A friend has written to ask me how I feel about the recent events in Honduras. All I can say is that I'm very happy that the people of that country resisted the efforts of the President Manuel Zelaya to remain in office beyond the term allowed by the Constitution. Whether he wanted to promote a progressive agenda or not is less relevant, in my opinion, than the fact that he attempted to promote it by decidedly non-progressive means. We have seen many times how leaders keep endlessly modifying the laws of their land with the best possible intentions. The only result, however, is the establishment of yet another dictatorship.
The very fact that Zelaya attempted to do this demonstrates, in my view, that he is nothing other than a dictator in the making, who would end up going to any lengths to hold on to power. Latin America has seen its fair share of this type of political leader. I'm very glad that Hondurans decided that they won't stand for it any longer.
22 comments:
I respect your regard for democracy, so in that spirit, I want to respectfully point out some crucial information: it was a military coup that ousted Zelaya, not the people themselves. He was still a democratically elected leader, and his term was not over yet when the military took over and ousted him by force. From every report I have read, most Hondurans want him back.
Thank you for your comment, sarah cb. I know Zelaya's term wasn't over but letting him stay until the end of the term would have guaranteed his messing with the law. Then nobody would have been able to prevent Zelaya staying on. And on and on.
Term limits do not prevent dictatorship. In PRI-ruled Mexico, there was a one-term limit... it serves to implement the wishes of a heavily-institutionalised outfit like the PRI with usually interchangeable leaders. In the case of Honduras, it's a vehicle for military rule. The constitution there was adopted under military rule and under it, a two-thirds majority of Congress is required to remove the head of the army, a hurdle not unlike that to amend constitutions elsewhere. One-term limits for president make for weak civilian presidents and strengthen the army's hand behind the scenes vis a vis those presidents, as intended. Thus, term limits help limit democracy by preventing the emergence of civilian leaders strong enough to resist the military.
There's a lot of disinformation out there about Zelaya and his plans. Let me clarify this...
His plan was a referendum on a constituent assembly as is allowed under the law. The assembly would be elected and help draft a new constitution. As Congress must approve of a vote for such an assembly, the referendum was to be purely consultative.
There was thus no guarantee that term limits would be something addressed by a constituent assembly, had one been elected... the referendum asked people if they favoured voting for that assembly at the same time as the presidential election.
That presidential election would be held under the existing constitution. Zelaya would not be allowed to run under that constitution, so, a new president would be in power whilst the constituent assembly was in operation, had Zelaya's plans been implemented. In short, Zelaya could not serve another term, even under his most optimistic scenario. That would include Congress deciding that a popular vote in favour of such an assembly would make them budge on the issue of actually holding a vote for such a constituent assembly.
Zelaya could, if a new constitution was promulgated abolishing the one-term limit, run to be president at the end of the new president's term... that's if all of his plans were implemented.
The real issue is civilian control. The army drew up this constitution to suit itself. It's well-known that as soon as it was promulgated, that Moonie General Alvarez Martinez was the real ruler (along with Proconsul John Negroponte)
One more thing - American history features periods when one-term presidents were customary (presidents were expected to serve only one term). Most notably, the antebellum period with the likes of Buchanan, Pierce, Fillmore, Taylor, etc... not exactly a time noted for its great leadership.
"term limits help limit democracy by preventing the emergence of civilian leaders strong enough to resist the military."
-The military in Latin America has been a curse for centuries. So off course I agree that limiting the power of the military would be good. But creating yet another dictator is not the answer. When Zelaya came to power, remember what his political platform was? Then he decided to get the people to like him through a lot of populist tricks. As we see now (and as I suspected for a while), his only goal was a desperate power grab. This has happened so many times in the history of Latin American countries. I don't understand why people still want to be duped by somebody like this.
That's the thing, you see. We are not talking about the US here. We are talking about Latin America which has its own history and a long long line of precedent to show us how people like Zelaya usurped power and stayed in power for decades.
I can't look at today's situation in Honduras outside the context of Latin American history of dictatorship or through the lens of what did or didn't happen in the US. I look at Honduras and I see huge similarities with every single dictator that came to power in these countries in the last 2 centuries. They say they will champion the right of the people, they say they will resist the military, they say they will uild a stronger civil society but it alwayss ends the same.
Look down the list of Honduran leaders and you'll find very few long-term dictators. The only one that stands out from the past century or so is Tiburcio Andino Carias who was one of the club of long-standing dictators in Central America of the 1930s-early 1940s (Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez in El Salvador, Jorge Ubico in Guatemala, Anastasio Somoza Garcia in Nicaragua)
The rule has been a dictator running things for between two and ten years or so, at the most, mostly around four years, which is about the length of a presidential term with a one-term limit!
So the problem in Honduras has not been the rule of one person for a long period of time. It's the rule by interchangeable people in the military. Term limits do not address this. The problem is the institutions running things, not individuals.
