Party politics in Honduras, post 2017

While the OAS has not recognized the outcome of the presidential election, Juan Orlando Hernández is proceeding as if the election is settled. Meanwhile, media and political observers from outside Honduras have pivoted to critiques of Salvador Nasralla, Manuel Zelaya, or both for supposedly playing their cards the wrong way, and for the actions each is taking now.

This seems entirely misguided to us. It is worth noting that there was never a chance that Hernández would concede that the election was fraudulent. We doubt that he would have done anything even if the US placed pressure on him, beyond what he is doing: calling for a national "dialogue" that, as in his previous dialogues, is controlled by him and excludes those who view him as corrupt and illegitimate.

Given that reality, it is worth emphasizing that having the officially reported election results come in so close was surprising, and probably not just to those of us watching from outside. Poll tallies that came in as paper documents and were not scanned at the election site appear to have been manipulated. But those transmitted directly as scans allowed the popularity of opposition to Hernández to show clearly.

Which brings us to the next steps: what is happening, and what should we make of it?

Much is being made of the fact that Nasralla and Zelaya are proceeding separately. International commentators seem to be fascinated with the personality issues involved, and ignore the fact that the Alianza was not a party. It was formed under Honduran electoral law that allows for alliances.

Technically, the Alianza joined two existing parties: Libre and PINU. The party founded by Nasralla, PAC (Partido Anti-corrupción), was originally supposed to form part of the Alianza as well.

However, PAC was taken over in May by dissidents, after the TSE declared their original primary null and void on a technicality. The Honduran press described this situation as a mess. As reports published outside Honduras made clear, this culminated a move by a faction in PAC that was tied to the Partido Nacional.

So in the aftermath of the November election, Nasralla has no party affiliation. He has announced that he is starting over again, pushing for a fuerza nacional-- a national political movement, which in Honduras is a first step to forming a party. Nasralla specifically called for participation by "the Alianza that gave him the electoral triumph"

which will be expanded with all the other sectors of the country that oppose the dictatorship such as the people who have demonstrated in the streets, workers, the church, honest businessmen, unions, the Partido Liberal, and the youth that always accompanied him.

This is playing a long game, looking forward to the next election in 2021. It represents a calculated attempt to broaden his original constituency, appealing to the remnants of the Liberal Partido, which came in third in the national presidential race, but also inviting people who may have supported the Alianza but be less comfortable with Libre's strong social democratic agenda.

Nasralla doesn't really have any other choice if he wants to influence the political future. There is no "Alianza" party of which he might be called the leader in Congress. The shell of PAC, led by his rival, managed to win 1 seat in congress (with less than 1% of the vote nationally). In fact, even in the 2013 elections, PAC only gained 13 seats in the congress. It was always a presidential movement, created by a prominent and visible person, but not anything like a traditional party.

The stakes are different for Zelaya. With the end of the presidential campaign, he returns to his position as leader of Libre. Libre is a party that was built by experienced politicians, and includes a substantial national congressional presence. Libre won 30 seats in Congress (with 23% of the vote nationally). That's a net gain of two seats.

Libre actually overtook what remains of the Partido Liberal, which saw its congressional delegation shrink from 33 to 26 (with 20% of the national vote). The Liberal Party continues to work through the aftermath of the 2009 coup, which was led by one faction within the party against the sitting president from the same party. When Zelaya created Libre, many progressives that formerly were Partido Liberal members followed him.

One of the dynamics to watch is what will become of the remains of the Liberal Party. Luis Zelaya, the candidate for president, was an unexpected choice, a university professor with no history of political office holding. Part of his motivations for seeking office parallel those that guided Nasralla: the corruption scandal in the Honduran social services agency, IHSS. He also was moved by the extra-judicial killing of a university student.

