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NEWS DAY | Honduras still in trouble

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By Mary Turck, News Day blog
July 09, 2009
As the military maintains a tight grip on the country, OAS, UN and US leaders have met with President Manuel Zelaya and are trying to negotiate with coup leaders for his return to Honduras. No luck yet, and reports from Honduras describe repressive conditions and anger from large segments of the society. Bertha Oliva, a human rights leader since the 1980s, denounced the coup in a radio interview as more of the military repression that has plagued the country. Here's another report, from the Weekly News Update on the Americas:

Father José Andrés Tamayo, an activist Honduran priest who was the Central American recipient of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for 2005, went into hiding shortly after the June 28 military coup that removed President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from power, according to phone calls he made on July 1 to New York's Spanish-language daily El Diario-La Prensa and the US-based Catholic News Service.

On June 29 Tamayo joined a group of several hundred protesters who were taking seven rented buses from the eastern department of Olancho, where Tamayo is based, to Tegucigalpa to join ongoing demonstrations against the coup. When soldiers shot out the buses' tires near the town of Los Limones, the protesters decided to block the road. During the night of June 30-July 1 the soldiers attacked, beating the protesters and firing their weapons "in all directions," according to Tamayo, who escaped into a house and hid under a bed. Some protesters were arrested and taken to a police station, where they were beaten, stripped and threatened with shotguns before being released after four hours.

Tamayo was in hiding when he made the calls. There have been several attempts against the priest's life since 2001 because of his campaigns to protect the forests; he had been assigned bodyguards by the previous government, but they were apparently withdrawn after the coup. (Catholic News Service 7/1/09; La Opinión (Los Angeles) 7/2/09 from ED-LP; New America Media 7/2/09, translated from ED-LP)


News with attitude, mostly from MN but with occasional forays abroad.News Day summarizes, links to, and comments on reports from news media around the world, with particular attention to Minnesota news.

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Disturbingly incomplete

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 2009-07-09 13:46.
Mary Turck's reports on Honduras are disturbingly biased. The Honduras Constitution prohibits a President seeking a second term, and also prohibits a President campaigning to change that part of the Constitution. It also provides that a President who tries to change the provision forfeits their office. Zelaya expressly defied court orders, and tried to coerce the military to help him run an illegal referendum. He had ballots sent in illegally from Venezuela, and when they were impounded, he went at the head of a mob and seized the ballots. The military carried out orders of the courts and decisions of the Honduras Congress when they ousted Zelaya and replaced him with the speaker of the Congress, who was next in line of succession. This was all done legally, arguably in defense of the Honduras Constitution. Yet Mary Turck presents this as an illegal military coup, refers to the ousted President as the President, and makes no mention of the provisions in the Honduras Constitution, the court orders and Zelaya's defiance of court orders.

Try this for

Submitted by Mary Turck on Sat, 2009-07-11 19:26.
Try this for completeness: 1) The proposed referendum was on the possibilty of holding a constitutional convention next year - NOT on the possibility of a second term. Zelaya would have been out of office before the convention was even started. 2) The Organization of American States, the United Nations and the United States have all denounced the military coup. 3) The argument that it is "legal" for the military to storm the presidential palace in the middle of the night, beat the president and force him out of the country, kidnap other government officials, and shoot demonstrators -- would be laughable, were it not so outrageous.

Looking to the Honduran Constitution

Submitted by brainfood (not verified) on Thu, 2009-07-09 16:27.
Interestingly, the Honduran Constitution of 1982 does provide for loss of citizenship for those who “incite, promote or aid in the continuation or re-election of the President” http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Honduras/hond05.html (article 42): ARTICULO 42.- La calidad de ciudadano se pierde: 5. Por incitar, promover o apoyar el continuismo o la reelección del Presidente de la República. Further, Article 239 indicates that anyone who has held the office of chief executive cannot be president or vice president and anyone who proposes reform to that prohibition can be barred from holding public office for ten years: ARTICULO 239.- El ciudadano que haya desempeñado la titularidad del Poder Ejecutivo no podrá ser Presidente o Vicepresidente de la República. El que quebrante esta disposición o proponga su reforma, así como aquellos que lo apoyen directa o indirectamente, cesarán de inmediato en el desempeño de sus respectivos cargos y quedarán inhabilitados por diez años para el ejercicio de toda función pública. My educated guess on that provision is that it is aimed move at banning past military dictators from pursuing the office than it is a stricture contra re-election, per se. Additionally, Article 374 bars any amendments regarding the length of the presidential term (amongst other things: ARTICULO 374.- No podrán reformarse, en ningún caso, el artículo anterior, el presente artículo, los artículos constitucionales que se refieren a la forma de gobierno, al territorio nacional, al período presidencial, a la prohibición para ser nuevamente Presidente de la República, el ciudadano que lo haya desempeñado bajo cualquier título y el referente a quienes no pueden ser Presidentes de la República por el período subsiguiente. As such, it is pretty clear why the Supreme Court of Justice ruled against Zelaya’s plebiscite proposal in the first place. It also means that if the vote had been allowed to happen it would have had no legal standing.

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