Reflections on the Honduras Presidential Removal

The following comes from a Facebook thread regarding the situation of Manuel Zelaya begun by Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. His own opening comment was as follows:

Baffled by Honduras situation. The Supreme Court and the democratically elected Congress voted unanimously to remove President Zeleya [sic], who was in open defiance of a court decision about an illegal dismissal of the military command, and about to stage an illegal 'election'. And yet, this action is universally condemned internationally as a "coup"? There must be facts of which I am unaware? — Jimmy Wales (30 June 2009 6:17 pm)

He later accepted the “friendly amendment” of the correct spelling of “Zelaya.”

It reminded me of the quote by Benjamin Franklin wittily delivered in the musical 1776:

Why, Mr. Dickinson, I’m surprised at you! You should know that rebellion is always legal in the first person – such as ‘our’ rebellion. It is only in the third person – ‘their’ rebellion – that it is illegal.

— Benjamin Franklin

Another Facebook friend of his stated:

i think the point everybody is missing is that the UN et al cannot condone a government that has seized power in a coup -- by taking the president at gunpoint in his pyjamas. If the president was acting illegally -- as zelaya apparently was -- impeach him dont threaten to murder him and cart him off to costa rica. The Honuduran military has done far worse than Zelaya. Two wrongs don't make a right and other cliches.

Reflecting from a generally naïve point-of-view, I responded:

It was a coup, though a bloodless one. The proper legal method to get rid of him would have been impeachment, with arrest by a civil authority. The military of nations generally are limited constitutionally because the President is generally considered C-in-C. When you overthrow your boss, it is a rebellion. When the military overthrow a president, rather than a legislature, it violates standard civil government checks-and-balances. Thus, technically, a coup.

In response to my thoughts, another direct reply was made to the thread:

Peter, ... the boss of the civil authorities (e.g., the police) that would have to carry the arrest is also the president. By your reasoning it would still be a rebellion. If a subordinate gets a court order to arrest the boss, what should he/she do?

Which is a good point. So tonight I wanted to dig a little deeper. I happened upon a good friend who was perfect for the necessary detective work! Tonight, I replied as follows:

I am sitting tonight with a good friend who is a very educated socio-political academic from Venezuela. He is helping me go over the Honduran Constitution.

The biggest problem is that there is *no* clear provision in the lengthy document on how the various powers maintain checks and balances. There is no direct clause for how to conduct the removal of the Presidente, or most any other elected official. Impeachment is not mentioned, per se.

However, there are a few clauses to work with, primarily: "...la usurpación de los poderes constituidos se tipifican como delitos de Traición a la Patria." Usurpation of constitutional powers is treason.

Thus, if you disobey the Constitution, no one need obey you. This is the argument of the Supreme Court. They can theoretically declare anything unconstitutional, thus treasonable, and can immediately have their judgments put into effect. There is no override on their decisions, except by a popular referendum for a constitutional revision.

In review, the decision of the Honduran Supreme Court seems tacitly legal, though highly disputable.

According to one assessment (CountryStudies.us):

"Honduran constitutions are generally held to have little bearing on Honduran political reality because they are considered aspirations or ideals rather than legal instruments of a working government."

http://countrystudies.us/honduras/84.htm

For the Constitution itself:

http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Honduras/hond05.html

I still maintain my view that this was a quasi-legal coup. While arguably a de jure power of the Supreme Court, it is could be just as arguable that the Supreme Court usurped and overstepped their Constitutional authority. They just had the backing of the military.

Thus, quite conforming to a coup as per Wikipedia: "A coup consists of the infiltration of a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder.”

The truth of the matter is that the Honduran Constitution is a rather poorly-written set of rules to govern from. Anyone used to playing diplomatic strategy games could spend days arguing about the gaps and fuzzy parts. Eventually the consensus of the players would be that the game seriously needs a second edition of the rules, and, in the meanwhile, a full-blown set of errata and addendum.

