Leading article: Guns and democracy
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Independent Minds
The ousting of the Honduran President Manuel Zelaya by the country's military at the weekend has been condemned by many members of the international community as an affront to democracy. But despite a natural distaste for any military coup, it is possible that the army might have actually done Honduran democracy a service.
President Zelaya was planning a referendum to give him power to alter the constitution. But the proposed alterations were perilously vague, with opponents accusing Mr Zelaya of wanting to scrap the four-year presidential term limit. The country's courts and congress had called the vote illegal.
This is an increasingly familiar turn of events in emerging democracies: an elected leader, facing the end of his time in office, decides that the country cannot do without him and resorts to dubious measures to retain power. The Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, won a referendum in February altering his country's constitution and abolishing term limits. He now talks about ruling beyond 2030.
Elected leaders who refuse to give up power have been the curse of sub-Saharan Africa for decades. Some have resorted to bribery, intimidation, or simple fraud – whatever it takes to retain power. That depressing pattern was what prompted the wealthy Sudanese mobile phone entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim to offer a prize of $5m a year to African leaders who voluntarily leave office. There are increasing examples of African states that have managed to combine free elections with transfers of power; Mozambique, Senegal and Ghana are among those that have shown it is possible, and are stronger and more attractive for investors as a result. But there are others, such as Nigeria and Kenya, which have highlighted the fact that voting and democracy do not amount to the same thing.
Honduras underlines that free votes only count if accompanied by a confident parliament, an independent judiciary, an unfettered media and impartial electoral monitors. The true test of a democracy's health is not the holding of elections. It is the possibility of power peaceably changing hands.
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Comments
The oligarchs and the military stole the right to vote from the people, handed (not so "peaceably") the presidential power to a puppet and this is being presented as a service to democracy! Free votes only count for the Independent and the like only when they "elect" servile pro-Western puppets. Think Yushchenko of Ukraine with his 2% of popular support, but still applauded as a great democrat by the ideologues of coloured revolutions and useful coups d'etat.
Your leading article ('Guns and democracy' - June 30, 2009) is indeed disturbing in that it appears to justify military coups against democratically elected presidents. Your standpoint that the military coup might have been beneficial ("... despite a natural distaste for any military coup, it is possible that the army might have actually done Honduran democracy a service."), could be taken as an advanced endorsement of future coups d'etat against any of the many Latin American leaders who are trying to reform both outdated constitutions, and grossly unjust political and socio-economic systems traditionally skewed in the favour of the very rich. No government has recognised the de facto civilian-military regime in Tegucigalpa.
Your allegation that "the proposed alterations were perilously vague, with opponents accusing Mr Zelaya of wanting to scrap the four-year presidential term limit" has no substance whatever. Democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, was proposing to hold a non-binding national consultation by asking Hondurans their view as to the possibility of two referenda in November 2009, one on creating a Constituent Assembly and another one a new constitution.
In this connection your contention that "an elected leader, facing the end of his time in office, decides that the country cannot do without him and resorts to dubious measures to retain power" is simply false, especially as applied to Venezuela. Yet what is dubious about holding a national referendum asking the voters whether they would end terms limits for all elected officials (councillors, mayors, governors and president) so that any individual may stand as a candidate for as many times as they wish, and where the final say is with the voters who may or may not elect them? You do not mention that all electoral processes in Venezuela are some of the most heavily observed in the world and have been certified as free and fair by the Carter Centre, European Union and Organization of American States observers.
However, you are correct on one point: "Honduras underlines that free votes only count if accompanied by a confident parliament, an independent judiciary, an unfettered media and impartial electoral monitors," but you fail to report that the judiciary, the old parliament, and the media in Honduras are anything but independent because they are in the hands of the traditional oigarchy, who are behind the coup d'etat.
One would have expected a leading article on Honduras to express strong condemnation -as just about everybody else in the world has done- of the ousting of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, including a total revulsion at the prospect of going back to the old bad days of military regimes that devastated the lives of millions of Latin Americans.
Dr Francisco Dominguez
Head of Centre for Brazilian and Latin American Studies
Then the daft example of the Sudanese mobile phone operator offering $5m as a prize for African leaders who voluntarily leave office. Is your writer really suggesting that this was done in the interest of democracy and why didn't somebody make the same offer to Tony Blair ? However the journalist lets it slip near the end when he mentions "making it more attractive for investors" as a reason. Now we know where the article is coming from !
Zelaya was democratically elected by the people of Honduras, but this was inconvenient to the right wing Honduran traitors living in USA, who felt they had a right to keep stealing money from the country.
I suspect the country's court system is rigged, like the Bush-appointed quango in Washington.
Zelaya was holding a referendum for the people to decide, but the right wing extremists are afraid of democracy.
Even USA refuses to recognise this illegal military regime, they have taken Honduras back to the days of a banana republic.
Whatever happened to the 'Independent'? Supporting military coups is about as anti-democratic as one can get, unless of course one accepts without question what the coup leaders say which is obviously the case here.
First lie: "President Zelaya was planning a referendum to give him power to alter the constitution." Give him power? In Latin American countries, it is a constituents assembly or constitutional convention (asemblea constitiuente) not the President that reforms the constitution. In fact in the US, "constituent assemblies met in the states before the formation of the Federal Constitution in 1787 as well as after its ratification. Since 1776 nearly 150 state constitutional conventions have met to draft or revise state constitutions."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constituen
Second lie: "the proposed alterations were perilously vague". There were no proposed alterations made at all. That would be the job of the constituents assembly. There was only one question that was to have been asked last Sunday.
