and 14 as an independent nation — this one, at 28, has been the longest lasting one. It has lasted for so long because it responds and adapts to our changing reality, as seen in the fact that out of its original 379 articles, seven of them 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 deal with the form of government; the extent of our borders; the number of years of the presidential term; two prohibitions — one to reelect presidents and another one to change the article that states who can’t run for president — and one article that penalizes the abrogation of the Constitution.
In these 28 years, Honduras has found legal ways to deal with its own problems. Each and every successful country around the world has lived through similar trial-and-error processes until they were able to find legal vehicles that adapt to their reality. France had 13 Constitutions between 1789 and the adoption of the current one in 1958 which has passed 22 constitutional revisions. The USA had one before this one which has been amended 27 times since 1789 and the British — pragmatic as they are — in 900 years have changed it so many times that they have never taken the time to compile their Constitution into a single body of law.
Having explained that, under our Constitution, what happened in Honduras this last Sunday? Soldiers arrested and took out of the country a Honduran citizen who, the day before, through his actions had stripped himself of the presidency of Honduras.
These are the hard facts. Last Friday, Mr. Zelaya, with his cabinet, issued a decree ordering all government employees to take part in the “Public Opinion Poll to convene a National Constitutional Assembly” (Presidential Decree PCM-020). The decree was published on Saturday in the official newspaper. With this event, Mr. Zelaya triggered a constitutional protection that automatically removed him from office.
The key legal elements for that constitutional protection to be triggered are the following ones. Constitutional assemblies are convened to write new constitutions. In Honduras, you have 365 articles that can be changed by Congress. When Zelaya published that decree to regulate an “opinion poll” about the possibility of convening a national assembly, he acted against the unchangeable articles of the constitution that deal with the prohibition of reelecting a president and of extending his term. His actions showed intent.
How is that kind of intent sanctioned in our Constitution? With the immediate removal of those involved in the action as stated in article 239 of the Constitution, which reads: “No citizen that has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President. Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, 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 rule speaks about intent and that it also says immediately — as in instantly, as in no trial required, as in no impeachment needed!
This immediate sanction might sound draconian, but every country knows its own enemies. Requiring no previous trial might be crazy, but in Latin America, a President is no ordinary citizen but is the most powerful figure of the land. Historically, that figure has been above the law. To prevent that officer from using his power to stay in office, Honduras has constitutional rules such as the mentioned one.
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, no one will be above the law.
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