Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle on the election

¿Como? ¿Quienes les ganamos, a quienes, porque y para que? 
How? Who won, over whom, why and what for?

                                                         

 To my skeptical friends:

The two parties of opposition have, since yesterday, counted all the poll tallies and the Alianza wins with the same 5% margin that was published by the Tribunal Supremo Electoral on Monday. Interesting that the victory could be so overwhelming when the polls by the Liberal and National parties, of private business and some by the Embassy continued foretelling the defeat of the Alianza up to a couple of weeks ago, that it would not manage to harvest more than 25%. The press in the USA followed, giving the win to JOH up to the very day of the elections. In Northern Europe, the same. On the one hand, important sectors there would prefer the status quo, to foretell his triumph was a way to support him. On the other hand, people were afraid to say it, and hid their determination. The rest is obvious.

Certainly, it is an extreme case. In the electoral canton in which I am selected to vote and to supervise, in Las Carmenes, in San Pedro, Luis Zelaya didn't even get 10%. The Alianza won every polling place over JOH, almost 2:1, 60% to 30%, despite the efforts of the mancha brava to pull in votes first, and later to insert twisted votes, and in the end, to impede people from continuing to vote, by prematurely closing the gates. But even in the neighborhoods of the bourgeousie, in San Pedro Sula, the Alianza won the majority of polling places. And the margin of advantage for Salvador on the North Coast and the west-- with the most urbanized population-- will keep safe the final result. We can say the triumph of the Alianza, thanks to Salvador, and God help him. We lost the mayors. There is no local leadership of the Alianza!

This stubbornness in hanging on to executive power is also interesting, which is not only personal to the despot. The first news indicated that los cachos (the conservatives) would hold many municipalities and-- thanks to the atavistic slate-- an important part of the Legislature. This instinctive tenacity of the mancha brava and total lack of responsibility is a dangerous bet, because JOH couldn't govern with 60% of public opinion against him and could lose everything. This could empowered Nasralla in his position to call for a strike and a Constitutional convention now, and it would be over. They could disappear. As happened with the Partido Liberal.

Clearly, there is not on this side less will to defend the conquest, and there are more of us. Who won? Everyone! Beyond Honduras-- that might finally truly reconcile itself, beginning with the recognition of that necessity-- Nasralla won of course, and the recomposed opposition, when LIBRE became the largest party with Mel at its head. Those who asked for the vote and those who, without being candidates, worked to attract them won, as -- in the end-- definitively, we won the voters. Some electoral tribunal officials [Marco Ramiro Lobo] will gain in general recognition, although the performance of the TSE in the end was calamitous. Never again! At the moment, the militia is gaining credibility!

We are defeating their greater resources and their better organization with our grip and enthusiasm. We are winning by overcoming indolence, indifference, negativity, the inertia of apathy, both our own and that of the voter. Overcoming in some cases the fear derived from the pre-electoral violence or the impression that the triumph of fraud was inevitable. Attaining the vote, with our own means, at times also with some sacrifice. Voting massively with a level of participation that hasn't been seen since the 1980s. We cusucos, armadillos, were too much for the fraud. The voters favored us with a majority very much higher than the official figure.

The notable failure of the eternal traps is also interesting. That, at least in the urban ambit, these don't work anymore. Could fraud influence the count of the totality of the vote for congress members, that the cachos, better organized, count on their own and in their manner? Could be. But the principal problem there is that there is no binding theme like re-election, and we voters of the Alianza are more critical and rebellious than the cachurecos. Not that there wasn't, it's clear there was, cheating. It is tiring to list them. Over in the lands of Fito Irías, famous for his gadgets, various activists were detained filling ballot boxes, afterward sent via helicopter to the site in Tegucigalpa, where at the last moment the mancha brava tried to rob ballot boxes. Here in El Ocotillo there were detected and detained bad citizens who were creating el trencito, a little train: one entered the polling station with hidden marked votes, deposited those that he carried and pulled out another group of sealed ballots, for the next and charged... they fished. Everywhere there appeared marked as deceased the people that someone supposed were ours. In El Carmen there was a a voter who was asked for his vote and ID, to photograph his vote to go out and sell it. Angry young men hurried by the well-paid activists who walked from midday on with money and some cases of falsified ID cards paying people to vote with them in the polling places where they controlled the oversight, which was discovered when-- later-- the actual owners of the identities arrived to vote, finding that someone had already voted for them, living a fingerprint "por no saber firmar" (not knowing how to write).

It wasn't defining. Now what before, on various occasions was just PR of the system was-- really-- a civic festival. There was a complicity among a great diversity of classes, of ages, of affiliations. All people, determined to "remove JOH". Great happiness. And after, equal worry, widely shared. (The manipulation by technicians of the TSE is another role. Almost incredible.)

Over whom did we win? Over JOH the dictator, because he undertook to make it something personal, and his gang, the deceitful cahirecos and their mancha brava, the imposters who see visions, the Cardinal, who was making an electoral intervention until the last minute, denouncing la intolerable injerencia extranjera (the intolerable foreign interference), we won over the bosses Flores and Micheletti, who have never lost everything, and the corrupt journalists and the media companies that misinform and mistake ratings for agreement, over the foreign lobbyists that have come to do so much damage, and also, J.J. Rendón and Arcadia lost.

Why did we win? It wasn't just that Salvador attracted voters or that the people identified with our proposals. Nor was it only a vote against re-election. We won because the people got fed up with JOH. With the omnipresence and almost omnipotence of JOH. They punished him as vain and prepotent, as abusive and cynical, and they will return to do it when it's needed. They voted to restore the agreed upon order and clean up the government. Those of us connected wish to preserve a space for our liberty, menaced by the dismantling of the state of law and sufficient guarantees.

La gente lee de otro modo,  pero cree en su voto.
The people read in another way, but they believe in their vote.

[our translation]