Honduras presidential and legislative elections 2013

[Famous Mortimer]

November 24th.

Leading candidate is wife of deposed former president, disassociated from the Liberal Party and now leading an explicitly socialist party called LIBRE (Liberty and Refoundation).

The traditional Liberal and National Parties also have candidates.

There's another strong third party candidate from something called the Anti-Corruption Party.

[Sir John Johns]

I intended to open a thread about this, but you beat me to it. At first I hoped to write something short, but as usual it finished in an endless block of text. Anyway, the Honduran political scene is very interesting but also very depressing. A large part of my information comes from this fantastic (but quite biased in favor of Zelaya) anglophone blog.

There will be a single round, not matter how many percent of the votes the leading candidate  had received, which could seriously hammered his legitimacy (according to polls, the potential winner would hardly break the 40% mark). Add to this that no party would probably have a parliamentary majority by its own so the winner will be forced to seek coalition. All of this is according to polls, but a massive electoral fraud cannot be ruled out. A
poll (numbers should probably be taken with a grain of salt) indicates that 59% of the Hondurans expected the election being highly or somewhat fraudulent (with 12% non responding).

78% of Hondurans are dissatisfied with the functioning of democracy, 59% (up from 54% in 2010) have no or lower confidence in political parties, 50% (up from 33%) in National Congress, 49% (up from 30%) in Supreme Court, 49% (up from 27%) in the Presidency of the Republic, and finally 48% (up from 34%) in the National Police. 73% think that the country need radical changes in all areas, 13% gradual changes in all areas, 12% changes only in the most problematic areas, 2.3% not responding.

These numbers illustrate the unpopularity of outgoing president Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo, from the ruling National Party. His term is a complete failure in all areas, especially fight against criminality, fight against corruption in police and the political class, and reestablishment of the constitutional order after the controversial (and certainly illegal) removal of President Zelaya. Honduras hold the record of highest murder rate in the world (officially 2,629 murders in the single first six months of 2013, but the real number is possibly of 3,547 as the government attempted to fudge the numbers before the elections ). Police forces have been denounced for their incompetence, their brutality, and their infiltration by organized crime. They were accused of being responsible of 149 violent deaths between January 2011 and December 2012 .

Apparently under the pressure from the U.S. government, President Lobo decided to solve the problem by issuing in May 2012 a decree to purge the police forces (decreto de depuración policial) that requires every police officer have to pass confidence tests, including lie detector tests, psychological test, drug test, and review of the personal financial situation.

Concerns were raised about the reliability of the tests (especially the lie detector thing) and the police administration show no rush to fire the officers that failed the tests. Anyway, in November 2012, the Supreme Court ruled out the decree as unconstitutional on the ground that it breached the police officers' right to the presumption of innocence. The previous month the Supreme Court had also struck down a controversial law enabling the creation of the so-called Regiones Especiales de Desarollo (Special Development Regions), some sort of private-run cities, which was seen as an abandonment of national sovereignty (there is a thread on the Atlas about it.

The Supreme Court's decisions precipitated a constitutional crisis as the National Party-controlled Congress replied on 12 December by illegally voting the removal of four (out of fifteen) Supreme Court justices and their immediate replacement by more malleable justices. It is probably no accident that the said removal occurred the day before the submission of a recount request of the primaries of the National Party.

After that, the Congress reintroduced the Special Development Regions law, voted a law making the confidence tests mandatory for police officers, another one giving itself the possibility to remove from office any senior official, minister, mayor, legislator, or justice by a two-thirds majority, and the President of the Republic by a three-quarters majority. The Congress quickly used its new powers by forcing the general procurator into resignation and appointed a new general procurator for a five-year term.

Despite the signature of a truce between street gangs, the Lobo administration created in August a military police force (Policía Militar del Orden Público), effectively giving the army the task to fight crime. An elite police unit, the so-called Tropa de Inteligencia y Grupos de Respuesta Especial de Seguridad (acronym TIGRES, Tigers in Spanish) was also created.

Economic situation isn't particularly good, the state run heavy deficit and failed to renew a deal with the IMF, which means it could be quickly ran out of cash.

[Sir John Johns]

The relevant candidates

Besides 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.

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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.

[Sir John Johns]

Salvador Nasralla (Anti-Corruption Party)

Salvador Nasralla, El Señor de la Televisión, is a sports commentator and TV-presenter that run for the newly founded populist Anti-Corruption Party (PAC). With Villeda, he is the candidate that put the most emphasis on the fight against corruption, even so far it had mostly consisted of endless rants against corrupt politicians. He has mostly criticized the National Party, calling it “the most corrupt party in history”, and claiming the support of no less than 60% of the voters, has said he would call to a popular uprising if any parties beside PAC and Libre won the presidential election.