Luis Zelaya shocked most observers when he supported the assertion by Nasralla that the Alianza candidate was the real winner of the contest. He has remained firm on this point. That has led to calls from within what his supporters call the lado oscuro or Dark Side of the party for his removal from his leadership of the party. Zelaya has openly accused those calling for his removal of being in a "perverse" coalition with the Partido Nacional.

Back in early 2015, Mauricio Villeda, then leader of the Liberal Party, was part of the first agreement to oppose the re-election of Juan Orlando Hernández. As recently as this spring, political strategists in Honduras were writing about his chances of leading a three-party alliance in the presidential race.

Which brings us to the next four years. If the Partido Liberal follows Zelaya, and he and his congressional delegation coordinate with Libre, they would form a voting bloc of 56 members, facing the Partido Nacional's 61 (based on a national vote of just under 48%).  This is enough on its own to block some of the constitutional moves that have been a staple of Hernández' consolidation of power.

And they could do more, with sufficient focus. The remaining 11 seats in Congress went to minority parties. The remnant PAC is suspected of being a National Party adherent. Other small parties that were floated as potential participants in a National Party alliance were the PUD, PDCH, FAPER and Vamos.

Only the first two of these political movements had seats in the previous congress, holding a total of five. PUD held on to its seat, but the PDCH lost three, ending up with a single seat. That brings the total votes that normally follow Hernández automatically to 63. This is two less than a majority in the 128 seat congress.

Adding the 4 congressional seats won by PINU to those of Libre, with which it formed the Alianza, would point to a core opposition of 34 votes. If the Partido Liberal under Luis Zelaya can work with Libre and PINU in the next congress on issues where they share concerns, they would still be at a disadvantage, with a total of 60 votes.

The wild card is something called the Partido Alianza Patriotica. It received enough votes in this election to receive 4 seats in congress. It ran the general who carried out the 2009 coup, Romeo Vásquez Velasquez. Not surprisingly, he ran on a tough on crime, support the military platform. In 2013, its first campaign, the party didn't even win a single congressional seat. So there's no history to go on.

And of course, there's the lone Partido Anti-corrupción diputado elected, who just may turn out to have more leverage than expected.

OAS calls for new elections in Honduras

Today witnessed a series of press conferences in the contested Honduran election.

Shortly after the OAS Mission said it would be making a statement late today, the Tribunal Supremo Electoral announced its own announcement would be made earlier in the day.

Not surprisingly, given previous statements, the TSE's announcement was their conclusion that the presidential election had been won by Juan Orlando Hernández, of the Partido Nacional. Neither the Partido Liberal nor the Alianza formed by two opposition parties, the Partido Anti-corrupción and LIBRE, have accepted the vote tallies posted by the TSE, alleging a number of different kinds of fraud.

There is also a potential legal issue left unaddressed: whether the candidacy of Hernández was entirely legal. The current president ran for an unprecedented second term under a Honduran constitution that prohibited even talk of re-election, until a Supreme Court he shaped while head of Congress ruled otherwise. The Supreme Court ruling opened the door to re-election. But lawmakers in Honduras did not pass any legislation authorizing re-election. Technically, then, this is not just an unprecedented election outcome: it is one that took place outside any defined legal framework.

Both the European Union and the Organization of American States are on record as seeing the electoral process as problematic. While the EU released a statement today that many read as supporting the TSE's conclusion, the OAS today signaled more reservations, beginning with statements by Secretary General Luis Almagro on Twitter.

These were expanded in the OAS announcement this evening that the Secretary General of the OAS cannot provide certainty about the results of the election. The press release reiterates previous descriptions of the electoral process as "characterized by irregularities and deficiencies" and of "very low technical quality" and "lacking integrity".

The press release continues:

in the face of the impossibility of determining a winner, the only road possible for the winner to be the Honduran people is a new called to general elections, within the strictest respect for the rule of law, with  guarantees of a TSE that would enjoy the technical capacity and the confidence of the citizenry and the political parties.

