coup

Honduras Agreement Did Not Promise Return of Authoritarian Ex-President, Contrary to Earlier Press Reports

by Hans Bader on October 31, 2009 · 2 comments

in International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual

The small country of Honduras did not agree to return its authoritarian ex-president to power after all.  Press reports said it did, but The Wall Street Journal says it merely agreed to submit a request for his return to Honduras’s Congress and Supreme Court, which previously backed the ex-president’s removal, in exchange for an end to U.S. sanctions and U.S. recognition of upcoming election results.  Under continuing U.S. pressure, they may soon allow his return to office, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The Washington Post admits that the ex-president, Manuel Zelaya, was trying to make himself into a dictator, like his mentor, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.  But the Post demands that he be returned to power anyway because he was “illegally deported” by the military after being removed from office.

But the ex-president is busy spinning the agreement as an unqualified recognition of his right to rule, which it isn’t.  And Obama Administration officials, like the State Department’s Thomas Shannon, are busy threatening Honduran legislators with sanctions and cancellation of their visas if they vote against reinstating Zelaya, in a manner seemingly at odds with the agreement itself.

Honduras removed ex-president Zelaya 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.

By levying sanctions on Honduras, and refusing to recognize its current government, the Obama administration has destabilized the country, one of the poorest in Latin America, resulting in mass layoffs leading to 65% unemployment among workers at small and medium-size enterprises in Honduras.  Vulnerable social groups in Honduras, like orphans, have suffered especially acutely, and malnutrition has risen.

Even before the current crisis, the World Food Program noted that “One out of  four Honduran children under 5 years old falls  to chronic malnutrition. In some rural communities to the west of the country, chronic malnutrition can reach 48.5 percent.”  Since the crisis, things have gotten much worse: “A woman caring for six grandchildren can no longer afford milk. A bricklayer who used to work six days a week now is lucky to get two. A shop manager has seen his earnings evaporate.”

The Obama administration insisted that Zelaya’s removal was illegal, although many legal commentators said that Honduras’s removal of ex-president Manuel Zelaya was legal — and thus, not a coup. 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.  Former Secretary of State James Baker, a lawyer, says that Honduras’s removal of Zelaya from office was legal, although its exiling of him was not.

Obama to Cut Off Aid to Honduras, Based on Legal Mistake and Misreading of the Law

by Hans Bader on August 29, 2009 · 13 comments

in International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

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. 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 remove 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 removing 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.

Obama Backs Imperial Presidency

by Hans Bader on July 29, 2009 · 6 comments

in Healthcare, International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

Obama is backing an imperial presidency in Honduras. When Honduras removed its ex-president and would-be dictator, Obama demanded his reinstatement, even though he was removed on orders of the Honduras Supreme Court and replaced by Honduras’s elected Congress, with the backing of much of Honduran society. Obama argued that elected presidents have a right to continue ruling even if they violate their country’s constitution, and his assistant secretary of state argued that presidents should not be removed without elaborate “judicial process” (an argument at odds with our own Constitution’s provision for legislative impeachment, and Honduras’s constitutional provision automatically stripping presidents of their office if they even propose changes to constitutional term limits).

Now, Obama is showing his poor grasp of civics, constitutional law, and separation of powers by suggesting that Honduran legislators and judges lost their right to hold office when the Honduran 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 intimidate Honduras’s legislature and courts, Obama has now had the state department rescind 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 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.”

But it should be obvious to anyone who knows anything that 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. Obama was not taught his bizarre theory of imperial power at Harvard Law School, which he and I both attended.

It’s difficult to say whether Obama is just being ignorant — as he was when he claimed in 2008 that America has 57 states — or whether he is willfully misreading the law in claiming that Honduras acted illegally, the way he has deceived the public through a long line of broken promises, such as his pledge to enact a “net spending cut,” which he broke on a big way with proposed budgets that will explode the national debt through $9.3 trillion in massively increased deficit spending.