As I said, PRI-run Mexico is a perfect example. A one-term limit, a different president every time, but always the same old PRI. It ended when the right wing of the PRI took total control of the party's policies. The left wing broke off and fielded its own candidate, and the PRI stole the 1988 election in plain view with the old broken computer trick. Then a sort of compact emerged between the new right wing PRI and the PAN and they have created a sort of two party system between them. This has maintained the policies of the post-1985 PRI with little hope of modifying them.
Clarissa, your scenario sounds like the case of how Duvalier took over Haiti... We all know that the Duvaliers have a bad reputation, but were they really worse then those military dictators like Henri Namphy and Prosper Avril? The latter cases were sure bad things, Francois Duvalier could have been a good leader...
I think that Chavez is a good leader... that he is good for his country. He has improved it since the days of the Caracanza when the Carlos Andres Perez government shot down hundreds in the streets protesting the IMF austerity plans. I mean the people supporting the coup are doing so mainly because they see the hand of Chavez, see Chavez supports him, sees Zelaya as wanting to be another Chavez. Chavez is not shooting people in the streets because he wants the poor to tighten their belts further.
Populism is always blamed for problems in Latin America when in fact things are always worse under technocrats and those kinds of leaderships that accept the supposed inferiority of these countries and wants to amount to nothing more. That is to be an export-driven economy featuring plantations and that essentially sees the whole country as a plantation and the little people must be kept in line... they hate leaders who try to appeal to the little people, that will never do.
I agree with you, Clarissa.
Those who see this as nothing more than an old-style, banana-republic military coup don't know what happened. This wasn't the military taking control on its own. The military responded to and reflected the desires of the Honduran attorney general, Congress, and Supreme Court. To mischaracterize what happened is a disservice to the people of Honduras.
Let me begin by saying that I'm very happy that this topic produced so many intelligent, well-informed responses.
I'm not opposed to Zelaya because I see him as another Chavez or Morales. I'm more afraid of him becoming another Castro. Duvalier is also pretty bad. Maybe my knowledge of him is limited but I never saw him positively.
I suppose that if the U.S. attorney general were to claim that Obama has broken a law, and the Supreme Court also, that they can order the U.S. military to seize the president to dump him in a foreign country, while implementing a 9-6 curfew, shutting down all pro-Obama media, and showing off a phony resignation letter. I'm sure that will be accepted.
Castro took power as the head of a guerrilla army that quickly absorbed the existing army that ceased to fight. Elements that could challenge the revolution were removed. There were no institutions that could effectively challenge Castro. It was necessary, for example, to re-make the army because of what happened in Guatemala in 1954 and Che Guevara was there for that.
In Honduras, Zelaya does not have an army... he even tells his supporters to show up without weapons.
Zelaya in a way is the product of a softer American line as compared with Castro's time when he decided that he needed Soviet protection. The Americans have not vigourously contested these leftist leaders like they did in the past, like when they invaded the Dominican Republic in 1965 in order to safeguard the coup that they sponsored in 1963. They did try to remove Chavez but they did not follow up after the failure of their side - Venezuela of course is harder to deal with than some small Central American or Caribbean state.
" suppose that if the U.S. attorney general were to claim that Obama has broken a law, and the Supreme Court also, that they can order the U.S. military to seize the president to dump him in a foreign country, while implementing a 9-6 curfew, shutting down all pro-Obama media, and showing off a phony resignation letter."
-If Obama does anything to remain in power longer than he should under the constitution, then I hope he will be removed. He could be the best president in the world, but the constitution should come first. A president who thinks he's above the law can't be good for any one.
As horrible as Bush was, he never tried to stay on longer than his term in office. And that's the way it should be.
Look at Russia, for example. It has become a total banana republic with a nasty little dictator (Putin) running everything. But even he didn't go as far as to run for a new term or to change the constitution. And he could have done it very easily.
"The Americans have not vigourously contested these leftist leaders like they did in the past"
-Why do you think that is? My version is that the US don't want a strong and united Latin America and for all their talk Chavez, Morales, Zelaya, etc. are the best guarantee of a constantly weakened Latin America that is always in turmoil. I know it sounds paradoxical, but aside from their speeches what have they really done? And why are the US suddenly so not threatened by them?
I also wanted to add about Chavez. I actually had high hopes for him for a while. And then I started watching Latin American television that broadcast his weekly antiBush speeches. He would go on and on and on about how Bush is a moron, and how he lloks stupid and talks stupid, etc. The only reason why a leader of a country would be reduced to such silly outbursts (on a regular basis) is, in my opinion, because he has nothing else to offer to his people.
I mean, ok, Bush sucked, but don't tell me this, tell me what you are doing for your people. Besides, it looked very demeaning. Bush doesn't care about youu enough to do that to you, so why do you make him the center of your universe?
