Posts in "Honduras"

By Peter St.Jean at 9:57PM

Oct 2, 2009

10/2/09 Roundup

Rachel Maddow blasts Jim DeMint, accusing him of treason for heroically opposing the establishment on Honduras ...
And since the Zalaya situation just won't go away, educate yourself with Don Rassmussen's earlier post about what's really going on in Honduras.
Don Boudreaux explains that true free-market economists don't (and shouldn't) rely on rote mathematics to explain economic reality.
William Kamkwamba, an enterprising Malawian teenager who didn't wait around for foreign aid, is now an international hero ...
And William Easterly explains why government and other aid providers should look to entrepreneurs like William for guidance.

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By Kelse Moen at 5:08PM

Jul 10, 2009

Philip Giraldi at AntiWar.Com has a good article on the Honduran coup. He lays out, in a very objective fashion, the underlying causes of the coup; as such, his article seems a good place to start for those who know little about it. Writes Giraldi:

Last month a crisis that had been building for nearly a year exploded. President Manuel Zelaya, a wealthy rancher elected as a center leftist in 2006 but turned populist after entering into office, proposed a non-binding referendum that would have supported amending the country’s constitution. Zelaya said that he was interested in changing the constitution to help the poor, though he did not propose any specific remedies. But according to most Hondurans, the particular part of the constitution that he was interested in obtaining a mandate for eventually amending was a non-amendable part that was designed to keep presidents like him from remaining in office beyond their constitutionally permitted terms. Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution reads in translation: "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 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." A number of Latin American countries have such clauses in their constitutions to avoid the establishment of presidents-for-life, which have resulted in continuous one party rule [emphasis added].

This, I think, is the crux of the matter. The Wilsonians of the left and right might cry about "democracy" and "the rights of man," but what we really saw in Honduras was the divided government working as it is supposed to. The other branches of government saw the executive trying to arrogate power and they deposed him. Isn't it a little embarassing that now Honduras takes the Constitution and the rule of law more seriously than do we, here in democracy's Shining City on the Hill?

Perhaps most importantly, Giraldi ends with a moral:

[The coup] is a Honduran problem that cries out to be left alone. It is not the business of the United States, its president, and secretary of state.

One would think not. But, in the land of the NSA, we don't know the meaning of the phrase "mind your own business."

Honduras: What You Should Know

Hondurans rally in support of their government's actions.

50,000 Hondurans rally in support of their government's actions.

Many people have failed to realize the importance of the events of the last few days and only the Wall Street Journal has managed to get it right. To be clear on the facts (in brief):

Manuel Zelaya was elected as a center-right candidate of the Liberal Party of Honduras. He immediately renounced his campaign and aligned himself with Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution.

He spent most of the last three years organizing a populist "democratic" uprising among the poor in hopes of using direct action to overcome Constitutional impediments to extending his power.

This culminated with calling a referendum vote (direct democracy) to ask if he could rewrite the Constitution (now that he's organized the underclass) to usher in a socialist utopia with him as president for life. This is the exact strategy, using democracy to subvert democracy, which was developed by Chavez and used to great effect in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.

The Honduran Constitution has eight provisions which are duradero: they cannot be amended, removed or changed in any way. All are designed to preserve rights and prevent dictators. One duradera disposición restricts all presidents to a single, four-year term.

The Supreme Court ruled the referendum illegal. Zelaya pushed forward and ordered the military to provide logistics for the vote. They refused and Zelaya fired the chief of the armed forces. The Supreme Court ordered him re-instated and reaffirmed their earlier decision. Zelaya decided to run the poll himself with ballots and boxes flown in on Venezuelan military planes. The Supreme Court ordered the military to confiscate the materials. Zelaya led a mob to the base and re-acquired them.

The Supreme Court then ruled that Zelaya was committing "acts of treason against the Constitution" and, acting with their Constitutional authority, they ordered the military to terminate Zelaya's presidency with a legal succession to follow.

The military complied and the congress, dominated by Zelaya's party, voted 104-4 to affirm the court's decision and the Speaker of the Senate, Roberto Micheletti, became, by order of succession, the new president.

Tomorrow I'll look at the response of the Obama administration, foreign governments, and the media and ask the question, "Why should I care?" Hint: You should.