Obama’s demand that Obama 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, admits that Obama has shown a “willful disregard of political oppression” by left-wing dictators in Latin America).

Obama state-department employees have called Honduras’s removal of its president a “coup,” and members of the press corps, who overwhelmingly voted for Obama, have mindlessly parroted this claim ever since without ever bothering to confront the reality that his removal was justified under stringent provisions of Honduras’s Constitution, such as Article 239, which bans presidents from serving if they even propose an end to term limits, and Article 272, which vests enforcement powers in the military to remove overreaching presidents (as many commentators have pointed out, including attorneys Octavio Sanchez, Miguel Estrada, and Dan Miller, former Assistant Secretary of State Kim Holmes, and the Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady).

But there was no “coup.” A coup is defined as the sudden, illegal removal of a legitimate government by a small group. 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 an illegitimate part of it: its constitution-shredding president. And his removal from office (as opposed to his subsequent exile) was clearly legally justified.

The fact that Honduran soldiers carried out a court order to remove the president does not make it a “military coup.” The ex-president was replaced by a civilian, the Congressional speaker. The soldiers merely played the same role in enforcing a court order that U.S. marshals might in the United States (Honduras does not have such marshalls, and it is the military — not court bailiffs or marshals — which is vested with enforcement powers under Article 272 of the Honduras Constitution). (Even in the U.S., troops can end up enforcing court orders against powerful officials, such as the 1957 court order desegregating Little Rock’s public schools, which was defied by Arkansas’ racist governor).

While engaging in unjustified meddling overseas, Obama is trying to push through an ill-conceived health-care overhaul at home which one of his own advisers says will harm people with insurance while raising their taxes. CNN says Obamacare will take away 5 freedoms. It will also destroy many affordable health-care plans while breaking Obama’s campaign promises.

Obama’s “Willful Disregard of Political Oppression” by Anti-American Dictators Is Admitted by Liberal Washington Post

by Hans Bader on July 13, 2009 · 1 comment

in International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony

Obama has demanded that Honduras allow its anti-American would-be dictator, Mel Zelaya, to return to power, arguing that President Zelaya’s removal by the Honduras Supreme Court, with the backing of his country’s Congress and military, was “undemocratic” because the now-unpopular Zelaya was once elected. He has ignored the many legal and foreign-affairs commentators who have pointed out that Zelaya’s removal was a legal response to Zelaya’s flouting of the constitution, and not a “coup,” such as attorneys Octavio Sanchez, Miguel Estrada, and Dan Miller, former Assistant Secretary of State Kim Holmes, and the Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady.

But Obama has shown no interest at all in criticizing the human rights violations, violent repression, and anti-democratic behavior of Venezuela’s anti-American strongman, as even the liberal Washington Post, which has not endorsed a Republican for president since 1952, noted today in an editorial by Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jackson Diehl, “Double Standards on Latin America.”

The Washington Post‘s Diehl notes Obama’s “willful disregard of political oppression” by anti-American regimes in places like Venezuela, and the fact that his Administration “for months refused to publicly” criticize human-rights abuses in Venezuela.

Obama’s glaring double-standard in favor of despotic anti-American regimes is not new for him. In 1983, the left-wing populist ruler of the Caribbean island nation of Grenada, Maurice Bishop, was overthrown and murdered by hardline Communist thugs backed by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Caribbean nations led by Dominican Prime Minister Eugenia Charles beseeched the U.S. to intervene to fight off Cuban imperialism and restore human rights and democracy, which the U.S. did, with the backing of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, producing a jubilant response among Grenada’s oppressed people. (Disgracefully, the UN General Assembly, representing mostly countries run by dictators, voted to condemn the U.S. for liberating Grenada).

How does Obama view this act of liberation from oppression, which has brought Grenada 25 years of peace and democracy? In his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope, he derides it as “the invasion of tiny, hapless Grenada.” This is exactly how Cuban dictator Fidel Castro disparaged America’s liberation of Grenada. It’s also how it is disparaged by former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, the Obama associate who sat on charitable boards along with Obama and helped him disburse tens of millions of dollars for left-wing causes.

