Manuel Zelaya

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Manuel Zelaya (2009)

José Manuel Zelaya Rosales [ xoˈse maˈnwel seˈlaja roˈsales ], also Mel Zelaya, (born September 20, 1952 in Catacamas ) is a Honduran politician. He was elected President of Honduras on November 27, 2005 to succeed Ricardo Maduro . In 2009 the Honduran military overthrew him as part of a constitutional conflict. Zelaya has been a member of the Central American Parliament since September 2010 .

career

Zelaya studied at the Honduran National University. He was trained as a civil engineer and was also the owner of a ranch in the Olancho department . Until 1984 he was a functionary in various business associations and sat on the board of a private bank. Between 1985 and 1998 Zelaya was represented three times as a member of the National Congress. He also held various leadership positions in the Liberal Party of Honduras (PLH) and became Minister responsible for the Honduran Social Investment Fund (FHIS). Under the presidency of Carlos Roberto Flores Facussé , Zelaya initiated a decentralization program that returned responsibility to the local communities. He used both the division according to public administrative structures and a classification of the population into 297 indigenous or traditional communities. He planned to reapply this scheme as president.

Presidency

Zelaya with US President Bush in New York on September 18, 2006

In the presidential election campaign of November 27, 2005, one of his main demands was to double the Honduran police forces from 9,000 to 18,000 people. He also promised to create a training program for the social integration of members of the Mara Salvatrucha gangs. This contrasted him with his opponent Porfirio Lobo Sosa from the Partido Nacional, who called for the death penalty to be widely used for gang crimes. In the media, Zelaya's victory was therefore described as a national vote for reconciliation instead of confrontation. He also promised to take action against the widespread corruption in Honduras and to advocate elements of direct participatory democracy .

During his tenure, Zelaya's policies reduced poverty in the population by increasing the minimum wage by 60 percent, from around US $ 6 per day (around 4 euros) to 9.60 US dollars per day (around 6.50 euros) , granting grants to smallholders and cutting bank interest rates, thereby incurring the hostility of the elites.

In 2008, under Zelaya's government, Honduras joined the ALBA . Zelaya, hitherto a loyal US ally, took this opportunity to sharply criticize the US and call for "social or socialist liberalism". Joining the ALBA is an attempt to break Honduras out of its close ties to the USA.

Disempowerment

On June 28, 2009, Manuel Zelaya was overthrown in a coup carried out with the help of the military and flown to Costa Rica on the same day , with the machine making a stopover at the Soto Cano Air Force Base , also known as Palmerola, which is operated jointly with the US Air Force . performed. On the same day, the Honduran parliament appointed its President Roberto Micheletti as Zelaya's successor. Zelaya himself declared from exile that he was still the rightful head of state. The international community and the USA also recognized Zelaya exclusively as the rightful President of Honduras.

Zelaya and most Latin American and Caribbean governments deny that his removal from office was lawful. Latin American leaders in particular voiced their fear that the coup could usher in a new phase of military coups in Latin America. In the Organization of American States (OAS) there was an agreement not to tolerate a military coup in a member country.

There is also the thesis that it was not a coup since Zelaya's arrest by the military was based on an order from the Supreme Court. In Germany, this opinion was mainly represented by the FDP-affiliated Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (FNF) with its representative in Central America, Christian Lüth , and its chairman in Germany, Wolfgang Gerhardt . Christian Lüth wrote in a newspaper article that the military carried out the orders of the Supreme Court.

Against this is the fact that Zelaya was taken abroad by the military after his capture. Article 241 of the Honduran Constitution does not allow a President to stay abroad for more than 15 days without the approval of Parliament. In the event of a violation, he can be deposed.

If his arrest had been ordered by the Supreme Court, Zelaya would have had to face due process under Article 82 of the Constitution, including the right to a defense against charges. According to Article 85, an arrest should have taken place according to defined constitutional criteria.

According to the Honduran prosecutor Jari Dixon Herrera, there was talk of an arrest warrant for the first time on the afternoon of June 30, 2009, a good two days after the coup. This is said to have been issued by the Supreme Court on June 25th. According to the lawyer, every incoming charge in the Secretariat of the Supreme Court is handwritten in a book, the court's logbook . However, after the alleged indictment was brought on July 25, 2009, further cases were already noted, and subsequent entry in this register was therefore impossible. A new book was then created. The only entry: the Zelaya case.

The coup was preceded by a dispute over a planned referendum on whether a referendum on the convening of a constituent assembly should be held at the same time as the presidential election on November 29 . The planned referendum would not have had any legally binding effect, but could at most serve as a means of psychological pressure on the MPs not to withhold their consent to hold a legally binding referendum contrary to the will of the people.

