The Obama Administration is about to cut off aid to Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. Earlier, the Obama Administration blocked travel to the United States by the people of Honduras.
Both actions are foolish responses to a recent ruling by the supreme court of Honduras refusing to approve the return to power of the country’s bullying ex-president and would-be dictator, Mel Zelaya. Zelaya was earlier arrested by soldiers acting on orders of the Honduras Supreme Court, which had ruled that he was no longer president. He was then replaced by his country’s Congress with a civilian successor, and forced into exile. Zelaya’s removal came after he systematically abused his powers: he sought to circumvent constitutional term limits, used mobs to intimidate his critics, threatened public employees with termination if they refused to help him violate the Constitution, engaged in massive corruption, illegally cut off public funds to local governments whose leaders refused to back his quest for more power, denied basic government services to his critics, refused to enforce dozens of laws passed by Congress, and spent the country into virtual bankruptcy, refusing to submit a budget so that he could illegally spend public funds on his cronies.
State Department lawyers, who are not experts on Honduran law, plan to declare the ex-president’s removal a “military coup” to justify cutting off aid, even though Honduras has a civilian president, and the ex-president was lawfully removed from office (although his subsequent exile may technically have violated Honduran law).
Journalists nonsensically refer to Honduras’s removal of its ex-president as a “coup” even while admitting that it was approved by the country's supreme court, and stating that it was ordered by the court. But if it was legal, by definition, it cannot be a coup, since a coup is defined as “the unconstitutional overthrow of a legitimate government by a small group.”
The ex-president’s removal was perfectly constitutional, say many lawyers and foreign policy experts, including attorneys Octavio Sanchez, Miguel Estrada, and Dan Miller, former Assistant Secretary of State Kim Holmes, Stanford’s William Ratliff, and the Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady.
Moreover, the ex-president’s removal was not a “coup” because it was not committed by a “small group,” as the definition of “coup” requires. The removal of Honduras’s president was supported by the entire Honduran Supreme Court, an almost unanimous Honduran Congress, and much of Honduran society. Honduras did not lose its government, but merely replaced one illegitimate part of it: its overbearing president. And his removal from office (as opposed to his subsequent exile) was clearly legally justified.
The fact that solders, not police, enforced the removal of Honduras’s ex-president does not make it a coup. Because soldiers, “instead of the police,” carried out the court’s orders to arrest the ex-president, the removal has been falsely called a “military coup” by liberal journalists, the Obama Administration, the Carter Center, and the leftist regimes that now prevail in much of Latin America. But soldiers’ participation made sense. Only soldiers, not police, would have enough manpower to remove a would-be dictator who was the most powerful man in his country, with his own bodyguards. More importantly, the Honduran Constitution expressly vests the military — not police — with the power to enforce Constitutional guarantees like term limits, in Article 272. The president forfeited his right to rule by proposing an end to term limits (Honduras has had such a problem with elected presidents later becoming “presidents for life” through vote fraud and intimidation that Article 239 of the Honduras Constitution strips presidents of the presidency if they even “propose” an end to term limits). And soldiers have occasionally been used to enforce court orders, even in the U.S., such as in the 1957 Little Rock desegregation order.
The State Department staff are reported to have a ridiculous response to all this. The State Department is apparently well aware of the constitutional provisions that justify the ex-president’s removal, but believes that they are irrelevant because they were not cited by the Honduran Supreme Court prior to the President’s removal. The U.S. Embassy in Honduras argues that because the court did not cite Article 239 in its order to arrest the President, Article 239’s provision stripping presidents of their office for proposing an end to term limits (as Honduras’s ex-president did) is an irrelevant after-the-fact “post-removal” rationalization.
The State Department staff’s position reflects a basic misunderstanding of how courts operate in the real world. It is quite common for courts to rule first, and issue an opinion explaining their reasoning later, especially in election disputes and other cases where courts need to rule rapidly (like removing a would-be dictator). Many of the court rulings in the Bush v. Gore litigation, for example, were issued first, with the court opinions explaining them following only later. When the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the federal government’s bankruptcy plan for Chrysler, it ruled first on June 5, and issued its opinion explaining its order only two months later, on August 5. When the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Georgia Thompson’s conviction and ordered her release from jail in United States v. Thompson, 484 F.3d 877 (7th Cir. 2007), it did so from the bench, “without waiting until completion of a written decision,” and explained its decision only 2 weeks later. Thus, the fact that the Honduras Supreme Court did not explicitly cite Article 239 in its decisions leading to the ex-president’s removal is of no consequence.