"This is an increasingly familiar turn of events in emerging democracies: an elected leader, facing the end of his time in office, decides that the country cannot do without him and resorts to dubious measures to retain power." Well this is actually crude demagoguery. In the UK there are no term limits, so why can't 'emerging democracies' do the same? Is it a case of do what I say not what I do? Is there an inherent racism here that 'emerging democracies' just can't be trustednecause they're not as civilised as us?
"The Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, won a referendum in February altering his country's constitution and abolishing term limits. He now talks about ruling beyond 2030." More crude elitist propaganda and demagogeury. The same could have been said about Thatcher or Blair or even Uribe in Colombia, but as he's an official 'friend', we don't mention it. What about Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Kuwait?
"But there are others, such as Nigeria and Kenya, which have highlighted the fact that voting and democracy do not amount to the same thing." The writer is a racist. What about the US and several stolen elections?
"The true test of a democracy's health is not the holding of elections." More apologetics for militar dictatorships.
I certainly will never spend any of my hard-earned money buying this rubbish from a rag like this.
In your statement that "it is possible that the army might have actually done Honduran democracy a service" you appear to advocate the use of a pre-emptive military strike. This is an extraordinary position for an editor of the Independent to take. Pre-emptive coups have long been a favourite excuse for military intervention in Latin America; Chile (1973), Argentina (1976), Brazil (1964) and Uruguay (1973) are just a few examples in a long list of tragic cases in which the military intervened under the excuse of "protecting" or "defending" democracy. These regimes were only ousted after many years of struggle and the imprisonment, torture and murder of thousands. Unfortunately many politicians and journalists in the West believed their claims and justified their actions, in the same way that your article attempts to justify recent events in Honduras.
Manuel Zelaya is the democratically elected president of Honduras. He has not acted in an unconstitutional or undemocratic fashion, nor has he violated any national laws. The coup was launched not to protect democracy (the military have a particularly poor record in this area) but to protect the vested interests of the economic and political elites that have long ruled Honduras. The threat of Zelaya was not that he sought to unermine democracy, but rather that he sought to challenge the status quo of inequality, poverty and exclusion and offer the Honduran people a greater say in politics.
One would expect the editorial article of the Independent to to have expressed strong condemnation of the military intervention - as most other media sources, and indeed governments have done. Instead, you stand alone in seeking to justify the unjustifiable overthrow of a democratically elected president. What on earth has happened to the Independent??
Dr Peter Lambert
Head of Latin American Studies
University of Bath
This crap is beneath everything, it's not worthy of debate. How about "elected leaders who refuse to give up power" like Bliar and Gordy? Would you like them being dragged out of their beds with a gun to their heads? No, eh? White Euros aren't coup-able, just blackies and latinos and other untermenschen, right? Just fuck off and die, OK?
Apart from: maybe the racist and virulently stupid author of 'Army Coup does Democracy a Service' should be birched and run into the sea; or failing that round John Rentoul's house. But wait, it sounds a bit like the deft hand of Roger 'Are you one of those c***s from Medialens?' Alton, doesn't it? Maybe he had 1.5 minutes off from merging the good old Indy with the Standard, stuck a pencil up his botty and scrawled this drivel. They'll be giving you away as a lame coffee break pull out with London Lite soon, with a five penny piece taped to the masthead to stop people throwing you away, you wretched man.
I stopped Paying for any printed Guardian / Independent gibberish many moons ago, I'd like now to delete them from my bookmarks too. I suggest everyone does the same. The Daily Mail-dependent bangs another nail in it's coffin. Sorry Fisky.
Lady Berkman, I loose the term loosely.
1. Planning a referendum to declare a change in a constitution is normal, having a coup to stop the people voting is a crime Duh, perhaps even in Tel Aviv or Washington?-Take Note please, even for your own limited intelligence not to mention logic.....referendums are legal
2. I am unaware of any court, congress calling, itself democratic but not allowing a legal referendum. But it never occurred, because the people of Honduras were not allowed to state there point of view,it seems because of your pretzel logic, that makes the mere concept of referendums in your limited Grey matter illegal., your a shameful apologist for the Junta, now disgracefulness running Honduras.
PEOPLE BE AWARE OF AMERICAN DOUBLE SPEAK, WHILST OBAMA CONDEMNS THE COUP, HE WILL NOT CALL IT A COUP, BECAUSE THAT MEANS THE END OF USA AID TO THAT COUNTRY. THAT'S AS SINCERE AS A CAT TELLING A MOUSE, DON'T WORRY I LIKE YOU, I WONT EAT YOU. YOU LEARNED GENTLEMEN OF THE INTERNET MAKE UP YOUR OWN MINDS AS TO THE SINCERITY OF THE US GOV WITH A VIEW OF THERE PAST PRECEDENTS IN LATIN AMERICA.
There are many who hate the wind of change blowing through Latin America. They hate the fact that people are voting for Presidents and governments that put the needs of ordinary people before profits and neoliberalism. They hate the social developments, and the rejection of life in the "USA's backyard".
But rarely do they openly advocate supporting military coup to put an end to these developments, to referenda and elections in which people can vote to sustain them, and to grass roots organisation through which the ordinary people are getting together to drive things forward.
My union has recently sent teachers to see the advances in Latin America... to see real educational and social developments. We've found people enthused and optiimistic, looking to build a real future for ordinary working people.
It is disgraceful that you give a platform to those who would want to see all these hopes ground down under the tracks of a tank
Bill Greenshields
Ex President
National Union of Teachers
In the meantime, Johann Hari's article (linked below) is much more accurate (and when someone says that, it means your piece was truly rubbish.)
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/co
Please someone tell me that this is an ironic piece of journalism!