The relevant candidatesBesides of the two traditional parties – National Party (right-wing) and Liberal Party (vaguely center-left and a member of the Liberal International) – that alternated in power since decades, several parties competed for the first times. The two most relevant are Liberty and Refoundation Party (LIBRE) founded by partisans of ousted president Manuel “Mel” Zelaya and the Anticorruption Party (PAC) led by Salvador Nasralla, a popular TV-presenter that decided to jump into politics.
Parties that include several internal movements (National Party, Liberal Party, and LIBRE) organized primaries to designate candidates for both presidential and legislative elections on 18 November 2012, one year before the date set for the general election. Presidential candidates have three running mates as there are three posts of vice president.
Juan Orlando Hernández “JOH” (National Party). The sitting president of Honduran Congress, he is seen as one of the most powerful if not the most powerful politician in Honduras. As head of the parliament, he played a key role in the passage of the legislation about militarization of police and in putting the judiciary power under the control of Congress. A Machiavellian politician, he used a series of shenanigans to win the National Party's nomination against six others candidates. Actually, there were, at best, only four candidates truly running against JOH. Two of candidates, the sisters Eva and Loreley Fernández, being fake candidates whose only purpose for running was to ensure extra electoral representatives for JOH.
Source.
JOH seems to have also received the support of another candidate, third vice president Víctor Hugo Barnica, so he had no difficulties to rig the results in his favor. Results were 45.42% for JOH against 38.76% for the runner-up, Tegucigalpa mayor Ricardo Álvarez, which belong to a concurrent faction of the National Party and was supported by former president (2002-2006) Ricardo Maduro. Eva Fernández, Loreley Fernández and Barnica finished last with respectively 0.71%, 0.64% and 0.59% of the votes.
Following more or less the same script than the French UMP leadership election (that ironically happened exactly the same day), both JOH and Álvarez declared themselves winners and Álvarez, generally seen as having actually won the nomination, asked for a recount. After Supreme Electoral Court rejected Álvarez's appeal, he requested a recount to the Supreme Court but, bad luck for him, the ousting of justices occurred the day before he formally submitted his request that was rejected by JOH's replacement picks.
Unwilling to divide the National Party, Álvarez finished by endorsing Hernández and was rewarded by a post of designado presidencial (one of the three posts of vice president). The designation of Álvarez was apparently illegal (and denounced as such by JOH's opponents) as the electoral law stipulates that a candidate that lost in the primary elections couldn't participated in the general elections, but the Supreme Electoral Court certificated Álvarez's pick anyway.
Unsurprisingly, Juan Orlando Hernández campaigned on the promise to continue the militarization of the police, to put according his own words “a soldier on every corner”, and added, for good measure, some demagogic and clientelist promises like the extension of the
Bono 10 Mil (a conditional cash transfer toward the poorest) up to 800,000 families, the creation of 800,000 jobs (he seems to love that number) and the implementation of a home renovation program called
Vida Mejor (Better Life) for poorest families. Note than if you are interested into the
Vida Mejor program you can apparently provide your contact information on Hernández's
campaign website. The program
Vida Mejor had already implemented on a small-scale and served as subject of a TV-program that was compared to Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Here the
trailer but there are several one-hour episodes on Youtube.
Another program promised by JOH is the so-called
La Cachureca, a sort of credit card that would provide to recipients discounts on various products and services (ranging from telephone credit recharge to medical consultation and fast food meal) from specific private enterprises.
Cachureco is the colloquial term to designate National Party militants and it seems that the card was first intended to be reserved for National Party members only, but according to JOH, it will be offered to everyone.
Mauricio Villeda (Liberal Party).
The Liberal Party suffered from the defection of a good share of its leadership and membership (I see the number of 55 percent coming from a pro-Zelaya source) toward the new party of Zelaya. There are apparently however some Zelayists remaining in the party which is now dominated by the most right-wing and anti-Zelaya elements.
The primaries opposed three candidates, Esteban Handal, Yani Rosenthal, and Mauricio Villeda.
Handal is a veteran politician and apparently a relatively loyal supporter of Zelaya (he visited him during his exile in Dominican Republic).
Rosenthal is a young and very ambitious politician and the son of Jaime Rosenthal, a very rich businessman and a powerful leader in the Liberal Party in which he lead one of the left wing factions. Jaime Rosenthal has been accused of using his political power to guarantee his own business interests and to favor his own son's political career. In the first years of Zelaya's administration, Yani Rosenthal was named to the powerful ministry of the presidency despite his political inexperience. I don't really understand what are exactly the relations between the Rosenthals and Zelaya. It has been suggested that Zelaya “converted” to chavism after having lose the support of Jaime Rosenthal but Rosenthal's media empire turned later very critical of Zelaya's removal. In the Liberal primaries, Rosenthal campaigned on a left-wing platform, calling for an extension of social programs.
Mauricio Villeda is the son of former president Ramón Villeda Morales (1957-1963), who implemented a progressive agenda before being ousted by a military coup, and is also the brother of the former Ramón Villeda Bermúdez, a bigwig of the Liberal Party. A member of the right wing of the party and a corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Villeda was an opponent of President Zelaya and supported the Micheletti administration that replaced Zelaya after his removal from office. He is backed by former president (1998-2002) Carlos Flores, also owner of
La Tribuna newspaper and leader a right-wing faction inside the Liberal Party.
Bishop Luis Alfonso Santos Villeda resigned his Santa Rosa de Copán bishopric and announced his intention to run in the Liberal primaries as a defender of the poor but Vatican apparently disagreed and he had to renounce.
Villeda won the nomination with 51.97% against 44.21% for Rosenthal and 3.81% for Handal. He has made a campaign based on “values”, the fight against corruption, and the defense of the separation of powers. He had also vocally voiced his opposition to same-sex marriage, despite the fact that none of the relevant candidates wants to legalize it. A rather uncharismatic figure, he has to deal with opposition inside his party (Rosenthal is seemingly still planning his own presidential run for 2017). Nevertheless, he is seen as an honest and non-corrupt politician and, while he struggled for a distant fourth position in polls at the begin of the year, the most recent polls gave him on a rise with a relatively solid third position. A poll even showed him ahead.
Xiomara Castro (Libre).The wife of Mel Zelaya, she was the only candidate running for president in the LIBRE primaries. LIBRE was founded in 2012 and is led by Zelaya who is constitutionally barred from running for another presidential term. Xiomara is widely seen as a proxy for Zelaya as she had no political activity until the removal of her husband. She had managed to attract the support of various labor, agrarian, indigenous, and LGTB organizations and her main proposal is the convocation of a constituent assembly and the drafting of a new constitution ensuring rights for ethnic minorities and citizens' participation. She also advocates ambitious social programs and is opposed to the new military police, preferring rather a community police, and is also unfavorable to same-sex marriage. Perhaps surprisingly given her links to the ALBA countries, Xiomara Castro received the [http://exclusivas.elheraldo.hn/elheraldo/especiales/eleccionesgenerales2013/419841-332/lula-da-silva-expresa-apoyo-a-xiomara-castro]endorsement[/url] of former Brazilian President Lula da Silva.
If elected, it remains to see who would be the actual leader of the country, she or Mel, and if Xiomara would be able to summon a Constituent Assembly with no majority in Congress and a National Party-controlled judiciary power. And as Zelaya's own term was plagued by various corruption scandals, I guess there is no major improvement should be expected in this area.