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Caudillismo in Action:
Looking Back on Honduras’ Plight
The unfortunate events that have besieged the
relatively few and brittle democratic institutions
of Honduras in the last few weeks cannot be neatly
compartmentalized into right or wrong, as certain
insider and outsider actors would like to do.
Manuel Zelaya Rosales, the deposed President of
Honduras, correctly claims that he has been the
victim of a coup at the hands of middle class elites
that viewed him as a threat to their political and
economic power.
On the morning of June 28, the day a “non-binding”
referendum was scheduled, he was whisked away from
his home in the capital Tegucigalpa by soldiers of
the Honduran Armed Forces, and taken to the Hernan
Acosta Mejia Airforce base on the outskirts of the
city.
For several hours, the country did not have any
clear information about the event. Columns of tanks
and soldiers took to the streets of Tegucigalpa and
a deliberate power outage was triggered, which left
the citizens of Honduras veritably in the dark as to
what exactly was occurring. Hours later, a
distressed Zelaya appeared at a press conference at
Juan Santamaría Airport in Costa Rica where he
claimed to have been a victim of a coup and that the
military had flown him out of the country.
However obfuscated was the information that this was
a coup carried out by the military, a range of
ideologically diverse world leaders unanimously
denounced the coup. Zelaya’s expulsion has been
flatly rejected by leaders of right-leaning Mexico
and Colombia, moderate Brazil and Chile, and the
members of the left-leaning ALBA bloc alike.
Leaders throughout the Americas have firmly stated
that they will not recognize any president other
than Zelaya. Predictably, Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez offered the most acerbic denunciation
regarding the forceful takeover, claiming that
certain enclaves within the military and the
bourgeoisie had “turned Honduras into a ‘banana
republic,’ into a political, military and terror
base for the North American empire,” while
simultaneously rattling his saber claiming that he
would “overthrow” any government that was not
Zelaya’s.
Countering Chavez’s relatively qualified accusations
of U.S. complicity, President Obama, Secretary of
State Clinton and US ambassador to Honduras Hugo
Llorens reiterated the stance taken by the rest of
the hemisphere: President Zelaya is the only
president that the United States will recognize. At
the same time, US officials are hesitant to label
June 28’s events a “military coup,” presumably since
such a designation would automatically force a cut
off of all-important U.S.-financed assistance to the
beleaguered Honduran economy. Additionally, the UN,
OAS, Rio Group and other area transnational bodies
released strongly worded statements deeming the
military’s actions anachronistic in 21st century
Latin America, and corrosive of democracy.
Following Zelaya’s forced exile, Speaker of the
National Congress Roberto Micheletti was sworn in
unanimously by the Honduran Congress as Interim
President of the country. Micheletti promptly
installed a weeklong curfew and brought on a
democracy wrecking crew which began to censor
certain television and radio networks aligned with
Zelaya. Just as quickly as he stepped in to fill the
vacant presidential position, he was unanimously and
properly condemned by the international community
with Chavez going so far as to claim that he would
overthrow the nascent regime, or at least that the
“blue helmets” of the UN should.
As the interim government, the Micheletti regime
found itself without a friend in sight. The rump
government is now faced with an emboldened Zelaya
who today enjoys undivided solidarity from the
entire hemisphere. It is unlikely that the interim
government will be able to hold onto power for much
longer given the inevitability of decisive action
against it. There are questions that deserve to be
answered before any lasting solution can be
administered: How did Honduras get to this point?
Who is to blame? Unfortunately, culpability probably
lies in every sector.
The Executive
Since his inauguration in January 2006, President
Manuel Zelaya and his administration have been
battered by several scandals which have raised
suspicion across the country about the government’s
bona fides. Once in power, Zelaya was personally
known for an exceedingly confrontational posture
towards other branches of government, as was made
evident by his sometimes hostile stance toward his
own Vice-President, and the forceful removal of
government employees on dubious grounds.
Furthermore, Zelaya’s own financial, nepotistic and
corruption scandals included a number of hotly
sought-after appointments to state-run companies
that were ultimately steered to the brink of
bankruptcy (Hondutel and ENEE), as well as his own
questionable use of state funds for personal
projects. Despite all this, his alignment with Hugo
Chavez’s ALBA bloc proved to be the straw that broke
the camel’s back, as it fully galvanized the
controversy surrounding Zelaya’s presidency and set
the stage for the most recent events to take place.