The referendum was to be held on the day of his fall. However, he did not find a parliamentary majority for his project. Opponents accused Zelaya of intending to allow a future presidential re-election. Honduran Supreme Court ruled the referendum illegal. Zelaya then dismissed army chief Romeo Vásquez on June 24th because he refused to hold the referendum. In Honduras, the military is responsible for distributing the ballot boxes. The next day, the Supreme Court ordered Vásquez's reinstatement and the destruction of the ballot papers. Zelaya then mobilized his supporters, with whom he moved to the site of the military airfield in Tegucigalpa and removed the voting material stored there in order to have it distributed throughout the country.

A few days after the coup, Honduras was excluded from the OAS. Zelaya traveled on to Nicaragua and announced several times from there that he would be returning to Honduras. Mediation efforts by the Costa Rican President Óscar Arias Sánchez failed. On July 24, 2009, Zelaya briefly crossed the Honduran border in the small Nicaraguan town of Las Manos in the presence of international reporters and camera teams, but returned immediately to the Nicaraguan side to avoid the threat of arrest.

Exile and return

On September 21, 2009, Zelaya surprisingly returned to Honduras. He managed to drive unmolested to the capital Tegucigalpa and find asylum there in the Brazilian embassy . Zelaya called on the population for peaceful protests and the interim government for negotiations. The government immediately closed Tegucigalpa Airport and erected roadblocks to stop the influx of Zelaya's supporters into the capital. According to the media, Zelaya accused the Honduran government of secretly poisoning him and storming the embassy, ​​and that Israeli mercenaries were hired to kill him. Because of this, and because of an interview with the director of Radio Globo, David Romero, one of his closest followers, in which he had justified the Holocaust and described it as a "historic mission", Zelaya was urged by Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim to "speak out" immediately clearly to moderate ".

After several weeks of negotiations between Zelaya and de facto President Micheletti, on October 29, 2009 the conflicting parties agreed on a plan to resolve the constitutional crisis. According to the agreements, the Honduran parliament decided on December 2, 2009 to reinstate Zelaya as President. The majority of the 128 MPs in the congress, which is dominated by conservative parties, voted in a roll-call vote in favor of Zelaya not being allowed to return to power temporarily. The country's new president was the conservative politician Porfirio Lobo Sosa on January 27, 2010 , who won the election on November 29, 2009. The resistance movement in Honduras as well as numerous governments in Latin America disputed the legitimacy of Lobo's election and continued to regard Zelaya as his country's head of state. Numerous South American states wanted to boycott the meeting in Madrid in protest against Porfirio Lobo's invitation to the EU-Latin America summit in 2010, whereupon the Spanish Council Presidency withdrew its invitation to Porfirio Lobo.

After spending four months at the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, Zelaya agreed to leave Honduras at the end of January 2010. After negotiations between Porfirio Lobo and Dominican President Leonel Fernández , Zelaya was accepted into the Dominican Republic with his family and close colleagues .

In March 2010, Zelaya was appointed chief political coordinator of the Petrocaribe oil alliance . He is to chair a newly created "political council for the defense of independence and democracy" in America.

After a mediation mission between Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez , Zelaya and the current Honduran government agreed on the ex-president's return from exile. Criminal proceedings against Zelaya and his supporters have been dropped. The resistance movement in Honduras, Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (FNRP) , whose main coordinator is Manuel Zelaya, should be registered as a political party and be able to participate in future elections. In return, the exclusion of Honduras from the OAS is to be withdrawn. Zelaya's return to his homeland was enthusiastically celebrated by his supporters on May 28, 2011.

