Honduras DemocracyFollow

No. If you have a legitimate government and actually have laws, you should follow the darn laws and not use the military to enforce your will. We call that a dictatorship.



It is the issue. The president was attempting a coup to replace the democracy with a dictatorship. This is why Ortega, Castro, and Chavez are against the actions of the supreme court.

Edited, Jun 30th 2009 4:14pm by publiusvarus[/quote]

No, it's really not the issue here. What does it matter what the political yearnings of other countries are when we're only thinking about what Honduras is doing and the US response? The president was attempting an illegal action; it should have been dealt with legally. Who cares why the other leaders are against Honduras' Supreme Court? The court just gave them more political fodder by saying "f*ck our laws, we're getting rid of this guy illegally."

As said, it doesn't matter.

Varrus... when you throw out your own laws to instate your own hand-picked candidate as president, it isn't democracy. I mean, hurray, only 7 months of a hand-picked candidate, sweet, that's totally democratic!

Edit: Or put another way, throwing out the Constitution and laws of your country because someone broke the law is not democracy.

Edited, Jun 30th 2009 4:40pm by LockeColeMA

I was actually there last month. Talk then was that the (democratically elected) president Zelaya wanted to hold a public referendum in autumn to allow for presidents to serve more than one term. It wasn't about him specifically, just lifting the limitation of serving one 5-year term.
My Honduran friends were of the opinion that he probably wouldn't get through with it. And even then, it wouldn't mean he'd be automatically re-elected. That just as an aside, because apparently even attempting this constitutinal change is illegal.

What should have happened in a democracy was that his actions were deemed illegal and he would be impeached. An interim president should take over until new elections could be held. The army has no role in this except maybe keeping an eye out for riots.

What actually happened was that he was forcibly removed from the country by the army, the Parliament elected a new president from their midst (Micheletti) and the army locked the country down with a curfew. Electricity is mostly out, so communication is quite hard at the moment. The country is so locked down, Hondureños are getting their information from the international media.

And Chavez threatening to bring the new government down by force is a bit rich, irrespective of how it came to power...

Obama isn't pro-Zelaya (he's shifted to the left during his term in power). But he is against presidents being removed by army coups.

You mean I should have added "unless the US is doing the removing"?
Maybe I should have specified "democratically elected presidents".

You're boring lately. This is around the time you're supposed to change the conversation to something about Michelle Obama and Twinkies and hope we don't notice how much you suck.

Edited, Jul 1st 2009 9:48am by CBD

This part is actually not so bad, and understandable in a country/region with a history of dictators.


This on the other hand is quite ridiculous and very much against International Law. According to the United Nations, countries shouldn't create stateless persons by removing their citizens' (last) citizenship. It can be argued that this law is not binding for Honduras, and honestly I don't know if Honduras subscribes to it.
In any case, it's pretty stupid to create stateless persons.

Edit: Looked up the original text of said Article 42. It covers various cases of acting against the government. In the stated case of presidential reelection, losing citizenship does not happen instantly but "por acuerdo gubernativo, previa sentencia condenatoria dictada por los tribunales competentes", i.e. "by government accord with previous condemning sentence passed by the competent courts". I'm pretty sure they left that bit out when they had the army seize him. So much for democratic process...


This on the other hand is a load of ********* Democratic? So you think Honduras can create a stateless person and then just dump that person on another country (in this case Costa Rica)?
Why should any nation even take a stateless person ejected from Honduras when that person's origins are clearely in Honduras?
Even though Honduras may have some weird laws as a sovereign nation, not all of the world has to agree with them or adhere to their laws.

Also, it's Zelaya.

Edited, Jul 1st 2009 4:25pm by Turicus

He didn't "go" anywhere, he got kicked out. And, you may have missed this in previous posts, he was the democratically elected President of Honduras, not a dictator.

Did you miss the part where I said it may not be binding for Honduras too?
If it is, they shouldn't be creating stateless persons. In any event, they solve the problem themselves, not kick him out and dump him on another country.

I won't pretend I know the details of how this happened, but passing sentence normally includes the defendant being present to defend himself and the police enforcing it. Not the army with a bit of help from a curfew.

Where did this come from now? It's about him trying to change the constitution. Other crimes he may or may not have commited and alleged financing just materialise out of thin air now?
"Let them deal with him." is also not exactly international law and completely ignores the fact that he is in neither country, but in Costa Rica. Do you even read this stuff? Who can force any foreign country to "deal with him"?

If they do, their own constitution (the above-mentioned article 42) would be in violation by creating stateless persons. And it's certainly not legal to just dump someone on another country.

I'm not. Again, for the slow readers, he was democratically elected. He wanted to change the constitution to allow re-election, not to establish himself for life. The referendum for this was already planned.

I may not agree with him or his politics, but I disagree with an elected politician being removed from office by the army without due process. This seems hard for you to grasp. If he broke the law, let the executive branch deal with him, not the army.

No. But everyone has their rights, even if they have different political opinions than me or you. And the world isn't just made up of freedom loving Americans on one side and evil Castros and Chavezes on the other. It's a bit more nuanced.

edit: punctuation.

Edited, Jul 1st 2009 4:58pm by Turicus

OK, now you're just taking the ****. You don't simply lose all your rights when you're convicted of a crime. What the hell are you going on about? And he wasn't really convicted, he was just kicked out by the army.

Do you want me to draw you a picture?

And I repeat: If he was braking the law, let the executive branch deal with him, not the army! Why does there have to be a nationwide army-enforced curfew for this? Possibly because something fishy is going on?

So having close ties with (let's go so far) criminals makes him what?
Their political posturing still has nothing to do with anything. They have actually done nothing, just like other foreign governments up to this point. You simply not liking his friends seems to bias you towards turning him into a lawless renegade without any rights. And the state of Honduras with him.

I don't like him, and Chavez et al can rot in hell. But that doesn't make a change of government enforced by the military right.

But I'm repeating myself...

Edit: Quotes of quotes are hard.

Another edit: Locke has a knack of being very succinct, unlike some I know :) Thanks for enforcing my main point with much less words.

Edited, Jul 1st 2009 9:06pm by Turicus

On the other hand, conservatives whined and cried about Obama's response.Well, this time we're doing stuff and you're whining and crying about that instead.

So, I guess, nothing's changed.

My understanding here is that Zelaya was having a non-binding poll which was not directly to extend term limits but to see if the people wanted a referendum in November in which they could vote on whether or not they wanted a constitutional assembly. Term limits could conceivably have been addressed at the assembly (after all, amending the constitution is what a constitutional assembly is all about). So the poll was basically asking people if they wanted to be asked later if they wanted to amend the constitution via assembly.

It was on that basis that the legislation claimed & supreme court ruled that Zelaya was in violation of the constitution and needed to be carted off at gunpoint in the dead of night, wearing his jammies, and drop a new guy into whatever passes for a Honduran White House the next day.

I'm no Honduran legal expert, nor do I even play one on the Googlenetz but that seems a pretty thin thread to hang a man on. Sort of a "Six Degrees from Violation" thing.

Edited, Jul 1st 2009 2:50pm by Jophiel