On the text of the aborted Honduran plebiscite

Fruit and Votes a href="http://fruitsandvotes.com/?p=3138" takes a look at /a the aborted Honduran plebiscite which Manuel Zelaya wanted to hold. It seems that the question merely asked if the voters wanted to elect a constituent assembly at the same time as the new presidential and parliamentary elections (November 2009).br /br /It therefore seems that, even if the people had voted 'yes', because there would have been an election for the presidency and for Congress under the old system at the same time then Zelaya would have had to stand down at that point since his term would have expired.br /br /It is also, of course, far from clear that a new constituent assembly would have made constitutional changes to enable presidential re-election or to make other changes to the powers of the president or the powers of Congress that Zelaya would have wanted. After all, if the opposition National Party and dissident Liberals were popular enough, they would have been able to win a majority in the constituent assembly elections and so work on a constitution that would not necessarily reflect the views of President Zelaya.br /br /It thus does seem that the coup can not be viewed - as its supporters would paint it - as one aimed at somehow 'saving' Honduras' democratic institutions since, if they feared that Zelaya would not be keen on holding elections in November, then they jumped the gun. Zelaya would only have been acting dictatorially if he had tried to stop there being presidential or Congressional elections in November 2009 as scheduled. There is no sign that he was trying to do that.br /br /The correct procedure in a situation where it seems the president was disobeying ruling of the Supreme Court would have been to use legal processes to impeach Zelaya - something his opponents in Congress have not done. However, a href="http://fruitsandvotes.com/?p=3129" Fruit and Votes /a does state that it does not appear to be clear how the impeachement process in Honduras works.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/38622711-8026119255320094559?l=vinospoliticalblog.blogspot.com'//div

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