TEGUCIGALPA, (Reuters) – Leftist Honduran President Manuel Zelaya yesterday pressed ahead with his effort to extend presidential terms as opposition lawmakers, saying he had overstepped his authority, moved to oust him from office.
Zelaya issued a decree to hold a national referendum on the issue tomorrow and supporters began distributing some 15,000 ballot boxes for the vote. A court has ruled the referendum has no legal basis.
Zelaya, backed by Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chavez and former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, is on a quest to change his country’s constitution to allow presidents to run for a second four-year term.
But opposition parties and the courts are fighting the referendum, and the army is refusing to help organize it.
Zelaya said in a television interview on Friday he would order the army to remain in barracks during the voting period.
Yesterday, legislators for the center-right National Party told Reuters a congressional committee set up to investigate Zelaya found he had violated the Central American nation’s laws and would ask Congress to declare him unfit to rule.
“What we agree on is declaring him incompetent to continue governing the country,” said deputy Wilfredo Bustillo, whose party is a close second to Zelaya’s Liberal Party in Congress.
“This is what is going to be asked of Congress,” he said, adding that the move would come after tomorrow.
Zelaya risks losing a vote in Congress over removing him, given that the Nationals have 55 deputies to his party’s 62 in the 128-seat assembly and a number of ruling party lawmakers also oppose the referendum plan.