Nasralla had been the target of a smear campaign about his supposed homosexuality but he still managed to attract the wrath of LGBT associations by making himself homophobic comments. On a more funny side, during a debate Ricardo Álvarez had claimed that Nasralla's
supposed botox injections are destroying his nerve cells.

Beside of the promise to fight corruption, Nasralla's platform includes simplification of administrative procedures to favor foreign investments, the promotion of e-Government and the introduction of electronic voting. He is supporting of the military police only on a provisional basis and want to rather develop a community police. At the begin of the campaign, some polls gave Nasralla a strong third place, behind Xiomara and JOH, and, at one point, second behind Xiomara. However, since then, he had considerably dropped in the polls and competed with Villeda for the third position with a slight edge for the latter.


The joke candidates

Beside of the big four, there are one candidate running for a newly founded party and the three running for the so-called Bonsái Partidos (Bonsai parties) that desperatly struggle to survive.

Romeo Vásquez Velásquez (Honduran Patriotic Alliance)
A former head of the army, he played a key part in the ousting of Zelaya in 2009. After his retirement from the military, he was rewarded by Porfirio Lobo with the post of CEO of Hondutel, the state-owned telephone company that was plagued by mismanagement and countless corruption scandals. When he left the company to run for presidency, Hondutel was on verge of bankruptcy as 1,200 new employees (an increase of 33%) had been hired and given generous salaries since Vásquez Velásquez had taken office.

With other retired military officers, Vásquez Velásquez founded the right-wing Honduran Patriotic Alliance that sounds more like a military lobby than a political party. He is running on a law-and-order platform and has promised to reduce violence in only six months. He also proposes the creation of a Social Opportunity Service (SOS) that would permit young people to undergo vocational training, partly under the supervision of the army, rather than joining street gangs. Vásquez Velásquez claims being supported by 1.2 million of voters (the same number than Lobo in 2009), especially reservists and their families, but polls disagreed and gave him near-zero.

One of the Honduran Patriotic Alliance star candidate in legislative election is former death squadron commander Billy Joya, previously accused of kidnapping and torture.

Andrés Pavón (UD-FAPER)
Andrés Pavón runs as the candidate of an alliance between his own Broad Political Electoral Front in Resistance (FAPER) and the Democratic Unification (UD). The former was found recently by Pavón, certainly as his empty political vehicle, while the latter was formed in 1991 by demilitarized leftist guerrillas and is the heir of the communist movement. UD is seen as a bunch of traitors by Zelaya's partisans as it participated in the 2009 elections and thereafter was part of the “government of reconciliation” set up by Porfirio Lobo. Its leader, César Ham, received then the post of head of the National Agrarian Institute. In that post, Ham had to deal with mass land occupations in the Bajo Aguan valley and was perceived as too much radical by National Party hacks and as not enough radical by agrarian organizations.

Pavón is a very bizarre politician and is seen either as a true leftist or a National Party's plant. He has a past as a leftist activist (he received a “revolutionary political training” in Cuba and Nicaragua according his biography) and heads of the Honduran Human Rights Commission for years. A big supporter of Zelaya, he was involved in the organization of protests against his removal from office. Later, Pavón broke with Zelaya, officially because Zelaya isn't enough revolutionary and acts like a “caudillo”. The true reason seems that Pavón thinks Zelaya didn't reward him fairly for his services.

Since then, Pavón had denounced a supposed collusion between Xiomara and Nasralla “to generate chaos in Honduras” and had engaged with the latter into a crazy insult contest, claiming that Nasralla is a clown and has a “platonic love” for JOH as he spent his time to attack him (Pavón himself seems very kind toward JOH).

For his part, Nasralla had claimed that Pavón is a sellout and is paid by the National Party to create controversy. Also, some days ago, Pavón denounced a supposed plot to murder an unnamed presidential candidate.

Pavón's platform is the implementation of "participatory socialism and a social mixed economy" (can't find much more details) and AFAIK he is the only candidate to openly support same-sex marriage.

Orle Solís (Christian Democratic Party)

The Christian Democratic Party of Honduras (PDCH) was originally founded as a center-left christian-democratic party but is by now a partido bisagra (hinge party) that traded its support in exchange of ministerial posts. One of its leader, Arturo Corrales, is currently the “super-minister” of Security, in charge of the setting up of the new military police, after having been previously foreign minister. Nobody seems to care about PDCH and its candidate.