Why does Obama think it is OK to meddle in foreign countries’ internal affairs to force them to accept the return of a would-be dictator — but not to liberate them from tyranny and oppression?

Obama has argued that the mere fact that Honduras’s would-be dictator was once elected means he couldn’t be removed even if he violated the law — a ridiculous argument that would have left Richard Nixon in charge of the U.S. after Watergate.

His nominee for Assistant Secretary of State, Arturo Valenzuela has made the ridiculous, legally-unfounded argument that even though Honduras’s president was removed on orders from Honduras’s Supreme Court, it was still illegal because he should have received more “judicial process.” Valenzuela has a soft-spot for Anti-American dictators, reflecting his reputation as a loud defender of Venezuelan dictator Chavez’s terrible record on freedom of the press.

Obama’s claim that the removal of Honduras’s president was “undemocratic” is belied by the fact that the Honduran Congress overwhelmingly voted to ratify the president’s removal and replace him with the speaker of the Honduran Congress.

Honduras did not use a formal impeachment process to remove its president because its constitution does not have a well-developed impeachment mechanism, says Latin American scholar Juan Carlos Hidalgo at the Cato Institute. But its unwieldy constitution does have other, less elegant means of removing abusive presidents: Article 239 bans presidents from continuing to hold office if they seek to extend their tenure, or merely propose an end to presidential term-limits. And Article 272 gives the military the power to enforce those term-limit provisions, which it did by executing a warrant for Zelaya’s arrest issued by the Honduran Supreme Court.

(The military’s law enforcement role is not unique to Honduras: in the U.S., federal troops were used to enforce a court order desegregating the schools in Little Rock in 1957, when the court’s order was thwarted by the Arkansas Governor. When confronted with powerful officials who refuse to comply with the law, the courts cannot rely simply on a handful of U.S. marshalls, but rather must look to federal troops or the national guard).

Church leaders and U.S. Senators are now opposing Obama’s demand that Honduras be forced to return Zelaya to power.

Church Leaders, Senators Oppose Forcing Honduras to Reinstate Ousted President and Would-Be Dictator

by Hans Bader on July 10, 2009

in International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Trade

Honduran church leaders, and 17 U.S. Senators, are now opposing outside pressure on Honduras to reinstate the corrupt president that it ousted last Sunday for seeking to eliminate constitutional term limits and become a dictator. The Obama Administration has joined Cuban dictator Castro, the anti-American Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, and the Organization of American States in demanding that Honduras put ex-president Mel Zelaya back in power.

“Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, and a Cardinal, strongly warned against Zelaya’s return to Honduras, which could lead to a ‘blood bath.’ Rodriguez, in a televised speech on July 4, asked the Organization of American States (OAS), which has demanded Zelaya’s restoration, to examine the ‘illegal deeds’ under Zelaya’s regime:’” “‘The Honduras people are also asking why the warlike threats against our country have not been condemned,’ he continued, by implication referring to invasion threats by Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.”

Speaking on behalf of Honduras’s bishops, he criticized international sanctions and threatened trade blockades against Honduras: “‘We declare the right we have to define our own destiny without unilateral pressure of any sort, seeking solutions which promote the good of all,’ said Cardinal Rodriguez in his July 4 broadcast, reading from the bishops’ statement. ‘We reject threats of force or blockades of any sort which only make the poorest suffer.’”

“Implicitly defending Zelaya’s ouster by the Supreme Court and Congress, Cardinal Rodriguez said: ‘Each and every one of the documents which have come into our hands show that the institutions of the Honduran democratic state are valid and that what it has executed in juridical-legal matters has been rooted in law.’ Rodriguez noted that the Honduran constitution asserts that ‘whoever proposes’ to change the constitution’s prohibition against presidential reelection ‘immediately ceases to hold his post and remains disqualified for ten years for any public function.’ The Cardinal concluded: ‘Therefore, the person sought, when he was captured, no longer held the position of President of the Republic.’ The Supreme Court had authorized an arrest warrant for the President, he noted.” In short, the removal of Zelaya was valid under Article 239 of the Honduras Constitution, as the Honduran-American lawyer Miguel Estrada, the Honduran lawyer Octavio Sanchez, and a former assistant secretary of state, have noted.