Confronted with the sound legal basis for removing the ex-president under his country’s constitution, the Obama Administration has responded with a series of increasingly weak rationalizations for stubbornly seeking to force his return on the Honduran people.
For example, President Obama has erroneously suggested that people have a “universal right” to keep the presidents they elected in office — even, apparently, if they violate their country’s constitution, as Honduras’s ex-president did. That is certainly not true in the U.S.: Richard Nixon was reelected in a landslide in 1972, but was forced to leave office 2 years later after he attempted to cover up the Watergate burglary.
Obama’s nominee for assistant secretary of state has erroneously argued that presidents should not be removed without unspecified “judicial process.” That argument is at odds with our own Constitution’s provision for legislative impeachment; Honduras’s constitutional provision automatically stripping presidents of their office if they even propose changes to constitutional term limits, without the need for impeachment or conviction; and the fact that Honduras’s ex-president was in fact removed through a “judicial” order, that has now been reaffirmed in a “judicial process.”
The Obama Administration earlier ignored bedrock constitutional principles by taking actions predicated on the erroneous idea that Honduran legislators and judges lost their right to hold office when Honduras’s ex-president was removed. That’s like saying that after Richard Nixon resigned in Watergate, all of his judicial appointees (including the 4 Supreme Court justices he appointed, such as Harry Blackmun and William Rehnquist) should have automatically lost their posts, and the entire Congress should have resigned. In an effort to pressure Honduras’s legislature and courts, Obama’s State Department earlier rescinded the visas of a Honduran Supreme Court justice, the leader of Honduras’s Congress, and its human-rights ombudsman, who had criticized human-rights abuses and intimidation by the ex-president. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly justified the taking away of the visas by saying that “We don’t recognize Roberto Micheletti as the president of Honduras. We recognize Manuel Zelaya.” U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens similarly explained the revocation of a supreme court justice’s visa by saying that “the Supreme Court justice was part of the ‘regime.’”
But Congress and the Supreme Court are co-equal branches of government that do not lose their right to hold office merely because the president leaves his office. Presidents are not emperors. They are not the government, but merely part of it. President Obama was not taught this bizarre theory of imperial power at Harvard Law School, which he and I both attended.
Obama’s demand that Honduras reinstate its would-be dictator has emboldened other elected leaders in Latin America to try to make themselves dictators. (Even the liberal Washington Post, which has not endorsed a Republican for president since 1952, admitted in an editorial by Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jackson Diehl that the Obama Administration has shown a “willful disregard of political oppression” by left-wing dictators in Latin America).
Obama’s demand that Honduras’s ex-president be returned to office has been supported by the Cuban communist dictator Castro and the Venezuelan socialist dictator Chavez, who counted Honduras’s deposed president as an ally, despite his background as a wealthy and corrupt landowner.
But allying with Castro and Chavez to force the return of Honduras’s would-be dictator has not even improved U.S. relations with their countries. The dictators Castro and Chavez continue to attack and oppose the United States at every turn, and oppose all of its Latin American initiatives, like its plans for bases in Colombia to fight drug trafficking. Obama has received nothing in exchange for his appeasement of Latin America’s left.
Comments
Interesting you say Obama has received nothing in exchange for his support of leftists in Latin America. To me that says his intentions are pure.
Mary, is that the only thing you took from this article? Let me translate: Mary sees purity in every action of Obama and takes her love of Obama to personally to heart and is unwilling to look at the a president of the U.S. using this nation's power to crush the constitution, congress and judiciary of another country. Mary only 'feels' his intentions are pure without using reason or the brain she was born with.
Well written Hans, good work.
In their neophytic enthusiasm to appease your President Obama and his administration got this one totally wrong. I really kind of feel sorry for them but hey, this is international politics and a reality smack in the face is surely a good teacher. But now, the poor sods in Washington are up the creek without a paddle.
If someone can only give them a ladder to climb down I imagine they would be eternally grateful. Having said that my guess is that they will plough ahead with hardly a look over the shoulder and Honduras be damned, small fry that it is. Who cares!
Disgusting. Shame on the Obama administration. I expected better, much better.
Because this action was determined to be a coup, it is required that aid be cut to the country of Honduras. Please read the news accounts detailing this decision. Thank you.
To Obama, anything, no matter how legal, that removes a leftist from office is a "coup."
