Shake Up In Control of the Christian Democrat Party of Honduras

The Honduran Partido Democráta Cristiano (PDCH) has split into two factions with two different leadership councils. Now it's up to the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) to decide which faction legitimately represents the party.

The PDCH was founded in 1968 but not recognized by the TSE until 1981.  It historically garnered between one and five Congressional Representatives in elections.

Since the coup in 2009 it has aligned itself with the ruling party.

In the last election, however, its presidential candidate received about 5000 votes or 0.17 % of the vote, and the party received only one Congressional seat. They gained a second Congressional representative in 2014 when Eduardo Coto joined the party, defecting from LIBRE.

By law, the TSE should have ceased to recognize the PDCH for failing to obtain enough votes to be considered a viable political party (set at 5%). Viability as a party has defined legal criteria because recognized parties receive funding from the TSE.

Other parties that received more presidential votes, such as Romeo Vasquez Velasquez's Partido Alianza Patriotica were disbanded by the TSE after their poor election showing in 2013. But that has not happened to the PDCH, perhaps because one of the three senior judges on its leadership panel, Saul Escobar, is a member. 

Coming out of the 2013 Elections, the PDCH, despite its small electoral constituency, had three factions attempting to gain power. One was controlled by Arturo Cruz Asensio, one by Nieves Fernando Perez and the third by Carlos Manzanares and Felicito Avila. This resulted in three different slates being nominated to compete for the party leadership, one headed by Cruz Asensio, a second by Carlos Manzanares, and a third by Nieves Fernando Perez.

Just before the party election, Manzanares and Fernando Perez stepped aside in the name of party unity.  Cruz Asensio was elected party President, and Manzanares Vice President. They replaced Felicito Avila and Lucas Aguilera in those posts. Cruz Asensio promised to be more questioning towards the ruling National Party, although there is no indication that he has been.

But all is not well.

A rift that developed between the current leadership and a faction led by Manzanares manifested in a violent meeting where people were throwing chairs and punches at each other. Disguised by rhetoric about old guard versus new guard, the attack on the party leadership turned out to be a long-planned attempt to co-opt this minor party in Honduras for personal gain, allegedly fomented by Arturo Corrales, the current Chancellor of the country.

Gissel Villanueva, an aide to Cruz Asensio said

“People paid by Arturo Corrales and his helpers, Felicito Avila, Carlos Romero and Jorge Bogran were the ones who started this fight and this they did because they are people who have already left the party but don't want to let go of power.....

The only thing that interests Arturo Corrales is power; what he wants is to have control over the three congressmen which this party has in the National Congress and which he doesn’t control; he wants these positions.”

Corrales has played a prominent role in both the Liberal Party and National Party governments that have ruled Honduras since the coup of 2009. He has held the cabinet posts of Security Minister and Head of Foreign Relations under both of the last two National Party Administrations. But his political career was made as a member of the minority Partido Democráta Cristiano, for which he was a presidential candidate in 1997.

On September 5th, a group claiming to be PDCH party leadership delegates met in Tegucigalpa and stripped Cruz Asensio of his party leadership role and elected Carlos Manzanares to that position.  In the very same meeting the disciplinary committee suspended the party membership of Arturo Corrales because of the attack at the youth meeting.  This appears to be a resurgence of the factionalism evident in 2014, with the Manzanares faction claiming control of the party leadership.

Cruz Asensio contests his demotion.  He called the meeting illegal because he neither convened it nor was present at it. He notes that the delegates who convened it were not the delegates registered with the TSE as the party's official delegates. David Aguilera, the party executive secretary called the suspension of Arturo Corrales illegal though he didn't state why. Luis Aguilera, who is part of the Manzanares faction, said that the 200 legal delegates were convened, conveying his position that the meeting was legal.

Now, the group that seized the leadership of the party has submitted to the TSE a leadership council headed by Manzanares with a replacement disciplinary committee, and with a new political committee headed by Arturo Corrales, and staffed by Felicito Avila, Ramon Velasquez Nazar, and Lucas Aguilera.

Augusto Cruz Asensio has submitted an appeal attempting to dismiss the other group's submission, arguing that the delegates that met were not those listed with the TSE as the law demands.

The TSE said that after combing its archives, it can find no filings listing the delegates for 2013, 2015, or 2015 for the PDCH. That greatly weakens Cruz Asensio's position, and the failure happened under this leadership.

At stake is more than control of a moribund electoral party: there is also the matter of control of votes for the upcoming selection of candidates for the Supreme Court.

Congress Moves to Consolidate Power

The Honduran Congress is on the way to passing legislation that would give it the power it claimed de facto by firing four Supreme Court judges. Except the new law would allow Congress to remove any high government official, elected or appointed. Even the President.

Call it the legal coup law. Or "the Law of Political Judgement".

Let's recap:

Yesterday the Honduran Congress passed a new law governing police human resources procedures, making the confidence tests on all police both mandatory and permanent.

Last week the Honduran Congress removed 4 Supreme Court Justices for ruling that Decreto 5-2012 and Decreto 89-2012 were unconstitutional.  The first of those modified the law guiding the operation of the police, and the second suspended a number of due process parts of the law guiding police operation for a six month period under an emergency declaration.