But even then, Zelaya was never the firebrand
radical leftwing ideologue his adversaries claimed
him to be; if anything, a lame duck populist
reformer would be a more suitable label. According
to an opinion poll conducted by Mexican firm
Mitofsky Consulting, his approval rating months
prior to the coup was a dismal 25 percent, making
him the least popular leaders of the Americas.
In November 2008, Zelaya began the push for the now
infamous “Cuarta Urna” (Fourth Ballot Box) project.
The stated intent behind “la cuarta” was to consult
Hondurans, by means of a national referendum, on
whether or not a fourth ballot box should be made
available during the upcoming November 2009
election, giving the Honduran electorate an
opportunity to support a revision of the present
constitution by a Constitutional Committee. Such a
body would be empowered to initiate the dissolution
of both Congress and the Supreme Court, as they
cannot coexist while a new constitution is drafted.
The rationale behind the initiative was murky from
the beginning. Several commentators, such as famed
Honduran Human Rights Ombudsman Ramon Custodio,
noticed parallels with similar referendums that had
taken place in other ALBA member states. He
expressed concern over Zelaya’s emulation of
Chavez’s brand of caudillismo, claiming that Zelaya
intended to use an eventual fourth ballot box to
reform the constitution in a way that would allow
him to serve a second term.
Zelaya’s intent was not diffused by the initial
outburst of criticism by former Honduran presidents,
congressmen from his own party, opposition lawyers,
judges, political analysts and former and future
presidential candidates. In response to all of them,
Zelaya ramped up his offensive, using divisive
rhetoric, populist measures and an expensive
publicity campaign in order to win over potential
votes. When faced with such opposition and legal
impediments to the poll, Zelaya regularly delivered
caustic barbs aimed at the dissident voices, while
blatantly ignoring the spirit behind the checks and
balances established by the constitution. The main
points of contention have been Zelaya’s refusal to
release the 2009 budget (due back in September
2008), and his threats of firing government
officials if they did not publicly support the
measure. But was all of this sufficient to justify
what was soon to transpire at the hands of the
patricidal members of the opposition?
The months leading up to June 28 found Zelaya
increasingly facing off against Congress, the
Judiciary, and the Armed Forces, none of them being
indisputably reputable branches of the government
nor tribunes of vigilant public rectitude.
Then-Speaker Micheletti publicly called Zelaya’s
actions irresponsible, claiming that more funds and
hours were being spent preparing for the poll than
running the country. He pointed to Honduras’ growing
wave of violence, overwhelming poverty, crumbling
infrastructure following the 2009 earthquakes, and
the looming threat of the H1N1 pandemic as more
pressing issues that had been ignored for far too
long. Micheletti also cited Article 373 of the
Honduran Constitution, which declares that only a
two-thirds majority of the National Congress – that
is 85 Congressmen out of the total 128 – can reform
certain articles of the Constitution.
The Judiciary also condemned the “Cuarta Urna”
initiative and all acts that led up to the potential
June 28 vote as illegal. On March 25, the Attorney
General’s office notified President Zelaya that the
planned poll would be considered an abuse of power
at the hands of the chief executive, and that, if
carried out, he would have to submit to criminal
charges, chief among them being treason. In late
May, the Court for Contentious-Administrative
Proceedings joined the fray by declaring that the
“Cuarta Urna” was illegal and all activities
relating to it should cease immediately. The
President of the Supreme Court of Justice, Jorge
Rivera, assented to the verdict of the lower
tribunals by stating that “the decisions made by
these tribunals must be obeyed, as we live under the
rule of law.” Zelaya remained confrontational toward
the legal dismantling of his project by making
statements such as “The ‘Cuarta Urna’ goes and no
one stops it” and, “Only God can stop the ‘Cuarta
Urna’,” on several occasions.