If he loses the 2012 election, he'll probably call that a coup, too.
The idea that the occupant of one branch of government can't just ignore the rights and prerogatives of the other branches seems to be beyond his comprehension.
Uh, the Honduran Supreme Court did not order Zelaya's removal from office. Your entire article is based on a faulty premise. I'd suggest reading the expediente at the court's web site. The court, the army and Micheletti have all subsequently admitted that the army acted illegally, by the way.
No, the court declared he was no longer president, and duly issued an order for his arrest.
Some members of the military admitted acting illegally in EXILING Zelaya AFTER he was properly removed from office.
All of the claims that the Honduran government admitted acting illegally in removing Zelaya actually involve admissions that the exiling of Zelaya after his removal was illegal.
An article of the Honduran constitution (article 80 or 81, I think) bans kicking citizens out of the country.
But as Miguel Estrada has noted, that merely means that Zelaya may have an immigration beef, not that he is entitled to return to office.
Some, like Octavio Sanchez, have denied that the exiling of the ex-president was illegal.
Sorry, I've read all 80+ pages of the expediente and I happen to know you're wrong. A member of the Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant, based on a complaint filed by the public ministry, to open proceedings against Zelaya. Cases against high public officials in Honduras are tried by the Supreme Court, which is why the case landed in this venue. The warrant specified that he was to be brought before a judge to give a statement. There was no trial and at no time did the Supreme Court ever make a finding regarding Zelaya's guilt or innocence based on the public ministry's complaint, or any other complaint. At no time did the Supreme Court ever order his deposition from office. Seriously, read the case file if you have further questions.
Frankly, we should butt out of Honduras. It sounds like much of Honduras doesn't want their former president back. Why should we tell them who their president ought to be?
Press reports say that the court said that the president was no longer president, and then ordered his arrest.
And a few days ago, the court affirmed that the replacement of the old president with the new one was a "constitutional succession."
One of the links in the above story is to a news story where the reporter does indeed write that the court ordered the president's removal.
And no one disputes that neither Honduras's Congress nor Honduras's Supreme Court wants him back. If his own country doesn't want him back, that should tell us something.
Even if the court hadn't said the former president was no longer president, his removal would technically be legal.
Even liberal commentators used to admit this, before it became clear that admtting this would make it harder to cut off aid under the fiction that what happened was a "military coup."
As one of the commentaries linked to above says,
"Article 272 of the Honduran Constitution gives the military the power to remove a president even without a court order, if he seeks to violate the term limits prescribed in the Honduran Constitution. Even a legal commentator, Litho, at the leading liberal blog Daily Kos, which is run by a leftist Latin American immigrant, admits that the military’s action was 'legal' in a 'technical sense' under the Honduran Constitution."
By the way, Litho now quotes some Honduran soldiers saying they acted illegally; but all the sources he cites for that claim say they acted illegally in EXILING the ex-president, not REMOVING him from OFFICE
Well good, now that we're clear that the Supreme Court of Honduras did not order Zelaya's destitution, the conversation can focus on the army, which the country's consitution requires to be "apolitical, obedient, and non-deliberative." In post-coup statements (but not in any ruling), the court has sought to justify the army's action. The court's president, for example, made an absurd claim in his meeting with Rep. Connie Mack:
"The Supreme Court President provided the legal argument for removing Mr. Zelaya to Costa Rica. He termed it 'estado de necessidad,' or 'state of necessity.' According to the President of the Supreme Court, Honduran law allows for an illegal act if that same act will save the lives of hundreds or thousands of Hondurans."
There is no such provision in the Honduran constitution, and no army in any legitimate democracy is authorized to depose a president if, in their opinion, doing so would save lives. It would be like the U.S. army deposing Bush post-Katrina.
Cadejo4 is a liar. I did not say any such thing. I said that even IF the court did not approve the removal of the former president (which it certainly has), he STILL was validly removed, because Article 272 of the Honduran Constitution gives the military the power to remove presidents who engage in abuses such as seeking to tamper with constitutional term limits.
The state-of-necessity and "illegal act" cadejo4 is discussing appears to relate to the exiling of Zelaya, not his removal from office.
The removal from office appears to have occurred legally.
JB, here's a small task for you. Find and quote from the Supreme Court order that instructed the army to depose the president. Such an important document must be widely circulated on the Internet, right? Let's have a quote from it.
