Honduras heads toward crisis over referendum

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — With backing from Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, Honduras’ leftist president pushed ahead Friday with a referendum on revamping the constitution, risking his rule in a standoff against Congress, the Supreme Court and the military.

Government supporters began distributing ballots at 15,000 voting stations across the country, defying a Supreme Court ruling declaring Sunday’s referendum illegal and ordering all election material confiscated. President Manuel Zelaya had led thousands of supporters to recover the material from an air force warehouse before it could be confiscated.

Under Honduran law, soldiers are normally responsible for distributing ballots ahead of elections, but the military leadership has opposed the vote. Zelaya has fired the military chief for refusing to support the referendum and vows to ignore a Supreme Court ruling ordering him reinstated.

Zelaya has the vocal support of his fellow leftist Latin American leaders as he seeks to follow in the path of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in transforming his country through a constitutional overhaul. The Venezuelan leader and former Cuban President Fidel Castro have warned a coup is under way in Honduras and pledged their support for Zelaya.

Zelaya says the constitution protects a system of government that excludes the poor, but has not specified what changes he will seek.

His opponents fear he will try to extend his rule by lifting a constitutional ban presidential re-election.

The showdown between the president and virtually all other circles of power in Honduras plunged the impoverished Central America country into a political crisis with no solution in sight. Congress — led by members of Zelaya’s own Liberal Party — has opened an investigation into his mental stability and could declare him unfit to govern.

Thousands of Zelaya opponents marched through the capital of Tegucigalpa to demand his ouster Friday, chanting “he must leave now!” Many shops, gasoline stations and some schools were closed for fear of disturbances.

In Washington, the Organization of American States held a session to discuss the situation in Honduras. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged “restraint by all concerned in order to prevent any further escalation” of the crisis, said U.N. associate spokesman Farhan Haq.

Zelaya lashed out at Congress early Friday for considering his ouster.

“Congress cannot investigate me, much less remove me or stage a technical coup against me because I am honest, I’m a free president and nobody scares me,” Zelaya said in his two-hour speech, at one point bursting — Chavez-like — into song.

“But we have to forgive them. Glory to God! We have to forgive, and I know who to forgive because the people are my support and my best ally in this political process,” he said.

He referred to Congressional President Roberto Micheletti — a member of his own party — as “a pathetic, second-class congressman who got that job because of me.”

Micheletti, who by law would take over the presidency if Zelaya were ousted, retorted, “We should not have to suffer the aspirations of a disturbed man who wants to hold onto to power.”

Sunday’s referendum has no legal effect: it merely asks people if they want to have a later vote on whether to convoke an assembly to rewrite the constitution.

The Supreme Court, Congress and the attorney general have all said the referendum he is sponsoring is illegal because the constitution says some of its clauses cannot be changed.

The constitution, approved in 1982 as Honduras was throwing off two decades of nearly uninterrupted military rule, states that any politician who promotes presidential re-election will be barred from public service for 10 years.

The showdown over Sunday’s referendum has all but overshadowed the election campaign, which pits Porfirio Lobo of the opposition National Party against Liberal Party candidate Elvin Santos, who resigned as vice president last year complaining that Zelaya had been trying to sideline him in the government.

Zelaya, whose four-year term ends in January, has seen his approval ratings fall over the past year as the country grapples with soaring food prices and a spike in drug violence that has saddled Honduras with one of the highest homicide rates in Latin America.

His campaign for changing the constitution has energized his support base of labor groups, farmers and civil organizations who have long felt marginalized in a country where a wealthy elite controls the media and much of politics, said Manuel Orozco, a political analyst with the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue.

But “the bottom line is that whether he has some level of popular support or not, this is democracy and he has to follow the rule of law,” Orozco said.