Excerpts from the Honduran Constitution:
ARTICLE 2. The Sovereignty belongs to the People, from whom emanate all the Powers of the State exercised by representation.
The People’s sovereignty may also be exercised in a direct manner, through a Plebiscite and a Referendum.
The supplantation of the People’s Sovereignty and the usurpation of the established powers are typified as crimes of Treason to the Motherland. The responsibility in such cases is imprescriptible and may not be deducted ex officio or at the petition of any citizen.
ARTICLE 3. No one owes obedience to a usurping government or to those who assume public functions or posts by force of arms or procedures that violate or ignore what this Constitution and the law establish. The acts carried out by such authorities are void. The people have the right to recur to insurrection in defense of the constitutional order.
ARTICLE 5. The government must stand on the principle of participatory democracy, from which derives the national integrity, which implies the participation of all political sectors in the public administration, for the purpose of ensuring and strengthening Honduras’ progress on the basis of political stability and national conciliation.
For the purpose of strengthening and enabling participatory democracy, the referendum and the plebiscite are instituted as mechanisms of consultation for the citizens, regarding affairs of fundamental importance to national life.
A special law, approved by two thirds of the totality of deputies in the National Congress, shall determine the procedures, requirements and other aspects necessary to the exercise of the people’s consultations. The referendum shall be convoked upon an Ordinary Law or a constitutional norm, or its reform approved for its ratification or disapproval by the citizenry.
The plebiscite shall be convoked by requesting from the citizens a pronouncement on constitutional, legislative or administrative aspects, upon which the Established Powers have not made any previous decision.
By initiative of at least ten (10) Deputies in the National Congress, the President of the Republic through a resolution by the Council of Secretaries of State, or six percent (6%) of the citizens inscribed in the National Electoral Census, enabled to vote after their signatures and fingerprints have been duly confirmed by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the National Congress will hear and discuss such petitions, and if it approves them by the affirmative vote of two thirds of the totality of its members, it shall approve a Decree that will determine the boundaries of the consultation, ordering the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to convoke, organize and direct the citizen consultations indicated in the previous paragraphs.
The exercise of the vote in citizen consultations is obligatory. The bills intended to reform Article 374 of this Constitution will not be the objects of a referendum or plebiscite.
Likewise, the aforementioned consultations may not be utilized for matters related to issues of taxation, public credit, amnesty, the national currency, budgets, international treaties and conventions and social achievements.
It is up to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to notify the National Congress, within a period no longer than ten (10) days, about the results of such consultations. The outcome of the citizen consultations will be obligatorily complied with
(a) if at least fifty-one percent (51%) of the citizens inscribed in the National Electoral Census at the time the consultation is held participate in it, and
(b) if the affirmative vote achieves a majority of valid votes.
If the result of the vote is not affirmative, a consultation on the same topics may not be held during the following period of the Government of the Republic. The National Congress shall order the enactment of the norms that may result as a consequence of the consultation, by means of constitutional procedures of the existing Law. A presidential veto is not allowed in cases of consultation through a referendum or plebiscite.
Consequently, the President of the Republic shall order the promulgation of the approved norms.
ARTICLE 45. Any act that prohibits or limits the participation of citizens in the political life of the country is declared to be punishable.