The Constitutional Branch of the Supreme Court upheld an appeal of these laws brought by police officers and found both sets of changes unconstitutional.  The Constitutional Branch argued that the specific law for police cleanup, Decreto 89-2012, was unconstitutional for three reasons:  it did not grant the police officers the right to self defense; it took away their right to due process; and the use of a polygraph is proscribed under the Honduran Penal Code. 

Fast forward to yesterday, which Reuters reported simply as Congress passing a new police cleansing law. 

In fact, Congress did a lot more than merely make some kind of confidence tests permanent in the changes they passed.  Congress re-introduced the whole concept of due process, allowing police officers who fail the confidence test to defend themselves in an oral hearing before any decision about dismissal is taken.  The new reformed law accommodates the constitutional requirement of due process and gives the accused the right of self-defense.

Or as two of the five major Honduran papers put it: Congress agreed with the Supreme Court that the law needed to protect the constitutional guarantees of the police officers.

Yet this is precisely the position that Congress just (illegally) fired four justices for defending.

Moving forward: Congressman Augusto Cruz Acensio introduced another bill yesterday that would give Congress the power to do what it already did with the Supreme Court Justices: fire them for doing their job. Cruz Asensio is one of Juan Orlando Hernandez's go to guys for interpreting the constitution (badly!).

Called the Law of Political Judgement (!) it would allow Congress to remove any high government official, elected or appointed, including the President.  The bill would allow Congress to dismiss officials for:  not being qualified for the position under the constitution; physical or mental impairment; not fulfilling the job requirements; incompetence; negligence; favoring someone or arbitrariness; decisions incompatible with the laws of the country; immorality; and finally, actions incompatible with the constitution. 

Whew. I thought we'd never get to treason.

The charges will be considered by a Political Judgement commission appointed by Congress which can summon the individual to testify if it wants to, or ask them for written comments on the charges.

It must, in the very next meeting, deliberate and decide if the charges have merit or not.

Not finding merit will not end the investigation, which may continue and hang over the official for as long as the commission wants.  The commission will report its vote back to Congress. 

In its current form, the bill does not seem to specify what Congress does next.

The new law, if passed, would consolidate Congressional power, following Porfirio Lobo Sosa's maxim that the Legislature rules over the other two branches.

Luckily Congress went on vacation for the holidays, so the law won't be considered for a few days. Maybe by then someone will read the Honduran Constitution.

Military Policing

The Honduran constitution spells out the role of the military: what they can and cannot do.

Juan Orlando Hernandez, head of the Honduran Congress with presidential aspirations, wants to change that. He assigned a committee of legislators (Mario Pérez, Oswaldo Ramos Soto, German Leitzelar, José Alfredo Saavedra, Augusto Cruz Asensio y Marvin Ponce) to formulate an "interpretation" of the constitution that will use Article 274 of the constitution to grant policing power to the military.

There's a real problem with this.

Its unconstitutional.

When Congress wrote a constitutional modification that granted it the sole power to interpret the constitution, which is what is proposed here, the Honduran Supreme Court ruled that change unconstitutional. The decision said that the Supreme Court itself is the final authority on the interpretation of the constitution. In retaliation, for years Congress has delayed publication of that decision, but it nonetheless is law. Three Justices of the Supreme Court chose to speak out and remind Congress of the law on Tuesday.

Articles 272 and 274 of the Honduran constitution define the role of the military. Article 272 reads:

The Armed Forces of Honduras is a National Institution of permanent character, essentially professional, apolitical, obedient and non deliberative. It is constituted to defend the territorial integrity and the sovereignty of the Republic, to maintain the peace, the public order, and the dominion of the Constitution, the principles of free suffrage and the alternation in the exercise of the Presidency of the Republic.

To cooperate with the National Police in the conservation of public order to the effect of guaranteeing the free exercise of suffrage, the custody, transport, and vigilance of the electoral materials and all the other aspects of the security of that process, the President of the Republic shall place the Armed Forces at the disposition of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, from one month before the elections, until the decision of the same.

Article 274 expands on other missions that the Armed Forces can have. These include education, agriculture, environmental protection, road building, health, and agricultural reform. Under this article, the military may cooperate with the institutions of public security (aka, the police).

All of these additional missions require a request from the appropriate Minister of state for the military to assume the role. In the case of cooperating with the police, they must be asked to do so by the Security Minister. They cannot act as police, only in conjunction with police.

In the United States we have a strong tradition, indeed a legal mandate, that says the military may not be used for civilian law enforcement except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress. In the debate over the ratification of the US Constitution, the Federalists argued that the military should not be used against the civilian population, ever. The legal foundations are embodied in the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.

In 1985, in Bissonette v. Haig, the US 8th Circuit Court wrote:

Civilian rule is basic to our system of government. The use of military forces to seize civilians can expose civilian government to the threat of military rule and the suspension of constitutional liberties. On a lesser scale, military enforcement of the civil law leaves the protection of vital Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights in the hands of persons who are not trained to uphold these rights.

Honduras has no such tradition. Civilian rule of the military is an aspiration in Honduras, one that was emergent over the two decades before the 2009 coup. Certainly the changes introduced with the 1982 constitution were an attempt to subject a strong military to a weak civilian rule, but the 2009 coup has brought this power struggle back to the limelight.

A change like the law proposed by the Honduran Congress would be step backwards, reinforcing the erosion of civilian control over the military that was set in motion by the Honduran coup. It is one among many continuing impacts of a coup that has not really ended.