The 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis was a political crisis in Honduras over plans by President Manuel Zelaya to hold a popular referendum to either rewrite the Constitution of Honduras or write a new one.
Zelaya's planned vote to change the constitution faced opposition from a majority of the government, including the Supreme Court of Honduras and prominent members of Zelaya's Liberal Party, as it could lead to the re-election of Presidents which is permanently outlawed by the Honduran constitution. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court injunction against the referendum. A crisis occurred as the Constitution of Honduras had no process for dealing with this situation, and there were no clear procedures for removing or prosecuting a sitting President.
On the morning of 28 June 2009, Zelaya was removed in a coup d’état by the Honduran Armed Forces, when approximately 100 soldiers stormed the President's residence in Tegucigalpa and exiled him to Costa Rica."Honduran leader forced into exile", BBC, 28 June 2009;One hundred soldiers: "Honduran Leader's Populism is what Provoked Military Violence" , Benjamin Dangl, Alternet, 1 July 2009. Ten guards: "Honduras supreme court 'ordered arm coup'" Telegraph, 28 June 2009. The National Congress voted to remove Zelaya as President, having read without objection a purported letter of resignation, which Zelaya stated was forged. Roberto Micheletti, the President of Congress and next in the presidential line of succession, was sworn in as interim president. Micheletti declared a "state of exception" on 1 July, suspending civil liberties and various curfews were imposed."High noon in Honduras" , Laura Carlsen, Alternet, 4 July 2009.
State of emergency On 21 September 2009, Zelaya returned in secret to Honduras, after several attempts to return had been rebuffed. It was announced that he was in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. The next day, the Micheletti government declared a state of emergency and suspended five constitutional rights for 45 days, specifically: personal liberty (Article 69), freedom of expression (Article 72), freedom of movement (Article 81), habeas corpus (Article 84) freedom of association and assembly.
The decree suspending human rights was officially revoked on 19 October 2009 in La Gaceta.
Reaction
These events garnered widespread condemnation as a coup d’état. The United Nations, the Organization of American States (OAS), and the European Union condemned the removal of Zelaya as a military coup, and some of these condemnations may still remain unretracted. The OAS rejected an attempt by Honduras to withdraw from the organisation and then suspended the membership of Honduras the following day. Domestic opinion remained very much divided, with demonstrations both for and against Zelaya.
Efforts by Costa Rican President Óscar Arias and the United States to effect a diplomatic solution between Micheletti and Zelaya initially resulted in a proposal by President Arias calling for Zelaya's return to the presidency, albeit with curtailed powers. Arias's proposal also stipulated political amnesty and moved the Honduran general elections up by a month, pushing them to take place in October. The US supported the San José Accord, but negotiations ultimately broke down. The two parties were unwilling to come to any lasting agreement.
Election
Zelaya (elected in January 2006) insisted that the elections of 29 November should not be a precondition to his return to power.
Honduran leaders refused to reinstate Zelaya, pending the elections, but international support for the elections remained scant leading up to the polls. Many Hondurans sought to move past the crisis with the elections, which had been scheduled previous to Zelaya's ouster. Zelaya urged a boycott of the vote.
Initial returns indicated a larger than usual turnout, around 60%, a figure subsequently revised downward to 49%. Zelaya also disputed those figures at the time. Some Honduran activists ended their daily protests demanding the reinstatement of Zelaya because he was ousted in a coup, since Congress voted to keep Manuel Zelaya out of office.
The crisis drew to a close with the inauguration of the newly elected president, Porfirio Lobo, on 27 January 2010. A deal allowed Zelaya to leave the Brazilian embassy and go into exile in the Dominican Republic.
Background
Political and socioeconomic divide in Honduras Two-thirds of Honduras citizens live below the poverty line, and unemployment is estimated at 28%. It has one of Latin America's most unequal distribution of wealth: the poorest 10% of the population receives just 1.2% of the country's wealth, while the richest 10% collect 42%. Approximately twenty per cent of the nation's GDP comes from remittances of workers from abroad. The BBC called the huge wealth gap in a poor country as one of the reasons why the relations between the president and the other institutions were so strained and that his leftward movement alarmed certain sectors.
Zelaya pushed for a referendum, insisting that Honduras' grinding poverty stemmed from a constitution written in 1982 at the height of that country's brutal repression of leftists – that rigs the game for the most powerful families and interests.