On June 26, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal – the
entity in charge of managing electoral materials,
logistics and general oversight of elections in
Honduras – found that Zelaya’s “Cuarta Urna”
violated electoral law and the constitution,
claiming that it was “a plebiscite (a vote) which
can only be approved by the National Congress and
Supreme Electoral Tribunal.” All materials that were
to be used in the “Cuarta Urna,” which had been
questionably printed and flown in from Venezuela,
were also deemed illegal. Had it been merely a poll,
carried out by a private company, such as Gallup or
Zogby, that was managing the event, and not the
Electoral Tribunal, Zelaya’s plan would basically
pass constitutional muster. Instead, Zelaya hired
groups sympathetic to him and the “Cuarta Urna” to
manage the initiative and imported the voting
material directly from Caracas. A series of
questionably legal and barely objective moves by
Zelaya did little to ease the rumors surrounding his
ambitions. The now entrenched establishment’s agenda
was not any clearer.
For the anti-Zelaya camp, the proverbial last straw
was drawn on June 25 when President Zelaya asked
Chief of Staff Romeo Vásquez Velásquez (a graduate
of the ill-reputed School of the Americas) to
safeguard and protect the materials that were to be
used for the “Cuarta Urna.” General Vásquez refused,
stating that by complying with such a request the
Armed Forces would be acting outside of the legal
framework of the Constitution they had sworn to
protect. Shortly after, Zelaya removed General
Vásquez from his post. Out of solidarity with
Vásquez, the Minister of Defense and collective
chiefs of the Honduran Army, Navy and Air Force soon
resigned. Almost immediately, the Supreme Court of
Justice invalidated Zelaya’s order, stating that
Vásquez had “obeyed the Constitution by not
participating on Sunday’s [June 28] illegal
consultation. His dismissal was wrongful and
arbitrary.” In a subsequent press conference, a
Supreme Court Justice menacingly stated that if
Zelaya did not follow the ruling, “civil and
criminal charges would take place.” Zelaya, once
again, ignored a ruling which was demonstrably legal
and which turned out to be a burning and smoking
tire hanging on the neck of Honduran democracy.
Manuel Zelaya’s actions and words may not deserve to
be described as undemocratic, but they certainly
make it difficult to avoid. Zelaya undoubtedly
stepped outside of constitutional bounds and thus
pushed an already crumbling establishment to its
limit. He also resorted to name calling and vilified
the voices of the institutions that earnestly
opposed the “Cuarta Urna.” Yet at his most flagrant
moment, he did not display sufficient disregard for
democratic checks and balances and the rule of law
to pose a fatal challenge to the country’s
constitutionality and the limits of the powers of
the Executive branch. Zelaya appears to have felt
that the country was ready to follow after him
wherever he led. Thus, he was wholly unconcerned
with the barriers and restraints that a democratic
system affords equally to all three independent
branches of government. Through his brazen actions,
Zelaya created an antagonistic environment of which
he ultimately became a victim of at dawn on June 28.
However, Zelaya’s opposition was ready to do the
very thing they wanted to stop.
The Armed Forces and the Interim Government
Early in the morning of June 28, approximately 150
balaclava-clad soldiers encircled Manuel Zelaya’s
house in Tegucigalpa. A dozen soldiers then broke
into the President’s bedroom, from where he was
taken at gunpoint to the airport and then to exile
in Costa Rica. What happened that morning was by
every definition a coup d’état by the Armed Forces
of Honduras; the military felt that it had the
necessary elite backing to forcefully remove a
sitting president and took control, albeit
provisionally, of a democratic republic. What took
place was a gross violation of democratic norms by a
military establishment against what many – but by no
means a majority – of Hondurans saw as a rogue
president. Although the authors of the coup believe
they acted as a constitutional bulwark to chaos,
they actually had unleashed a flood that most likely
will turn around and drown them.
The Supreme Court claims that it ordered the Armed
Forces to seize Zelaya in order to “defend the state
of law” and “apply legal dispositions against those
who expressed themselves publicly and acted against
the disposition of basic law.” Nevertheless, with
all of its mendacious language, its espoused
reasoning does not legitimize the expulsion of
Zelaya, cabinet members, and key allies that ensued.
Under the rule of law, Zelaya should have been
submitted to the proper legal proceedings that were
recommended by some more moderate personages prior
to his forced exile. Instead of acting as a
protector of the Constitution, the Supreme Court
dealt yet another heavy blow to the already fragile
state of Honduran democracy. Now as the tribunals
have issued several warrants for corruption,
embezzlement, treason and drug trafficking, the
question now becomes: Where were they before the
military became involved?
