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Term limit law has been mandated in emerging countries around the world. Many of the nations have a constitutional framework influenced by older democracies with an extensive record of interpretation by means of a stable court system. At the present time term limits are under assault by incumbent leadership.
Typically a strong leader assumes vast power and when the time comes to step aside this leader devises a strategy to keep his power. Commanding many resources, often including law enforcement, the army as well as control of the civil service jobs base, the leader is often successful in retaining power. The tool is an easily arranged referendum vote that requires a simple majority vote to accomplish important change.
ABTL will track current events relating to term limit law in an effort to permit readers to note similarities and differences among those seeking change.
On June 28th there was a UPI news report that noted that "the president of Niger says he will ignore a Supreme Court ruling banning him from seeking a third term."
"President Namadou Tandja, who is in the final year of his second and final term, said in a national television address that he would govern through decrees and ordinances in order "to protect the nation's foundation and the interest of the people."
Another source AfricaNews stated that Tandja made his move late last week amid efforts to drum up support for a referendum that would allow him to run for a third five-year term. It was further reported that the referendum proposal met with a tepid reception, even among some of his supporters.
Tandja has received generally good marks over the years for his management of the poverty stricken African nation's economy. Nevertheless, a coalition of four political parties that had been allied with Tandja's ruling party last week called on the president to abide by the court decision.
In Venezuela last February 15th, the National Electoral Council announced that Venezuelans had voted nearly 55% in favor of the constitutional amendment to eliminate term limits. The vote will allow President Hugo Chávez to run for a third full term in 2012. Chávez and his supporters had argued that the elimination of term limits is necessary to allow the President to govern for longer than the four years remaining in his term, in order to complete Venezuela's transition to "Bolivarian Socialism."
On December 1st President Hugo Chavez had called on his party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela to campaign for the constitutional change. In January the national assembly approved it, and then put before the Venezuelan people in this weekend's national referendum vote. A previous attempt to change the constitution had failed.
When Colombian President Álvaro Uribe's effort to lift term limits succeeded in 2005, an emboldened Chavez seized the moment. U.S. media had taken little notice of the Columbia change although in that country, the lifting of term limits was a big story. Perhaps the fact that the Colombian courts have sentenced the congress member who cast the deciding vote on the amendment to almost four years in prison for taking bribes from Uribe aides in exchange for her vote drove the story. Yet Uribe's scandal-ridden term limits law was treated as far less newsworthy by U.S. editors than the Venezuelan government's moves to put the question of term limits back on the ballot.
There is an ongoing crisis in the Central American country of Honduras caused by another leader attempting to overturn term limits. After the Supreme Court of that nation rejected President Manuel Zelaya firing of his top military officer in a dispute over the Presidents quest to permit presidents to serve more than a single four year term a constitutional crisis developed rapidly.
Honduran soldiers rousted President Manuel Zelaya from his bed and exiled him at gunpoint on a Sunday to Costa Rica, halting his controversial push to redraw the constitution but spurring fresh concerns about democratic rule across Latin America. A military team removed the President from his residence at gunpoint and flew him to exile in Costa Rica. Mr. Zelaya called the action a kidnapping, and said he was still president.
According to news reports Honduras's Supreme Court gave the order for the military to detain the president. Later, Honduras's Congress formally removed Mr. Zelaya from the presidency and named congressional leader Roberto Micheletti as his successor until the end of Mr. Zelaya's term in January. The news report stated that Mr. Micheletti and others said they were the defenders, not opponents, of democratic rule.
Moves to try to stay in power through the ballot box have become increasingly common in Latin America. Leftist Latin American leaders such as Mr. Chavez, Ecuador's Rafael Correa and Bolivia's Evo Morales have used referendums for a similar purpose. Bolivia's socialist President Evo Morales became the latest to join the group earlier this year, winning a nationwide referendum that creates a new constitution and changes existing term limits to allow him to stay in power until 2014. "Democracy has become weaker, not only in Bolivia, but the entire region," says Roberto Laserna, a professor at the Center for Social and Economic Affairs in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
Ecuador President Rafael Correa could stay in office until 2017 under a new constitution just approved in that South American country. It is the 20th constitution in the history of this chronically unstable nation considerably broadens Correa's powers and will let him run for two more consecutive terms, consolidating what he calls a citizen's revolution.
