HONDURAS: 3 Open Letters to Rush Limbaugh

Following are reproductions of three recent email sent to
Mr. Limbaugh regarding the current affairs in Honduras.

Subject: A question from the new seat of Democracy - HONDURAS

Mr. Rush,

Not being a sophisticated political analyst, I am wholly bewildered by the upsetting unanimity of polarized political prejudice against (the people of) Honduras (i.e. support for Manuel Zelaya).  Moreover, the moronic mantras mouthed about democratic principles & processes and constitutional order is blatantly brazen considering that those are precisely the points most violated by ‘Mel’.

Regarding the Honduras Constitution, allow me to quote from the bottom of the page found at http://countrystudies.us/honduras/84.htm
“Title VII, with two chapters, outlines the process of amending the constitution and sets forth the principle of constitutional inviolability. The constitution may be amended by the National Congress after a two-thirds vote of all its members in two consecutive regular annual sessions. However, several constitutional provisions may not be amended. These consist of the amendment process itself, as well as provisions covering the form of government, national territory, and several articles covering the presidency, including term of office and prohibition from reelection.”

Moreover from http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/29/748124/-Peculiarities-of-the-1982-Honduran-Constitution (and written by a Honduran politician in 1992) we read, “… the armed forces are charged with fulfilling eminently political functions: maintaining the rule of the Constitution, the principles of free suffrage, and the alternation of the office of the presidency of the republic.”

SO MY QUESTION IS THIS:  Is the vehemence of the reactions against Honduras by Obama and other leftist leaders due to FEAR? 

In other words, the courageously pro-democratic actions taken by Honduras cannot be allowed to prevail as this would set a highly dangerous precedence.  I mean, IF Honduras can get by with independently cleaning up a grave threat to their constitution and way of life with zero outside assistance/interference, THEN what is to prevent other countries from following their valiant example?  Could this “Honduras Happening” potentially derail us off the “new world order” track and revive quaint dreadful notions of sovereignty?  Is there any validity to the prospect that Ortega, Chavez. or even Obama could follow Zelaya's fate if this Honduran happenstance is not urgently undone?  *OR* is there a better answer to the desperate untenable accusations exacted against Honduras by leftest??

Thanks,
zClark

To collect your own complete copy of the Honduran constitution I suggest:
http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Honduras/honduras.html

To enjoy a visual of the Honduras I know & love you are invited to check out:

Mr. Limbaugh,

QUESTION:
As the number one crusader for Democracy on this planet, would you be willing to take a call directly from Mr. Micheletti on your radio program??  If so, kindly advise as I believe a truly historic interview can be arranged.

To explain: Myself along with several influential and concerned Hondurans have been invited to the Capital to meet with Congressional members and Mr. Roberto Micheletti.

You are our first choice and best hope of getting the Honduran positioned fairly aired, as the rest of the world seems bent on avoiding the truth.  Real democracy is hanging by a thread in Honduras while the rest of the world is flourishing machetes – a Rush Limbaugh lifeline could make all the difference.

Thanks,
ZClark

PS: I wrote to you yesterday (Subject: A question from the new seat of Democracy - HONDURAS).  Subsequently we read with great satisfaction your latest insights on Honduras at:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_063009/content/01125109.gues...

Third open letter to Mr. Limbaugh:

Given that:
1) Our Central American neighbors via the OAS disowns and opposes Honduras in its struggle to defend democracy and its constitution.
2) The World Bank is trying to financially dissuade/threaten Honduras from its pursuit of justice.

Why should Honduras not capitulate and reward everyone by simply Declaring its sovereign independence this July 4th?

After all, shouldn't a Honduras freed from the bounds of ‘cooperation’ with entities like the UN, ALBA and the OAS advance and develop better than ever? How can Honduras (or anyone) possibly function with integrity when various big brothers thrive on tying our hands to their money.  Why allow ourselves to be held back by trying to fit in with a counter productive leftist consensus?  When has a pack advanced faster than a true sovereign independent country?

