For Want of a Better Title

For all of you not in the know there is a political crisis brewing in Honduras. The President was deposed for doing things unconstitutionally, but the multinational organisations (UN, OAS) want him reinstated.

A frater of mine has asked me to share this with as many people as possible, so blogging it is a good way to share. He’s from the pro-deposition group.

Roberto Calderon
KX 460

I write this report to try to explain the situation from my point of view, and try to clear the scenario for as many international eyes and ears as possible. I also know that thousands of Hondurans think alike and are ecstatic about the events that occurred this day. Events which will live in our history books as the day that good and decent citizens stood up against a criminal in order to make democracy prevail.

Mr. Zelaya was elected president of Honduras through popular election on November 2005, for the 2006-2009 period. He was elected on a narrow margin, mostly due to the ruling party’s candidate desire to push for the death penalty in our country, which is not allowed in our law. We are a peaceful and tame people, and do not like such drastic penalties.

Mr. Zelaya was elected because he opposed death penalty, and he promised to continue his party’s work on improving the situation on our country’s education, health and social situation, while promoting democracy and swearing to protect our Constitution. He also promoted a so called “Citizen’s power”, which was supposed to be a channel for the people to express their thoughts to the government.

In the first 2 years of his term, he seemed to be trying to fulfill his promises, but then we see him starting to engage in relations with Venezuela’s leftist president Hugo Chavez, which per se is not a bad thing, but he starts to support his ideologies.

This is where Mr. Zelaya stabbed the Honduran people in the back. He makes an unpredicted turn to the left, which the majority of the population is against, but nevertheless, he goes on with the integration of Honduras to the ALBA, Hugo Chavez’s initiative, which has caused nothing but civil unrest on countries that have joined. This mostly motivated by promises of easy money by Chavez.

Zelaya starts also to take a populist stance, first approving a huge increase in government workers’ wage, then approving a general increase to the minimum wage to levels where small and medium business were not able to cope with. He uses his “Citizen’s power” initiative to promise the poor areas of Honduras a thousand and one benefits with the integration to the ALBA. This all seems good, but in the background, he is asphyxiating our country’s air-thin budget with these initiatives, and forgoing such responsibilities such as the fight of crime, drug trafficking, diseases, the World’s economical crisis, and many other social matters.This is Zelaya first crime.

With this strategy, Zelaya “purchased” the support of some in-country blocks, such as peasant and indigenous organizations.This all would have been good, until you see Zelaya’s true intentions.

His purpose was of gathering support for his new project: to dispose of the current Constitution, over which he was sworn in, and create a new one, similar to ones crafted by Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, with which he would be allowed to be re-elected. This is Zelaya’s second crime.

In trying to create a legal and “democratic” facade for his project, Zelaya used one of the statutes of his “Citizen’s power” initiative, which is the “Law of Citizens’ participation”, in which the people can put request to the government to conduct surveys about the peoples opinion. The problem is that no one to be asked about their will to change the constitution. This was fabricated by Zelaya, by threatening public employees to fire them, if they do not bring in a quota of “voluntarily” signed requested for this inquiry. So public employees, trying to safeguard their jobs, started forcing people to sign this if they wanted to be treated at hospitals, sold needed medicines, and even have a phone line repaired. This is Zelaya’s third crime.

After gathering a certain number of “requests”, he started moving for the installation of a popular inquiry, in which he would ask if the people wanted a new constitution, and which was going to take place today. The issue here is that this “popular inquiry” was not sanctioned by any independent and legal body, such as the Supreme Electoral Tribunal,  and, furthermore, was declared illegal by the Supreme Court of Justice, on the grounds that our Constitution forbids anyone on changing the basic, or petrous, articles of it, which state the form of government and the impossibility of re-election. He also fired our Military Chief of Staff because he would not follow his orders after being declared illegal by the supreme court. This action was immediately reverted by congress. Because the job of the military chief of staff is to uphold the constitution, and not the whims of a single person, even though he is the president. Remember the president is there to UPHOLD the constitution, NOT break it; which was Zelaya’s intention. This was his fourth and last crime, against the Republic of Honduras.

This day’s event, where just a consequence of Zelaya’s moving on with this illegal inquiry. After his stubbornness to continue with it, his arrest was ordered by the Supreme Court of Justice, arrest which was conducted by the brave men in the military. I believe he was taken out of the country due to imminent threat of Hugo Chavez. Chavez has vowed to reinstate Zelaya, “no matter what it takes”.

Yes, Zelaya was democratically elected, but he also betrayed the Honduras’s people vote by trying to take the country to a path that we do not chose (ALBA and Chavez extreme socialism), forgetting important country affairs for promoting his Chavist agenda, and using the country’s poor for this purpose. If he promotes democracy through the voice of the people, why didn’t he asked us if we wanted to join the ALBA?

Finally, I want to remind everyone that this was not a military coup, this was the ARREST and DESTITUTION of a criminal president (call it an impeachment if you like), with the help of the military. Proof that it is not a coup, is that as of this moment we already have the Constitutional State of Right re-established, with a new president, and new cabinet. Let us Hondurans be, we have already defenestrated what was causing us such stress, division and unrest, and we will reunite ourselves, to again perform our right of suffrage in 5 months. Also i want to clarify that what Zelaya has been saying about revolts in the cities and power shutdown are not completely true. It is true that some sectors in the country had a power shortage for a few hours and a couple hundred of his supporters came out to the streets to protest, but not even near to what he is saying. It was a very peaceful transition as more than 80% of the Honduran population agrees on what happened today.

Before I finish, I would like to leave you with a last comment.  How often do a couple of hundred people (our CONGRESSMEN) of different backgrounds, social standing, and POLITICAL PARTY unanimously agree on the same thing. It is hard enough for every member in a single party to agree. So how can OUR CONGRESS come to an UNANIMOUS vote regarding the illegal activities of Zelaya’s actions. We Hondurans are extremely proud today of our political leaders who had the courage to do the right thing and stand up against a CRIMINAL.

This is what we want. We ask the international community to take a closer look of our situation, and not allow other states such as Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Ecuador, to interfere with what we have chosen. We, the people of Honduras, have chosen: that is Democracy.