28 of 30 - Honduran Presidency

[aggienaut]

   So, apparently, the president of Honduras has been removed. He wanted to hold a referendum on changing the constitution so he could run for another term, but not only does the constitution say he can't have another term, it also says that he can't CHANGE that clause. So the Supreme Court told him he couldn't do that, and the congress told him he couldn't do that, and the military told him he couldn't do that (so he fired the chief of the military, but the Supreme Court reinstated him) ... but he wanted to go ahead with it anyway.

   So the Supreme Court authorized the military to remove him and drop him off in Costa Rica. And then following the established rules of succession the head of his party in congress was sworn in (the VP had apparently resigned in 2008).

   At least Hugo Chavez says he'll still be his buddy, lol.

   So... I'm not sure this is even a coup d'etat, if all three branches of government worked together on it and the Supreme Court of their country thinks it's the way to go. Thoughts?

[Poll #1422630]


   Also, compare this to 2005 when the Bolivian congress REJECTED the resignation of the then-President. If I recall correctly the President resigned and so did the VP and the head of congress flatly refused to take the position so the chief justice became the acting president. Silly!

Comments

Re: Coups.

[guabili.livejournal.com]

Yeah, if something like that occurred in the States, no matter how totally the other branches of gov't agreed, it would be absurd. My guess, given that it's Latin America, is that there is either no really "proper" procedure set up for this type of thing, or it would be too convoluted to get into, so they just went with the coup.

I don't know a whole lot about Honduran politics or Zelaya in particular, but from what I've read, I think this was a legitimate move. Bear in mind, though, anyone Chavez approves of automatically loses like, sixty thousand points in my book.

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Re: Coups.

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Haha and as I noted, Chavez has promised he'll still be best buddies with him. But then again Chavez himself held a "shall I be president for life?" referendum (which failed).

I looked at the wikipedia entry before making this entry, it noted that "there wasn't a viable way to impeach the president" ... so I'm not sure what the dealio with that was, because it sounds like if it was just a 2/3rds of senate thing they'd have had it -- sounds like he wasn't too popular with the congress and all.