Al's Opinions

The Los Angeles Times today ran an article on the editorial page that confirms my opinion about the "coup" in Honduras. (See the second article below this one.) According to the writer of the article, the method of removing the President from office was strictly according to the Honduran constitution. That constitution has no provision for impeaching a president. Instead, he can be arrested for violating the constitution. The constitution provides a single term of office for the president and does not allow for a national plebiscite for amending it. It can be amended only by a 2/3 vote in the Congress and a vote by the people. The President, Mr. Zelaya, was attempting to conduct a national vote on allowing a change so that he could serve another term of office. The supreme court ruled that his action was illegal and a violation of the constitution and that he had forfeited his office by attempting to carry out the plebiscite. An overwhelmimg majority in the congress supported the action of the court.

The court ordered the army to arrest Mr. Zelaya and put him in jail. Instead, the army officials who made the arrest escorted him out of the country. Sending him out of the country was the only illegal action.

So, it was not a coup. It was a process provided in the constitution of the country as a means of deposing a criminal president. No coup! I was right! I gloat!

Not only that, but I strongly favor that we adopt the Honduran method of getting rid of a criminal or incompetent president. Let the army arrest him and put him in jail. Impeachment doesn't work worth shit.

Labels: coup, Honduras, impeachment, Zelaya

Or was it a coup? The news media and the Obama administration have been quick to call the removal from office of the President of Honduras a coup because it was carried out by the army. In the past, armies in various Latin American countries have removed elected presidents from office by force. In most cases, a general took over the office of president and instituted a military dictatorship. In some cases, the American CIA was involved in replacing the president with a general. Examples are Nicaragua and Chile. In those cases, as in the case of Honduras, the ousted president was a socialist. In Nicaragua and Chile, the person who took over the government was a general with rignt-wing conservative ideas and allies.

Nothing like that has happpened in Honduras, as near as I can determine. The ousted president was a socialist and a follower of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. The successor is the former vice-president, not a general. The new president is also a socialist and a member of the same party as the ousted president. The other institutions of government - the legislature, the courts - are still functioning as before.

The Hondurans have offered this explanation for ousting the president: He was planning to hold a national referendum to change the nation's constitution so that he could run for reelection next year. The constitution limits the president to one term in office, just like the constitution of Mexico. The Hondurans have also stated that holding a referendum is not a legal way of changing the nation's constitution. In simple terms, the president was breaking the law, or proposing to break the law. The country's supreme court and an overwhelming majority of the members of the legislature urged his arrest. The Army undertook to arrest him. However, rather than put him in jail, the Army allowed him to leave the country. He faces arrest and incarceration if he comes back.

Our administration has criticized Honduras for not following the procedure of impeachment. Let the president be tried and convicted, then arrest him and remove him from office. Well, we should talk. We have that process in our own constitution and it's been tried three times to remove an unpopular or law-breaking president. It worked only once in two hundred years. We've had plenty of incompetent, venal, and lying presidents and we've never used the impeachment process to get rid of them. I think we should take a lesson from the Hondurans instead of criticizing them. If the president appears to be committing crimes against the people, let him be arrested and tried, and either convicted or acquitted. Let's not monkey around with the lengthy and archaic process of impeachment.

Labels: coups in Latin America, Honduras, impeachment

Recently the Presidential candidates, McCain, Clinton, and Obama, have been campaigning in Ohio and Texas. Economic issues seem most important in the voters' minds. In Ohio voters are down on NAFTA and similar free trade agreements because they see that manufacturing jobs have left Ohio and have gone to China, India, Indonesia, and other low-wage countries. In Texas voters are high on NAFTA because the agreement has opened markets for agricultural products in Mexico, other central American countries, and countries farther away. Of course American agricultural products are selling in those countries at prices that the local farmers can't meet. Many farmers have had to leave their farms and travel to cities and ultimately to the United States, mostly illegally, in search of work that will pay them money to support their families.

So, is NAFTA a good deal for the United States? Some politicians say it is, overall. Some economists say that free trade agreements have created more new jobs in this country than the number of jobs that have been lost.

It is interesting to compare the Democratic and Republican responses to the charge that NAFTA has cost jobs in industrial States like Ohio. The Democratic candidates express an intention to renegotiate the NAFTA agreements to put in requirements about working conditions, fair wages, environmental protection, and the like. The Republican candidate, Sen. McCain, urges the taking down of still more barriers to free trade and opines that with all barriers removed American workers and American industries can compete successfully with workers and industries anywhere else in the world. He speaks of the innovation that Americans introduce in a manufacturing process to improve both the efficiency and the economy of the process.

Most of the industries that have left the United States and have become established in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Indonesia, China, India, Honduras, and the like went through an innovation process about a hundred years ago. Today when I go to a store to buy a shirt I find that it is made in one of those countries. An American textile firm that pays its workers an American salary of, say, twelve dollars an hour plus benefits, can not compete with a factory in China or India or Cambodia in which workers are paid five dollars a day with no benefits.

In fact, I did buy shirts today. They were made in Sri Lanka and India. They cost an average of twelve dollars apiece. I went on to Trader Joe's and bought some raisins. The information on the package indicated that they were grown and harvested near Fresno, California. There were also some raisins from Chile. The Chilean raisins and the Californian raisins all cost less than three dollars a pound. We compete very well on agricultural products; we lose our shirts if we try to compete on textile products. Of course, agricultural workers are paid less in the United States than workers in shirt factories - if there are any shirt factories left in the country.

Labels: Cambodia, Central America, China, Honduras, India, John McCain, Mexico, raisins from California and Chile, shirts, Sri Lanka