This is followed by the appointment of a commission from the OAS of ex-presidents Jorge Quiroga and Alvaro Colom to "carry out the necessary work for a new electoral process and national democratic reconciliation in Honduras".

The full basis for this position is contained in the OAS mission's report to the Secretary General. It rehearses all the weaknesses in the electoral process. It calls allowing a run for re-election based on a court finding (without implementing legislation in place) a "bad practice...that revived the polarization generated by the coup and political crisis of 2009".

The OAS report also provides a new statistical analysis by Professor Irfan Nooruddin of Georgetown University addressing whether the sharp change in voting patterns noted after a break in counting could be explained in any innocent way.

This retraces some of the terrain covered by an analysis in The Economist that concluded that the shifts in voting seen were very unlikely.

Professor Nooruddin uses additional techniques, and concludes "on the basis of this analysis, I would reject the proposition that the National Party won the election
legitimately."

We will revisit these statistical analyses tomorrow, explaining what they do (and do not) show, and relate those observations to some of the known problems in the conduct of Honduran elections in general, and this one in particular.

For now, though, the question is: will Juan Orlando Hernández accept the OAS recommendation? Or does he think he can ignore the massive resistance to his re-election that has already led to almost two dozen deaths of protesters, and the closure of roads across the country?

Election update: four days since polling ended

Yesterday the Tribunal Supremo Electoral said it would make an announcement of final vote count at 3 AM local time Thursday.

One assumes that was a projection based on the pace of counting, not (just) a way to try to avoid having people awake and paying attention. We did not set an alarm, which is just as well, since nothing was announced at 3 AM.

In part, that may be due to an as-yet incompletely explained event that affected the computer equipment Wednesday evening. This took the entire TSE system down with about 82% of the votes counted-- just after the vote had swung slightly to favor Hernández.

The explanation offered by David Matamoros, head of the electoral tribunal, was that this was a computer breakdown, due to the high volume of data being too much for the system used, requiring additional servers to come online. Continuing a pattern of uncertainty and confusion stemming from the Tribunal, another tribunal member, Marco Ramiro Lobo, was quoted as saying the system had been "hacked".

Regardless of the actual cause, the break in the technology came at an unfortunate point in the process. Moments before, an agreement (since repudiated) was released, brokered by the OAS, in which the two candidates agreed to accept the numbers that the TSE was supposed to be reporting in the early morning.

At 8 AM Thursday, Tegucigalpa time, the count is still stalled at just under 89%.

The vote count posted favors Juan Orlando Hernández by 23,000, out of a total of 2.92 million votes-- less than 1% difference.

Due to the procedures used by the electoral tribunal, it is impossible to be certain which polling places have yet to be tabulated. Where the 11% of votes still outstanding comes from is critical, because of the sharp differences in vote preference from region to region.

For example, in the Department of Cortes, where Salvador Nasralla has won 56% of the 404,000 votes counted, we can compare to the 2013 results, which showed a total of 516,000 voters. The possibility of there being more than 100,000 votes still uncounted from this region could be enough to shift the totals, if the current 56%/32% split of vote there continued, as that would be a 24,000 vote advantage for Nasralla.

This won't be settled until every vote has been counted. As the slow process drips on, Honduran citizens continue to have their trust in democratic institutions eroded.

And it appears that the almost inevitable round of repression of protest has also begun, with twitter reporting (and photos confirming) the militarized police or military tear-gassing protesters assembled outside the location of the counting in Tegucigalpa last evening.

It could be easy to lose sight of one clear lesson in this election: even if the incumbent president somehow holds on for a second term, against the popular rejection of presidential re-election seen in pre-election opinion surveys, the opposition campaign mobilized a far larger group of voters than international observers expected.

They maintained the level of support seen in the 2013 election, when it was split between the component Partido Anti-corrupción and LIBRE parties that make up the present Alianza, thus allowing Hernández to win with only 37% of the 2013 vote.

