His term ends in January. He is termed out at that time. The proposal that he championed, on behalf of unions and grass roots groups all over the country, was merely for an ADVISORY vote of the people on forming a Constituent Assembly to discuss and rewrite all aspects of the Honduran Constitution. Period. That's all it said. And it would have had no force of law, would have to go the Congress, and would have taken years to be actualized. Zelaya could not benefit from it. The purpose of it was to start a process of reform to give the
people of Honduras more say in their own government. (Honduras' Constitution was written by Reagan's henchmen in the 1980s, and favors the rich and the military*).
You need to read NarcoNews--on the ground report from Honduras of union and grass roots meetings around the country. The Constituent Assembly vote was
their idea. Zelaya was responding to the voices of the people, as a good president should.
And you need to read the Lawyers' Guild report on Zelaya's ouster.
"...a preliminary report by an international delegation of lawyers that visited Honduras in late August affirms that a military coup is what took place. The report considers the lack of an independent judiciary in Honduras as part of the context in which this (the coup) occurred and points to powerful economic and political groups opposed to social advances promoted by President Zelaya as the driving force behind the coup.
"The report, drafted by members of the American Association of Jurists, the National Lawyers Guild, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the International Association Against Torture, further states that the military overthrow was a clear violation of Honduras' 1982 Political Constitution. Among various constitutional articles that the report claims were violated includes Article 102, which states: "No Honduran may be expatriated nor delivered by the authorities to a foreign state".
(MORE)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2132/1/-----------------------
*(One of the ways it favors the rich and the military is by confining the president to ONE term, so that no political figure who is responding to the will of the people has sufficient time, or can gain sufficient power, to oppose the entrenched interests of the "ten families" and the "School of the Americas"-trained military who rule over Honduras. So I would personally favor adding at least a second term for the president. Our own FDR ran for and won FOUR terms in office, and needed that much time to solidify the "New Deal" as well as to win WW II. Should the American people have been denied his leadership by an arbitrary term limit rule? The Pukes thought so. In the 1950s, they rammed through the two-term limit on the president in order to prevent any "New Deal" from ever happening here again, and to begin to undo the one we had (which they have very nearly accomplished). Our own Founders opposed term limits as undemocratic (the People should be able to elect whomever they want), and
did not include them in the US Constitution because of this. The people of Honduras have a right to reconsider this provision of their Reagan-written Constitution--and change it, after hashing out of the issues by a Constituent Assembly. That's
democracy! But that is only one of numerous issues that a Constituent Assembly would discuss, and ultimately put to a vote of the people. This process takes years. Zelaya could not have benefited from it, at least in immediate future. The vote was only to be ADVISORY--which would likely mean 5 to 10 years before anything could be put to an actual vote and be implemented--with of course the "ten families" and the global corporate predators in Honduras, and the corpo/fascist media in Honduras, fighting it all the way. It is a lie and slander against Zelaya that he was trying to get around the one-term limit. He was not.)
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