The birth pangs of the Interim Government began at
around noon on the 28th when Congress produced a
letter of resignation allegedly signed by Manuel
Zelaya dated June 25. Addressed to Roberto
Micheletti, the body of the letter stated that due
to “health problems,” “an eroding political base,”
and “the polarizing political situation,” Zelaya and
his cabinet effectively resigned so that “the wounds
[could] be healed.” Congress unanimously accepted
the letter as authentic even though some members of
Congress were not present in the chamber at the time
to validate their votes. In the absence of an acting
Vice-President, the Speaker was next in line. The
stout and not exactly popular Micheletti was sworn
in as Interim President of Honduras amidst applause
and “Vivas!” but the participants were unaware that
they were invidiously participating in a death watch
of a failed initiative.
In his truncated inaugural address, Micheletti vowed
that the scheduled elections would take place on
November 29 and that democracy had prevailed in
Honduras. Micheletti echoed the Supreme Court by
saying that the army had acted in defense of the
Constitution, and what had occurred was a
“constitutional succession.” Unfortunately, the
Micheletti regime is not helping the country’s
already tarnished international image. News of the
twice-extended curfew (10pm – 5am), the censorship
of television and radio stations sympathetic to
Zelaya (CNN and Telesur have been intermittently
blocked) and images of the June 29 and July 5
violent crackdowns on Pro-Zelaya protestors outside
the Presidential Palace and Toncontin Airport have
made headlines around the world, further isolating
an already alienated country. The Micheletti regime
has further distanced itself from its
self-proclaimed image as a righteous and democratic
government by suspending Habeas Corpus, the freedom
of assembly and free passage amongst other
constitutional guarantees. Additionally, former
battalion 3-16 leader Billy Joya has assumed the
role of security advisor in Micheletti’s cabinet.
Parallels with 1980s Honduras are becoming
regrettably clearer as each day passes.
Particularly, damage is being done to Honduras’
fragile democratic planks by an interim government
that has not shown itself to be a friend of its own
constitution, and a military force that has worked
outside the confines of the law.
The Rule of Law
Many of the sparks of Honduras’ current turmoil were
most certainly lit by Zelaya, according to his
critics who saw him as undermining democratic
institutions during his presidency. However, even
though part of the blame undoubtedly lies in
Zelaya’s hands, the Armed Forces and the Interim
Government must own up to their share of
culpability. Aggressively wrestling control from
Zelaya was not in any form a constitutional act; it
was a coup, and no amount of semantics will hide
this unsettling fact. More to the point, it was a
coup crafted to bring down Zelaya because under
presumed Chavez tutelage, the Honduran establishment
was convinced that he was moving the country towards
the ALBA yolk.
Despite disappointing a significant percentage of
Hondurans, the rule of law must be unequivocally
reaffirmed. Both Zelaya and Micheletti have
pronounced themselves as constitutional democrats,
while hardly acting as such. Both have demonstrated
disrespect to their positions and it is time both
sides demonstrate the equanimity and cooperation
seldom displayed in the violence, crime, and
corruption that have transpired in Honduras over the
past decade. Zelaya’s newfound international
flamboyance and Micheletti’s uncompromising
countenance are only allowing the crisis to fester
and intensify. There have already been bombs set off
outside government buildings, private businesses and
radio stations plunging Tegucigalpa into a
heightened state of tension. On July 5, the military
spilt the blood of the very people both factions
pretend to protect. It is time the rule of law
return to Honduras.
If Honduras is to grow peacefully out of the morass
it now finds itself in and become a stronger nation
in the process, the relevant actors must stand down
from their calcified positions, letting the law do
what it must and do away with the de facto Potemkin
democracy. Manuel Zelaya must return to the office
he was elected to serve, Micheletti’s Interim
Government must be dismantled, and the Armed Forces
should guarantee the safety of all, with many of its
senior commanders required to retire. Immediately
afterward, the Honduran courts ought to protect
justice by enforcing the law and impeaching some of
their colleagues for breaking it. When Manuel Zelaya
is adjudged, he must be given a fair and transparent
hearing for the alleged 18 crimes he committed prior
to June 28.. But so too should the architects of the
coup. Compromise and dialogue are necessities at
this point, and they must take place so that the
Republic of Honduras can come out of these trying
times as a coherent and lawful state and make it to
the November 29 elections in one piece.
Mr. Ayuso is
currently in Honduras and can be reached by e-mail
at [email protected].
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