It is true that Chavez's dependence on an anti-Bush rhetoric is annoying, but people are not stupid. They know that Obama is now in power and that Chavez's anti-Bush speeches are outdated. Chavez is not stupid, he will change his discourse for an anti-imperialist one. Hence his clever gift to Obama, Galeano's great The Open Veins..., a book that unveils the history of Western imperialism in Spanish America.
We should also remember that a military coup was organized against the democratically elected Chavez some years ago, and the Bush administration remained silent on this attack against democracy. So Bush cared enough for Latin America, even if Latin America is more and more peripheral a region -at least the Bush administration cared for Chavez for ideological reasons.
Zelaya as a Castro-to-be? I am curious about how you came up with such a scenario.
One problem I noticed about the discomfort with Chavez among the liberal intelligentsia is that it is trained to analyze "discourses". I am not saying that we should not pay attention to words (I am troubled with Chavez's/ALBA's position on Iran, for instance), but I suspect that to give such an overwhelming importance to political speeches often obscures real political actions. You ask what Chavez, Zelaya and Morales have done beyond their speeches. That is a troubling question to me, because I naively? believe that the poorest live better under Chavez and Morales. This fact should outweight complaints about rhetoric. An annoying rhetoric to the skilled reader.
"Chavez is not stupid, he will change his discourse for an anti-imperialist one"
-That's what I'm saying, my friend. He has nothing to offer but discourses and more discourses and even more discourses. It's not about the quality of discourse, it's the sheer numbber of speeches that's so annoying.
" That is a troubling question to me, because I naively? believe that the poorest live better under Chavez and Morales. This fact should outweight complaints about rhetoric."
-I wish I could believe that the people actually live better under these leaders. Maybe the similarities they share with the regular banana-republic Lat. Am. dictators are too strong for me to see any differences.
As to Zelaya, one of the greatest problems of our 3rd-world countries has been the desire of our leaders to stay on in power forever. So I'm always VERY suspicious of people wwho want to do this. There can be no good reason to exrend one's stay beyond what's specified in the constitution.
Well, I hope that Chávez goes on with his annoying discourses. I will never ask him to shut up, like the king of Spain. For many years now Chávez has been a voice against the consensual, unidimensional thinking of the West. What I say is that we should make our minds beyond his rhetoric, scrutinizing his political flaws and achievements.
But your post was not on Chávez, but on Zelaya, and many things have changed since you wrote your post. I wonder if you are still very glad that Hondurans decided that they won't stand Zelaya's attempt to be a dictator in the making any longer. And when you say Hondurans, who are you thinking about?
Don't get me wrong. I understand your concern with Zelaya changing his political views in order to be elected again and again - though on a theoretical level I think it is healthy to change your mind. I wonder, however, why you don't trust the Honduran people in their democracy. Hondurans have a voice in an election. If they want to throw out Zelaya, they will! Also, since you rightly put the Honduran case in its Latin American context, aren't you concerned that what has happened in the last week may constitute a precedent for future new forms of coup d'état in Latin America? You seem to be concerned only with a new form of dictatorship arising from the left, with Zelaya trying to hold the power changing the constitution, but have you seen the other side of the coin? I am concerned that some social segments elsewhere in Latin America - and elsewhere in the world for that matter - try to legitimate a coup or other forms of political instability despite the general agreement on the basic rules of democracy.
I am not a political scientist. Others are more qualified than I am to analyze the conflict in Honduras. But I have heard so many weird analysis on the conflict in the last weeks that democracy in Latin America really appears to be in troubled waters.
Ol.
I knew it was you, dear Oli! You have much knowledge of these issues, definitely more than I can ever hope to have. This is not my area, so my understanding of the issue is not as in-depth as yours. If we were to discuss Bildungsroman, on the other hand... :-)
Have there been new developments in Honduras recently? With all the horrible news coming out of Russia and Ukraine + the Sotomayor nomination hearings about to start, I confess I failed to keep in touch.
"I wonder, however, why you don't trust the Honduran people in their democracy. Hondurans have a voice in an election. If they want to throw out Zelaya, they will!"
-Having everything decided by popular vote isn't really democracy, in my view. If it were, somebody could declare elections every day on every issue. There should be a Constitution that decides when people get to vote and what about.
"aren't you concerned that what has happened in the last week may constitute a precedent for future new forms of coup d'état in Latin America"
-I don't think it's a coup if that's what the Supreme Court decided.
"You seem to be concerned only with a new form of dictatorship arising from the left"
-That's not true. As I said, my concern with Zelaya is not because he's leftist (which I don't think he even is), but that he'll fashion himself into a new Putin-like banana republic style dictator. I think I'm seeing the signs of that. Would it that I were wrong!
I miss you, my friend!
It is a new form of coup, in my view.
This is the latest I've read on Honduras:
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-128196-2009-07-14.html
Take much care.
Ol.
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