Zelaya supporters, largely from labour unions and the poor, claim conservative business leaders are actually concerned because Zelaya had sharply increased the minimum wage. Víctor Meza, formerly Zelaya's interior minister, stated that: "The impression that stuck with the traditional political class and with the most conservative business leaders of the country was that Zelaya had taken a dangerous turn to the left, and therefore that their interests were in jeopardy." "We underestimated the conservatism of the Honduran political class and the military leadership." John Donaghy of Caritas has said that the real conflict in Honduras is between the poor and wealthy: "It's a system that has kept the poor down for years." To some members of Honduras's small upper class, Zelaya was ousted because of his blossoming leftist alliance with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela which they recognised as a threat to their interests. To the working-class, it appeared Zelaya was ousted because the elite felt threatened by his efforts to improve their lives – most notably with a 60% increase in the minimum wage to about US$9.60 a day from about $6 a day. Some who protested in support of Zelaya had never voted for him.
Zelaya presidency
Manuel Zelaya, a businessman born into a wealthy Honduran family,Manuel Zelaya, en un sainete bananero. ABC.es was elected in 2005 as the candidate of the country's historically powerful Liberal Party.The Nation: In Honduras The Heat Is On by John Nichols, NPR, 30 June 2009 Zelaya's economic and social policies earned him praise from labour unions and civil society groups, but alienated him from parts of his own party. which were particularly upset by Zelaya's forging a regional alliance with the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), established by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and other leaders in Latin America as a counter to the trade and security policies sponsored by the United States. Zelaya also planned to convert the Soto Cano Air Base ("Palmerola"), where one of the three United States Southern Command Task Forces is located, into a civilian airport (it was already in use for many civilian flights because of safety concerns about Toncontín International Airport), partly using financing from ALBA and Petrocaribe. The New York Times reported that much of Zelaya's support was derived from labour unions and the nation's poor, while the middle and upper class feared Zelaya was seeking to establish Hugo Chávez's type of socialist populism with a powerful leader in the country.
Zelaya's government was accused of harassing journalists and also accused by the Organization of American States (OAS) of imposing "subtle censorship" in Honduras."Honduras: Government advertising as subtle censorship", Inter Press Service, 2 October 2008,
According to The Economist, "Mr. Zelaya's presidency has been marked by a rise in crime, corruption scandals and economic populism." By April 2009, a Mitofsky opinion poll showed that, of those consulted, only one in four respondents approved of Zelaya – the lowest approval rating of 18 regional leaders.
Alliance with ALBA
On 22 July 2008, Zelaya announced plans to incorporate the country into the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our America (ALBA), an organisation founded by Hugo Chávez, and that the country had been an "observer member" for "four or more months". The Associated Press, citing Manuel Orozco of the Inter-American Dialogue, said his "campaign for changing the constitution has energized his support base of labour groups, farmers and civil organisations who have long felt marginalized in a country where a wealthy elite controls the media and much of politics".
The Honduran right opposed the ALBA alliance, and feared that Zelaya would move to eliminate the presidential term limit as other ALBA leaders had, whom they considered would-be dictators. According to National Party analyst Raúl Pineda Alvarado, Zelaya's attempt to modify the constitution was a "carbon copy" of what had happened in Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua. US Republican Newt Gingrich wrote in the Washington Examiner that Chávez had used ALBA to create "a tide of incipient dictatorship" flowing out of Venezuela into other countries in Latin America. He noted that Chávez had subverted democracy in Venezuela to ensure his rule would be uncontested for decades, and "one-by-one, each of the members of ALBA have followed Chavez's lead and changed their constitutions to remove limits on the number of terms their presidents can serve." However, the notion of extending term limits in Latin America is not unique to ALBA countries, as efforts in Colombia have been made towards allowing President Álvaro Uribe seek re-election.
Constitutional assembly plans
As early as August 2006, Central America Report stated that "liberal sectors" were proposing to reform "obsolete articles" in the constitution, including one against presidential re-election. The Report said that this was causing controversy. Debate regarding the convening of a constituent assembly took place in Honduras, with support from many groups. "The constitution has since 1980 been tweaked in other areas around thirty times, to the point where politicians of all camps are convinced that the document is no longer adequate. This is where the formal change proposed by Manuel Zelaya comes in: that in the November 2009 election-round, the voters will be presented with four ballot-boxes – the fourth one being used for a referendum on the question: "Do you agree with convening a constituent assembly to draw up a new constitution?"
On 11 November 2008, President Zelaya announced a non-binding referendum to see if the people wanted to have a fourth ballot box (or "Cuarta Urna") during the November 2009 election. The fourth ballot would ask voters whether they wanted to hold a National Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution. Zelaya, whose presidential term was to expire on 27 January 2010, would be ineligible, under the term-limitations of the present constitution, to run in the 2009 election.
On 22 December 2008 Zelaya issued two emergency executive agreements ("acuerdos"), both numbered 46-A-2008, which each authorised transfer of of public money to advertising of the fourth ballot box. Only one was published in the official Gazette. The supposed advertisers paid no sales tax. The Supreme Audit Court's investigation of the advertising money raised concerns of irregularities.