Government cabinet

  • Private Secretary: Eduardo Enrique Reina.
  • Deputy President Elvin Ernesto Santos Ordóñez until December 18, 2008, Ricardo Arias Brito
  • Foreign Minister: Patricia Isabel Rodas Baca
  • Government and Justice Administration Minister: Jorge Arturo Reina
  • Finance Minister: Rebeca Santos.
  • Defense Minister: Arístides Mejía Carranza from January 2006 to the end of January 2009, Ángel Edmundo Orellana Mercado until June 24, 2009
  • Ministro de la Presidencia: Enrique Flores Lanza
  • President of the Banco Central de Honduras (BCH): Edwin Araque
  • President of the Colegio Médico de Honduras (CMH): Carlos Aguilar
  • Dirección Nacional de Transporte : Ruiz Pastor Canales
  • Minister of Labor: Mayra Mejía del Cid
  • Director of the Consejo Hondureño de Ciencia y Tecnología (Cohcit): Mayra Mejía del Cid
  • Security Ministers: Jorge Alberto Rodas Gamero, Álvaro Antonio Romero Salgado
  • Minister for Técnica de Cooperación (Setco) : Karen Lizeth Zelaya
  • Minister of Public Education: Marlon Antonio Brevé Reyes
  • Minister of Public Health: Jenny Meza Paguada
  • Minister for Industry and Trade: Miriam Elizabeth Mejia, Fredis Cerrato
  • Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources: Mayra Mejia del Cid
  • Minister of Public Affairs, Transport and Housing: José Rosario Bonanno Zaldivar
  • Minister for Art, Culture and Sport: Eng. Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle
  • Minister of Agriculture: Héctor Hernández Amador
  • Minister of Tourism: Ricardo Martínez Castañeda
  • Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States: Carlos Sosa Coello
  • Ambassador and Plenipotentiary to the United States Government: Roberto Flores Bermudes.

Private

Zelaya is married to Xiomara Castro de Zelaya and has four children.

Web links

Commons : Manuel Zelaya  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
 Wikinews: Manuel Zelaya  - on the news

Individual evidence

  1. Media-Newswire: OAS Secretary General Pleased with Swearing in of President Zelaya to PARLACEN , September 21, 2010
  2. Harald Neuber: Putschists in the battle of retreat. In: Telepolis. July 1, 2009, accessed July 2, 2009 .
  3. Benjamin Dangl: The Road to Zelaya's Return: Money, Arms, and Social Movements in Honduras. In: Quetzal. September 22, 2009. Retrieved December 5, 2009 .
  4. Military arrests Honduras' President Zelaya , Spiegel-Online of June 28, 2009.
  5. André Scheer: stop Palmerola , Honduras: President Zelaya was flown out on air base of the United States. young world , 7th September 2009
  6. http://www.heute.de/ZDFheute/inhalt/19/0,3672,7599763,00.html  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.heute.de  
  7. Christian Lüth: Why Europe and the UN are wrong about Honduras Die Welt, July 4, 2009
  8. a b c Honduran Constitution as amended May 4, 2005
  9. Harald Neuber: A coup clearly took place in Honduras telepolis, August 13, 2009
  10. ^ Military coups President Zelaya ; Stern, June 28, 2009
  11. ^ Supreme Court versus President ; Zeit-Online from June 25, 2009
  12. ^ Zelaya mobilizes the population , Amerika21.de of June 26, 2009
  13. cf. Honduras excluded from OAS ( memento of the original from July 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at sueddeutsche.de, July 5, 2009 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sueddeutsche.de
  14. Zelaya wants to start the march to Honduras Spiegel Online, July 23, 2009
  15. cf. Zelaya briefly returns to home soil ( Memento from July 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) at tagesschau.de, July 24, 2009 (accessed on July 25, 2009)
  16. Neue Zürcher Zeitung : Zelaya's return brings Honduras into an uproar on September 22, 2009 (accessed on September 22, 2009).
  17. Battle for Honduras Echoes Loudly in Media . In: The New York Times , September 25, 2009. Retrieved May 12, 2010. 
  18. ^ Anti-Semitic tones in Zelaya's campaign. world-online. de, October 2, 2009
  19. Die Zeit : Political Crisis in Honduras ended ( Memento of November 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) of October 30, 2009.
  20. Parliament votes against the return of Zelaya Focus Online, December 3, 2009
  21. ^ André Scheer: New rumors of coup. In: young world. June 14, 2010, accessed May 29, 2011 .
  22. ^ EU-Latin America summit in Madrid without Porfirio Lobo. In: agência latina press. May 7, 2010, accessed May 29, 2011 .
  23. cf. Honduras: Zelaya agrees to leave at focus.de, January 24, 2010 (accessed on January 24, 2010)
  24. Chávez plays the job broker: Zelaya is now doing oil , ntv.de from March 7, 2010
  25. Tages-Anzeiger : Honduras celebrates the return of the chased , May 29, 2011.
  26. ^ Zelaya Returning to Honduras. In: Prensa Latina. May 28, 2011, accessed May 29, 2011 .
  27. ^ Member States of OAS
  28. directoriolegislativo.fdsf.hn: Nómina de Entes del Estado  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / directoriolegislativo.fdsf.hn  
  29. TLAXCALA: HONDURAS: The Members of the Cabinet of the Government of President Zelaya Address the Honduran People and the International Community
predecessor Office successor
Ricardo Maduro President of Honduras
January 27, 2006 - June 28, 2009
Roberto Micheletti