Jorge Aguilar Paredes (Innovation and Unity Party - Social-democrat)

The Innovation and Unity Party – Social-democrat (PINU) is rather a centrist party than a truly social-democrat party. In last election, its candidate was Bernard Martínez, the first Garifuna to run for president, and so sometimes dubbed as the Honduran Obama. Martínez, however, ended up with a poor 1.86%. Nevertheless he joined Lobo's “government of reconciliation” as minister for Culture, Arts, and Sports. His tenure was plagued by accusations of corruption and mismanagement and by clashes with the vice minister of Sports (from the National Party) over the patronage inside the ministry and he was finally sacked.

PINU's candidate is a one-term deputy and by now deputy to the Central American Parliament but as for PDCH nobody cares about.


The last polls

[Famous Mortimer]

JOH in the lead.

[Sir John Johns]

With 24% of ballots counted:
Juan Orlando Hernández 34.97%
Xiomara Castro 28.37%
Mauricio Villeda 21%
Salvador Nasralla 15.74%
all other under 1%

Both JOH and Xiomara declare themselves the winner.

[Leftbehind]

JOH in the lead.

*Throws laptop*.

[RodPresident]

Nasralla acted as spoiler, taking down Xiomara's chances.

[Sir John Johns]

With 68.35% of ballots counted:
Juan Orlando Hernández 34.13%
Xiomara Castro 28.89%
Mauricio Villeda 20.29%
Salvador Nasralla 15.63%
Romeo Vásquez 0.21%
Orle Solís 0.18%
Jorge Aguilar 0.17%
Andrés Pavón 0.11%

Results are here

JOH is ahead in 11 out of 18 departments, Xiomara Castro is ahead in 5 (Colón, Gracias a Dios, Olancho, Santa Bárbara and Yoro, all in the northern and eastern parts), Nasralla won the most populated department of Cortés with 35% (JOH finished third behind Castro there), and Villeda won the least populated department of the Bay Islands.

The big surprise is the breakthrough of PAC in Cortés department and more generally its good result in legislative elections. In Cortés (until now a Liberal stronghold), not only Nasrallah finished first, but the PAC won the strongest representation in Congress and, in the concurrently held municipal elections, the PAC candidate is (so far) a very close second (only 20 votes behind the National Party front-runner) in the San Pedro Sula mayoral election. The incumbent Liberal mayor finished in a distant fourth position.

So far, only Vásquez, Solís, and Pavón had recognized Hernández' victory. Villeda is waiting the end of the count; Castro still says she is the real winner; and Nasralla has stated that no one can claim victory as they are irregularities and fraud in the vote count. The vote count was also questioned by Billy Joya (the former death squad leader) as he failed to get elected to Congress.

[Sir John Johns]

96.08% of ballots counted:
Juan Orlando Hernández 36.72%
Xiomara Castro 28.78%
Mauricio Villeda 20.26%
Salvador Nasralla 13.60%
Romeo Vásquez 0.20%
Orle Solís 0.17%
Jorge Aguilar 0.15%
Andrés Pavón 0.11%

Results for National Congress so far
National Party 48 seats (-23)
Libre 39 seats (+39)
Liberal Party 25 seats (-20)
Anti Corruption Party 13 seats (+13)
PINU 1 seat (-2)
Christian Democratic Party 1 seat (-3)
Democratic Unification 1 seat (-3)

Patriotic Alliance and FAPER fail to enter parliament. The National Party seems now to seek the support of the Liberal Party for a majority.

Final results for the San Pedro Sula mayoralty
Armando Calidonio (National Party) 28.77%
Guillermo Milla (Anti Corruption Party) 28.05%
José Antonio Rivera (Libre) 22.68%
Juan Carlos Zúniga (Liberal Party) 19.19%
5 other candidates under 1%

In 2009, this was also a close election: Zúniga won barely with ... 48.89% against 47.68% for the National Party candidate.

Results for Tegucigalpa mayoralty (with 94.32% reported)
Nasry 'Tito' Asfura (National Party) 50.28%
Rafael Barahona (Libre) 22.24%
Marcia Facussé de Villeda (Liberal Party) 14.32%
José Cárlenton Dávila (Anti Corruption Party) 10.18%
others under 2%

In 2009, Ricardo Álvarez was elected with 62.2% against 18.2% for the Liberal candidate and 11.6% for an (apparently) leftist candidate.