(For folks watching at home, no quote will be produced, because the order does not exist. There is a warrant to bring him before a judge, which is not even remotely the same thing.)
Are there any restrictions on travel to Honduras? Or is it only from Honduras to the U.S.?
For all the current turmoil, Honduras is still a safer travel destination than some parts of Latin America. Travel to Honduras is still permitted. It's just visas for Hondurans seeking to go to the U.S. that have been largely suspended.
Thank God for cadejo4! At least we have some truth brought to the discussion. I'm tired of seeing people twist facts based on their own political agenda, which is certainly the case with Hans Bader, who considers himself a true conservative but has no money to show for it.
In the end, Castro, Chavez, and Zelaya will likely win.
Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is spending a fortune paying off Latin American leaders and journalists, U.S. think-tanks, and NGOs, to get them to demand Zelaya's return to power in Honduras.
This "astro-turfing" is paying off.
Foreign aid is something like 6 percent of Honduras's GDP. Without it, its economy is in deep recession. Travel matters, too. By cutting it off, the Obama Administration may be able to force Honduras to accept Zelaya's return, no matter how unpopular he is.
And by damaging Honduras's economy, the Administration has succeeded in making Zelaya's successor nearly as unpopular as Zelaya himself. People tend to hold the current president responsible for the economy, fairly or unfairly.
When Zelaya returns and Honduran democratic institutions are in tatters, the public should hold Obama accountable for forcing his return on a once-friendly country.
The State Department employees who came up with this erroneous legal interpretation claiming that what happened in Honduras was an illegal coup are probably the same left-wing State Department employees who applauded the harangues of Cuban spy Walter Kendall Myers.
Myers was an openly pro-Castro employee of the State Department.
Myers delivered left-wing harangues at the State Department's headquarters in the years before he was finally discovered to be a spy for the Cuban government.
Myers' pro-Castro sympathies only seemed to increase his popularity among the career staff at the State Department, who are mostly staunch leftists.
Restoring Zelaya to power would set a dangerous precedent for the region, encouraging other presidents who want to become dictators. (Indeed, it already has had an impact on neighboring Nicaragua, where the president, Daniel Ortega, has become increasingly bold in his moves to make himself a dictator).
As another commenter noted,
"Most of the nations in the region that are demanding Zelaya's return are either run by dictators, or run by presidents who want to rewrite their own constitutions to expand their powers -- the way that Zelaya attempted to do (like Colombia's Uribe, who wants to get rid of his own term limits, and Costa Rica's Arias, who wants to allow relatives to succeed him and have more power than he did).
The OAS is a president's club that has a pro-executive bent. And what happened in Honduras is that the legislature and judiciary quite legitimately don't want their ex-president back, given his abuses of power."
Cadejo4 Do you live in Honduras? Do you remotely know what is happening down here? Do you remotley understand what is going on after Zelaya left this country? I thought so.
O.K. I am a honduran, I live in Honduras, Zelaya's removal was legal. If anybody in the USA had seen him his last month in office they would wonder why the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court took so long in ordering his arrest? He was leading mobs to do illegal break ins into the Honduran Armed Forces to get his illegal ballots(sent by Hugo Chavez) for his illegal referendum. Referendums are approved by the Honduran Constitution but they must be done by the TSE (Electoral Tribune) because they are not partial to any given political party, and the referendum Zelaya was doing was illegal because he was doing it himself,paying for it, counting it , so of course he was going to win it(duhh). Zelaya thought he could rule Honduras like it was his farm, ordering everybody around, inventing his own rules but when he decided he was going to install a constituent which was going to give him full powers, the honduran people and the legislative and legal powers said NO, get him out of here.
I believe Obama is doing this to Honduras because he intends to rewrite our Bill of Rights and Consitituion. He has said that the Constitution is flawed and allows for redistribution of wealth. He was checking with lawyers on how to get around the part of the Constitution saying that a president has to be born in America.Everything he is saying is preparing us for him to rewrite the Constitution in his image. He has pretty much gotten away with the illegal and unconstitutionl things he has already done. I heard he is thinking about calling a special meeting of states to change the Constitution.So, he can't support Honduras following their Constitution when he already is ignoring America's and, I believe, intends to do the same thing Hugo Chavez did with Venezuela's Constitution. The tiny far left are too spoiled by having freedoms and rights they didn't earn and are using the courts to ursurp the power of the people. They are throwing their rights away and unfairly everyone elses too.
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