Cardinal Rodriguez did, however, criticize the military for exiling Zelaya after removing him from office, taking him in his pajamas to the nearby country of Costa Rica, “when he observed that the constitution prohibits expatriation to a ‘foreign State,’” referring to Article 81 of the Honduran Constitution.

(The military’s role in removing Zelaya from office was valid under Article 272 of the Honduras Constitution. Moreover, it acted on orders of the Honduran Supreme Court, and the president was replaced by the Congressional speaker, Roberto Micheletti, who was duly selected by an almost unanimous vote of Honduras’s Congress. Given the country’s civilian leadership, the oft-repeated claim that Honduras had a “military coup” or is controlled by a “military junta” is simply false).

Obama and the State Department have argued that Zelaya’s removal from office was an “illegal” “coup,” but they have not explained how his removal could violate Honduran law if it was approved by the Honduran Supreme Court and carried out in accord with Articles 239 and 272 of the Constitution. That has puzzled many in the Senate.

On July 8, 17 senators sent Secretary of State Clinton a letter calling on the Administration to stop pressuring Honduras to accept the return of its would-be dictator, and asking the Administration to explain how it can possibly call the removal illegal when it was carried on orders of the Honduran courts and approved by the Honduran Congress. They noted that “the removal of Mr. Zelaya was legal and legitimate” pursuant to the Honduran Constitution’s “system of checks and balances.” Accusing the Administration of “disregarding Honduran law,” they argued that “U.S. assistance should not be interrupted to Honduras” based on the false assumption that it has experienced a military “coup d’etat.”

(To argue that Honduras acted illegally, the Obama Administration has made some pretty radical, and unfounded, legal claims, such as suggesting, contrary to the U.S. and Honduran Constitutions, that corrupt government officials can’t be removed from office without elaborate “judicial process,” and that there is a “universal principle” that allows elected presidents to stay in office, even, apparently, if they violate the law or constitutional checks and balances.).

The Episcopal Bishop of Honduras has also criticized ousted president Zelaya, noting that he had defied the Supreme Court and Congress when he “led a group of protesters to an air force installation and seized the ballot boxes, which the procurator’s office and the electoral tribunal had ordered confiscated.”

The democratically-elected president of Panama is now telling other American leaders not to meddle in Honduras’s affairs by forcing Zelaya’s return.

Obama Nominee: Corrupt Foreign Rulers Have Right to Remain in Office Until They Receive “Judicial Process”

by Hans Bader on July 8, 2009 · 1 comment

in International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual

Arturo Valenzuela, Obama’s nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State, falsely claims it was an illegal “coup” for Honduras to remove its corrupt would-be dictator, President Mel Zelaya, without providing more “judicial process,” even though courts said it was perfectly legal. Obama has joined Cuban dictator Castro and Venezuelan dictator Chavez in demanding that Zelaya be reinstated. He nominated Valenzuela despite his reputation as a loud defender of dictator Chavez. Obama, too, claims Zelaya’s removal was “illegal,” even though it was carried out on orders of Honduras’s supreme court, and ratified by Honduras’s Congress, pursuant to Articles 239 and 272 of the Honduran Constitution.

The Obama team’s idea that officeholders have a right to “judicial process” before being removed from office, a right that even trumps contrary provisions in a country’s constitution, is truly staggering. Many elected officials, like California’s governor, can be recalled from office by voters at any time, without any proof of wrongdoing, and without any due process at all. For example, California Governor Gray Davis was duly replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger in a voter-initiated recall, without any allegation of proof of any wrongdoing. If due process keeps corrupt Honduran leaders from being removed without a trial, then American politicians like Gray Davis logically can’t be removed either.