Honduras is the politically most stable nation in Central America and given its geographical location, deep sea ports, highway system, etc. is easily the most strategically positioned country here. So those who seek to punish Honduras with isolation, are likely cutting their own throats.

And is it not inevitable that Honduras' historical alliance with the US will only wax more worthy as Honduras grows increasingly independent and democratic? (Just as Britain remaining outside of the UE pack has been a benefit to both her and the US.)

zClark

I am confused about your attitude of what happened in Honduras from the first letter. Your views have not been expressed well, and certainly not in a way that helps me understand. That is, all I hear from your first two emails to Rush is extreme bias without hearing supporting foundation.

I accept and concur with your goals of independence, constitutional defense, and democracy. I am still unclear how the military overthrow is defensible, since it appears to have occurred prior to any actual unconstitutional action by the legally elected president. That is, I understand there was a movement to change the constitution in obviously unconstitutional ways, but wouldn't the constitutional process to be 1) wait until the effort failed, or 2) if passed, allow the courts to rule it unconstitutional, or 3) if the courts rule the changed unconstitutional and the president ignores the courts, then proceed with overthrow, or 4) if the courts ruled the change constitutional, then live with it until a better solution can be worked out? It appears from what I've seen so far that the military has acted prematurely.

Aren't you declaring a priori that the president is acting unconstitutional and justifying the overthrow on the grounds that the president attempted to change the constitution? Isn't this acting against democracy?

If the Honduran voters vote non-libertarian leaning people into office, is the democracy or the libertarian principals more important to you with respect to basic support of the elected government? Shouldn't you be working to convince the voters to change, and not working to force change for the sake of satisfying your goals independent of the democracy? Isn't this the higher principal?

Finally, why involve the gasbag Rush? He is a far-right wing nut job who is hardly libertarian, and probably less so than Obama is libertarian. He is a right-wing conservative religious hypocrite with no regards for the full truth of any situation. He is an ass who is entirely an entertainer. I love listening to him for the entertainment, which he is truly first class and very intelligent at, but I am constantly disgusted by his twisted logic and recital of false facts for which he has to know are false. Are you trying to use him for your purposes, are do you actually have some respect for the asshole? Note that this is not a left/right issue, unless you would consider things like Palin's qualification as Vice Presidential candidate to be a based in objective measures and not a left/right issue!

On 25 May 1993, the good Guatemalan President, Jorge Serrano Elias Serrano --in his fight against corruption-- suspended the constitution, dissolved Congress, sacked the Supreme Court, imposed censorship and restricted civil freedoms. Like Zelaya, Serrano's action met with strong protests by most elements in his country. Hence the army staged a ‘coup’ by executing the decisions of the Constitutional Court, which ruled against Serrano. Ombudsman Ramiro de León was eventually installed by the Congress (not a democratic popular election). So now the world (or at least leftest voices) are bemoaning another damnable military coup in Honduras – how horrible.

Now we recognize that Mr. Zelaya had not yet dissolved Congress nor the Supreme Court, yet that is exactly where the elected Honduran Congress and the Court feared he was heading.  Also this transpired in Latin America with its infamous propensity for ‘continuismo’ where heads of state often inevitably seek to indefinitely extend their rule. Prime examples include: Alfredo Stroessner (Paraguay), Alvaro Uribe (Colombia), Hugo Chavez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Rafael Correa (Ecuador) and Manuel Zelaya (Honduras). Continuismo explains the strict/rash position taken by the Honduran constitution when it emphatically states, “No citizen who has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President. Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.” Said determination was made by both the Congress and Court who instructed the military to fulfill their legal requirement to administer “alternation of the office of the presidency of the republic.” So the military never acted on it's own initiative nor was it ever in control of the government for even a minute. So the dastardly culprits here are the democratically elected Congress and Court (who -incidentally- are eager to take responsibility).