While the definitions of “high crimes and misdemeanors” is elastic and arguable, the U.S. Constitution has a far more explicit, albeit very brief, method to determine what to do in case of such crises of confidence in a chief executive.

In Honduras, lacking such explicit methods for removal, the national Supreme Court basically has the tacit de jure power to do what they did. It may indeed rub many people the wrong way, given cultural and political biases towards what we are familiar with in our own systems.

I would be quite interested to hear other opinions on such a topic. Was this a de facto coup d’etat, or a de jure removal of an executive in broach of his constitutional duties?

Turkey's Inner Turmoil

More arrests in Turkey coup probe

The private ART television station was also being searched, the AFP reports

Up to 30 people have been arrested across Turkey in connection with an ongoing investigation into an alleged plot to topple the government.

Those detained include a union leader as well as a number of army officers and special force police officers.

Eighty-six people have been on trial since October, accused of an ultra-nationalist plot to stoke unrest and provoke the army to launch a coup.

Critics say the ruling AK party is simply arresting its secular opponents.

Around 30 people were detained in a separate wave of arrests earlier this month. [Read More]

Is it a coup plot, led by members of an elite police counterterrorism unit? Or is it an Islamic government repression of the opposition Turk Metal trade union? Was this special operations unit responsible for brutal murder of Kurds, or was it legitimately protecting Turkish law? Was it responsible for the false flag attacks on the Turkish court and newspaper, or is this a setup?

Turkey’s arrests today read like a fictional thriller. Yet this is quite a real crisis.

The weight of evidence, were it printed out, seems rather solid. There are 2,455 pages to the report. Which means that even legal scholars and human rights experts will need weeks or months to pore through the evidence presented in the indictment alone.

It is also possible that there is a general sweep occurring. A rounding up of the usual suspects, a la Casablanca. Opponents of the government contend that the state is rounding up people on the pretense of fighting corruption and crime. Others believe this is just serious business, and just the tip of the iceberg. If they try to round up too many suspects, there may be a backlash from the politically powerful armed forces. According to Ümit Kardaş, a retired military judge, speaking about the Ergenekon investigations in Today’s Zaman on 9 January 2009:

“I do not believe that Ergenekon marks the start of a general cleanup operation within the TSK (Turkish Armed Forces) because the TSK will resist such a move. It is not that easy to change the TSK. But behind the Ergenekon operations may be a consensus with the US to bring the TSK in line with NATO standards, under which interventions into politics through military coups are unacceptable,” Kardaş said.

Turkey, a nation of 74 million persons, has a patchy story around freedoms. According to Freedom House, it has a Political Rights score of 3, and Civil Liberties score of 3 (out of a scale of 1 = best, 8 = worst).

The Armenian community of roughly 75,000 persons, and some of the other 70,000 other Christians in Turkey might contend, due to Article 301, the 2007 assassination of Hrant Dink, and assassinations of Christian priests and community leaders in recent years, that a rating of 3 across the board may be on the high side. Likewise, the Kurdish minority of 12 million, though it now has a state-run Kurdish-language television station, has its own reasons to be leery of ultranationalist Turks.

Turkey is facing choices as to what sort of nation it wishes to be for the 21st Century. Kardas lays forth the issues surrounding Turkish repression and justice in an article from 14 January 2009 in Today’s Zaman:

“The Ergenekon process must have the foresight to expose the mentality of those who lust after power and who do not regard there being an ethical problem with transitions of power which are based on violence and deception, but it must do this by staying within the limits of law and ethics.”

— Ümit Kardas

It is quite possible Turkey is slowly building towards another coup d’état. After the left-wing coup of 1960, the right-wing coup of 1971, the Kemalist coup of 1980, and the bloodless “postmodern coup” of 1997, a modern decade seemingly cannot go by without the Turkish military forcing the handover of civilian control.

The question seems not to be whether the military will take a hand in the de facto alteration of the civilian government of Turkey, and in the repression of the state’s minorities and opponents, and more as to how heavy-handed their tactics will be.