Unlike the Honduran President, the U.S. president can only be removed by impeachment, but even impeachment does not require either “judicial process” or the “technical rules” required by due process “to protect persons accused of crimes.” Moreover, requiring impeachment before removal is not a civil right or universal human right, but rather a privilege accorded certain officials to promote peculiarly American notions of separation of powers. Nothing in human-rights treaties or customary international law gives elected officials a “right” to remain in office until they are formally impeached, much less given a trial.

Moreover, Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution expressly clear that Honduras’s president loses the right to remain in office, without any need for impeachment, by seeking to perpetuate his time in office, or even merely proposing an end to term limits. To push that illegal referendum, Honduras’s president relied on aid from a foreign dictator, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. He also pressured public employees, fired military leaders who refused to help him violate the law (a decision reversed by the Honduran Supreme Court), and threatened citizens with the cut-off of public services if they didn’t support him. His removal from office was clearly legal. (In any event, as a result of recent amendments, Honduras’s constitution does not contain a well-developed impeachment mechanism.)

It is unbelievably arrogant for Valenzuela and Obama (who knows little about Honduran law) to claim that they know more about what is legal in Honduras than the Honduran Supreme Court. It is unbelievably arrogant for the Obama Administration to insist that Honduras reinstate its would-be dictator based on made-up principles of law that are contrary to both U.S. and Honduran law, and nowhere found in international law. It is a truly outrageous form of legal imperialism for Obama to insist that Honduras’s democratic processes be subject to cumbersome restrictions that the U.S. refuses to observe within its own borders.

Obama also claims that Zelaya must be put back in power because of the “universal principle that people should choose their own leaders”. Never mind that even publications that criticized the manner of Zelaya’s removal, like the Economist, have candidly admitted that Zelaya was unpopular with Hondurans, who overwhelmingly back the removal of their president — and that Zelaya was a bullying crook with approval ratings below 30 percent. In the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and other papers, Hondurans have overwhelmingly supported his removal.

Apparently, Obama is determined to saddle Hondurans with Zelaya whether they want him or not, just because they once elected him. (Even though he radically changed his policy positions after being elected). Under Obama’s reasoning, Richard Nixon, who was twice elected president, shouldn’t have been forced to resign over Watergate, because that violated the American people’s “universal” right to choose their ruler. And America’s electoral-college system, which has resulted in four presidents being selected despite losing the popular vote, must be as “illegal,” since it, too, limits the people’s “right” to choose their ruler. Under Obama’s reasoning, the UN and OAS could have slapped sanctions and a trade embargo on the U.S. after our Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore.

What Obama really means is that presidents, once elected, have a universal right to rule their subjects, and to flout the constitution, as Zelaya did, without being subject to removal. This sounds disturbingly like the “divine right” to rule (without following the law) claimed by medieval kings. (It’s certainly not what Obama and I were taught at Harvard Law School).

But the entire purpose of constitutional checks and balances, is that even elected presidents can lose their right to rule if they violate their country’s constitution or laws. In our constitution’s impeachment process, the Congress removes the president from office for wrongdoing, even if he was elected by a landslide. In Honduras, the Congress voted by 123-to-5 to replace Zelaya, including the vast majority of Zelaya’s own political party.

Honduras did not use a formal impeachment process to remove its president because its constitution does not have a well-developed impeachment mechanism, says Latin American scholar Juan Carlos Hidalgo at the Cato Institute. But its unwieldy constitution does have other, less elegant means of removing abusive presidents: Article 239 bans presidents from continuing to hold office if they seek to extend their tenure, or merely propose an end to presidential term-limits. And Article 272 gives the military the power to enforce those term-limit provisions, which it did by executing a warrant for Zelaya’s arrest issued by the Honduran Supreme Court.