Now everyone form Hugo Chavez to Obama to Alan are clamoring about democratic process and that Honduras acted too hastily. OK fine, maybe good-old Mel should have been given a free hand. And stopping him after the fact may have been just as easy, effective and successful as it was with Mr. Hitler.

My main point is simply that Honduras worked within her Constitution, Court, and Congress to address issues regarding their President (who now faces some 18 charges for alleged criminal acts, including treason and failing to implement more than 80 laws approved by Congress since he took office in 2006). It is a strange ‘democracy’ when the executive branch person is held so much higher than all the elected congress and Supreme Court. And all of this would have been wholly nonviolent and no great problem if only the rest of the world merely attended to their own affairs. Things could likely have been done more kosher, but it was nevertheless a Honduran affair with no reason to suspect serious harmful internal repercussions. I'd been happy to see the fourth mandate of the main ALBA tenants abided by: Respect for the sovereignty of nations … and right to self-determination

Per Mr. Rush Limbaugh, I am personally not particularly opinionated regarding that personality (at least not as much as Dr. Alan). The ‘call’ to write to Rush was in this instance NOT mine, but was a strategic posture on the part of an associate here.  Moreover –unlike everything else that has appeared on this blog– several of the points proffered in my missives can be credited to same.

The single best on-going news coverage that I've found regarding all this is Wikipedia's “2009 Honduran coup 2009 Honduran coup d'état” (despite its presumptive title). While a good historic background on the disruptive years of Zelaya as president is “Nikolas Kozloff: Honduras -- What's Behind the Coup?” Mr. Kozloff has a Zelaya sympathetic site on blogspot.com called “Senor Chichero” and authored “Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics and the Challenge to the U.S.” Finally, the military's chief lawyer, Colonel Herberth Bayardo Inestroza, admits that, “In the moment that we took him out of the country, in the way that he was taken out, there is a crime. Because of the circumstances of the moment this crime occurred, there is going to be a justification and cause for acquittal that will protect us.” see http://www.elfaro.net/secciones/Noticias/20090629/noticias16_20090629.asp and http://www.miamiherald.com/1506/story/1125872.html

Thanks for the excellent perspective. As the news coverage from this side gets deeper into this story, it seems to validate all that you say above, and, therefore, I withdraw my previous objections.

This kind of perspective should have been present in your first post, as it would have made it much easier for me to verify (knowing exactly what to search for) rather than be more dependent on the shallow news coverage. In any case, thanks for posting it now.

Now I am perplexed as to why most of the rest of the world, including the US, is unwilling to support the Honduran courts.

In reviewing my comment from the 6th, it's bemusing to see that my links could be construed as more pro Zelaya than not. For good details and a truly supportive stance with the Honduran Constitution, Congress & Courts check-out: http://in-honduras.com/wordpress/

I find a number of issues revolving around this to be most perplexing. The way this Honduran affair took over the front pages of all the world's big newspapers on the day of the ‘coup’ was in itself simply amazing. Plus there is this ever prevalent yet unstated insistence that the executive function (mostly in the hands of one) is the only governmental branch that matters. So I fall back to this being a FEAR based reaction. The fact that Honduras has a demonstrated history of being the most orderly and least violent prone people in Central America only makes their bold moves all the more dangerous in terms of others following suit and dismantling (or at least checking) unseemly large executive powers world wide.

You may be happy to hear that our local newspaper, the Arizona Republic, is now backing up what you claim about the constitutional issues in Honduras, and in its editorial is also asking the administration why it is backing the wrong side! This is a Gannet owned paper that is normally very supportive of the Obama administration, and was originally asking more or less the same questions I posed in my first reply.

Yes, regarding the Arizona Republic (AZ's largest newspaper) the following URL should prove interesting:

How for the sake of argument, lets say the Arizona Republic is right on. Then how does one explain such a largely 1 sided weird world reaction?