Skip to footer

Honduran lawmakers fire four Supreme Court judges

The Honduran Congress ordered the removal of four Supreme Court judges who ruled a police vetting law unconstitutional. The constitutionality of whether Congress can do this is at question.

• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, bloggingsbyboz.com. The views expressed are the author's own.

The events in Honduras over recent weeks have created a renewed serious institutional crisis in which President [Porfirio] Lobo, the Congress, and the Supreme Court are all vying to show their power over the other branches. Tensions are high as the Congress is trying to remove four Supreme Court justices who had ruled a law unconstitutional.

In late November, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court ruled 4-1 that the controversial and poorly implemented police reform law is unconstitutional on the grounds that it violates the right to due process for police officers. President Lobo and the Congress rejected that decision.

Last weekend, Lobo claimed that the same forces that caused the 2009 coup were out to overthrow him, pointing specifically at the publisher of newspapers El Heraldo and La Prensa.

RELATED: Think you know Latin America? Take our geography quiz!

Yesterday (or early this morning), the Congress approved a bill to hold a referendum on the police reform law, though whether that referendum process or the resulting bill are constitutional is certainly up for debate.
 
More importantly, earlier this week, the Congress formed a commission to investigate the four Supreme Court judges who ruled the original bill unconstitutional. Early Wednesday morning, the Congress used the commission's report delivered in 24 hours (fastest commission ever) to order the removal of those four judges. Again, the constitutionality of whether the Congress can do any of this is at question, which is why this is an institutional crisis.
 
Several media outlets, including El Heraldo and La Prensa (both of which supported the 2009 removal of President Zelaya), are calling the Congress's vote a "technical coup" against the judiciary. Not helping, Army soldiers deployed near the presidential palace and Congress to "protect" those branches create the image of the military taking sides.
 
So that's the basic info of a complex and rapidly developing situation.
 
In the background, the legacy of the 2009 coup still haunts the country and will lead to many comparisons and contrasts with the current situation. Honduras remains one of the most violent countries in the world. Organized criminal networks are deeply infiltrated in a number of institutions, particularly the police. The country can't solve its security challenges until it cleans up the corruption within the police force and deals with impunity for crimes. The political class and business elite within the country are constantly jockeying for position, power, and influence in a political game that usually doesn't represent the country's best interests or immediate needs. And there are elections next year.
 
The last thing the country needs is another institutional crisis.

– James Bosworth is a freelance writer and consultant who runs Bloggings by Boz.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Honduran lawmakers fire four Supreme Court judges
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/Latin-America-Monitor/2012/1212/Honduran-lawmakers-fire-four-Supreme-Court-judges
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe