One of the ongoing arguments about the Honduran crisis that has been on the rise of late is along the lines of “sure the exile was illegal, but the arrest order wasn’t, so no coup.”
The latest iteration comes from the editorial pages of the LAT (Honduras’ non-coup
True, Zelaya should not have been arbitrarily exiled from his homeland. That, however, does not mean he must be reinstalled as president of Honduras. It merely makes him an indicted private citizen with a meritorious immigration beef against his country.
I suppose we could call this the “oops, the military wasn’t supposed to do that, but c’est la vie” argument.
There is a lot that could be said about the piece, but there is one key question that this line of reasoning utterly ignores: if there was a legitimate legal case against Zelaya and the military accidentally exiled him, then why not let his plane land over the weekend so that the proper arrest could have been made? After all, if the only oopsie here was the exile, that is easily rectified, given that Mel keeps trying to get back into the country (on international TV, no less).
It is difficult to sustain the position that the current Honduran government simply wants to proceed down the path of legality, yet has gone rather demonstrably out of its way to avoid doing so.
The ultimate problem, by the way, for the “it wasn’t a coup” position is that the actual removal of power of Zelaya was an act of force, not law. And as I believe I noted the other day, it certainly seems like the coup perpetrators thought they were instituting a quick and easy solution to their Zelaya problem and assumed that no one would care and instead they have been in constant damage control ever since with no end in sight.
July 10th, 2009 at 7:48 am
You know, you have issues when your military somehow “accidentally” exiles your leader illegally.
“Whoops! Our bad. We didn’t MEAN to exile him, but things kinda got out of control, and before we knew it, we were kicking off the plane in another country! You know how these things go . . . you have a few too many at the weekend party, you start doing stupid things, the General starts wearing lampshades, and before you know, you’ve exiled your president!”
A deeply weird excuse.
July 10th, 2009 at 8:16 am
Weird, indeed.
In fact, I really don’t believe that it was a mistake. The whole thing continues to feel like an ex post CYA.
It was legal!
He was a drug dealer!
The exile was an error.the military made!
Etc…
July 10th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Not that the discussion here makes any difference what so ever. Seems the whole government in Honduras wanted Zelaya removed. Both the Legislature and the Supreme Court. All the members of his own party in the legislature agreed. The supreme court ordered the military to remove Zelaya. Zelaya admits he violated the constitution. That section of the Honduran constitution says the violation costs the violator his citizenship. A court says he violated it. Did I miss something? What could possibly be illegal about that?
July 10th, 2009 at 10:06 am
The illegal part is where the military didn’t charge him and arrest him (as you would do legally), but came in the middle of the night and threw him out. That’s what’s illegal about this whole thing. Basically, you need to bring formal charges and impeach the guy.
If the legislature hated him, as you said, then why not bring up impeachment measures?
July 10th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Under what conditions would the military be responsible for either charging or arresting a president–or anyone else, outside of perhaps a prior legally declared state of siege?
The Times piece uses the term “indictment,” but that is a very specific legal term. Where was the proper indictment of Zelaya? I remain somewhat unclear on the impeachment provision, and whether a sitting president can be indicted outside of the impeachment process. But under no circumstances is it the military’s job either to initiate such a process or to enforce it.
As we have discussed in previous threads, there have been few (if any) military coups in which the military did not claim to be acting to uphold the constitution. But that does not make it so.
July 10th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
MSS: I should have said the government should have charged him, not the military. You are right here.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
The comments above argue incorrectly that the removal was illegal because it was not preceded by a trial or impeachment. Actually, the removal was quite legal.
Nothing in Honduran law required impeachment, there is no well-developed impeachment mechanism in Honduran law, and in the absence of any impeachment mechanism, it is usually assumed that government employees can be fired without first being impeached or subjected to any judicial process.
Article 239 said he lost his office “immediately” by violating that article.
In America, some high-ranking officials are entitled not to be removed without being impeached.
But we can’t impose that norm on other countries, and they are entitled to write their own laws as they see fit.
The fact that the removal itself was legal does not, of course, justify any subsequent illegalities alleged, such as exile or press censorship.
July 10th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
The military’s role in removing the president was sanctioned both by court order and by Article 272 of the Honduran Constitution.