(The military’s law enforcement role is not unique to Honduras: in the U.S., federal troops were used to enforce a court order desegregating the schools in Little Rock in 1957, when the court’s order was thwarted by the Arkansas Governor. When confronted with powerful officials who refuse to comply with the law, the courts cannot rely simply on a handful of U.S. marshalls, but rather must look to federal troops or the national guard).

Will Obama Blackmail Honduras Into Installing Would-Be Dictator?

by Hans Bader on July 5, 2009 · 3 comments

in Features, International, Legal, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

Last Sunday, Honduras removed its would-be dictator, Mel Zelaya, who flouted court rulings by using intimidation to try to get Hondurans to change their constitution to allow him to extend his tenure in office. The country’s Supreme Court issued a warrant for Zelaya’s arrest, which the military enforced by removing Zelaya from office. The country’s legislature then voted almost unanimously to replace him with a legislative speaker, in accord with the country’s constitution.

Now, Obama, who knows nothing about Honduran law, is ignorantly claiming that Zelaya’s removal was “illegal,” and demanding that Zelaya be reinstated as president. His demand is joined in by the Organization of American States, many of whose leaders, like Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, have either violated their own countries’ constitutions, or likewise seek to eliminate term limits contained in their own countries’ constitutions. (“A senior Obama administration official said the United States would probably move to suspend economic development and military assistance” to Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere).

Obama is quite wrong to claim that the removal of Zelaya was “illegal.” The Honduran president forfeited his right to rule under Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution, which bans presidents from holding office if they even propose to alter the constitutional term limits for presidents. And the Honduran military, which acted on orders of the Honduran supreme court, expressly had the right to remove the president for seeking to alter the constitutional term limit, under Article 272 of the Honduran Constitution, as even left-leaning commentators have now admitted. The Honduran military’s role in enforcing the court order does not make it a “coup” anymore than federal troops’ role in enforcing the court-ordered integration of the Little Rock public schools in 1957 constituted a military occupation or takeover.

(Zelaya was a corrupt ruler who so mismanaged his country’s finances so badly that it recently failed to pay many of its bills. His violations of his country’s constitution were criticized by human rights groups and the Catholic Church as well as the legislature and judiciary).

What happened in Honduras was not illegal, much less a coup, agrees the Honduran lawyer and former Minister of Culture Octavio Sanchez in his July 2 column in the Christian Science Monitor. He notes that under Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution, the President automatically lost his right to remain in office by seeking to extend his term in office: “According to 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 [emphasis added], 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 article speaks about intent and that it also says ‘immediately’ – as in ‘instant,’ as in ‘no trial required,’ as in ‘no impeachment needed.’ Continuismo – the tendency of heads of state to extend their rule indefinitely – has been the lifeblood of Latin America’s authoritarian tradition. The Constitution’s provision of instant sanction might sound draconian, but every Latin American democrat knows how much of a threat to our fragile democracies continuismo presents. In Latin America, chiefs of state have often been above the law. The instant sanction of the supreme law has successfully prevented the possibility of a new Honduran continuismo. The Supreme Court and the attorney general ordered Zelaya’s arrest for disobeying several court orders compelling him to obey the Constitution. He was detained and taken to Costa Rica. Why? Congress needed time to convene and remove him from office. With him inside the country that would have been impossible. This decision was taken by the 123 (of the 128) members of Congress present that day. Don’t believe the coup myth. The Honduran military acted entirely within the bounds of the Constitution. The military gained nothing but the respect of the nation by its actions.”

If Richard Nixon had been impeached and convicted for Watergate, and then refused to leave office, until being forced out by the military, would that have been a “military coup”? Of course not. But Obama and many in the press are taking essentially that position in demanding the reinstatement of Honduras’s would-be dictator.

The fact that the military carried out the Honduran Supreme Court’s orders in removing a would-be dictator, after he flouted the court’s rulings, does not make it a “military coup.” When court orders are defied by powerful government officials, troops are sometimes called out to enforce them, as happened in the U.S. in 1957 when federal troops forced Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus to stop blocking the court-ordered integration of Little Rock’s public schools.

Indeed, 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.