Whether denied office this year or not, the Alianza should be a political force to reckon with over the next four years, representing as many Honduran voters as the Partido Nacional, inheriting the role long played by the now diminished Partido Liberal as the counter to that political force.

Electoral coverage: Part one

At the New York Times, Elizabeth Malkin continues to provide some of the best informed coverage of Honduras in the English language media. Her story on the election lays out clearly the reasons many Hondurans are unhappy with this election, and think it is already stolen: the approval of re-election by a Supreme Court a majority of whose justices owe their office to the current president's actions when he was head of Congress; "reforms" of election processes that give that president's party more control over ballot counting; and the public and notorious evidence of corrupt practices by the same party in the last election.

Meanwhile, Reuters provides what purports to be a simple comparison of the proposed policies of the National Party and Alianza candidates for president. It's textbook example of how to make a selective case without seeming to have an opinion. Start with the characterization of Juan Orlando Hernández as US-friendly and approved by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. The implication would be that Salvador Nasralla and the Alianza are somehow anti-US. That's not really the difference between the two parties: Honduran political parties all want good relations with the US. What the National Party provides, though, is a willing partner in militarization of policing in Honduras that some US policy makers think is a key to ending drug trafficking (or at least diminishing it). Hernández also has accepted US characterization of undocumented migration to the US as his country's problem, leading him to militarize the borders to stop people fleeing violence in the cities and drug-dominated areas.

Reuters pairs the pro-US characterization of Hernández with a description of the Alianza as supposedly dominated by former president Mel Zelaya, saying "many believe" Zelaya is the "true force" behind the Alianza. This echoes the line taken by the National Party in an attempt to discourage voters in Honduras from supporting the opposition. It ignores the reality that Salvador Nasralla is the Alianza candidate because his insurgent party, the Partido Anti-corrupcíon, ran strongly in the 2013 election. Nasralla leads his own political movement, and the fact that what were competing parties in 2013 have now joined forces is a testament to the common goals of Libre and PAC: removing power from the traditional parties seen as corrupt bastions of an oligarchy.

Reuters also reports that polls show Hérnandez leading. They don't identify the polls, or give a link. Three polling companies were approved to do polls by the Honduran electoral tribunal, a new practice that narrowed the data stream when compared to 2013. One of the approved companies is the consultant used by the National Party. Legally, none of them are allowed to poll after September, so any polls from these official sources would be stale. Private polling done by the parties might be available, but legally, they also cannot share any such information.

One effect of published claims that Hernández has an established lead, of course, is to give his election an aura of inevitability. That could hamper efforts already promised by both the Alianza and the Liberal Party (the traditional opposition, depleted in the wake of the 2009 coup and fourth in votes for presidency in 2013) to contest any hint of fraud.

There are already reports from Honduras of intimidation of poll watchers. Some international observers have been refused entry into the country.

TeleSur has a worthwhile infographic showing voting results based on exit polling. So far, Hernández is getting fewer votes than the last published polls, while the Liberal party candidate is drawing significantly more votes.

Obviously, we have no idea which parts of the country this exit polling reflects. But the present numbers show, again, the National Party falling far below a majority, with the number of votes going to the Alianza and Liberal parties together surpassing the National Party vote.

Because of Honduran law, a plurality of votes, no matter how low, will win the office. It will be important to watch how international media report the results: a minority win should not be portrayed as legitimating the National Party. And equally, the international press needs to cover what happens after this election, how complaints are treated, and not accept the deterioration of public trust as somehow inevitable.

Election Sunday

In Honduras, national elections are held on a Sunday in late November, every four years. Even in 2009, following the coup that removed the president, the national election process went on.

This year will mark the second presidential election after the coup. Two things emerged from that rupture that make this an unprecedented election day: viable opposition parties emerged; and the ruling party overturned the very part of the constitution that was claimed, however falsely, by supporters of the 2009 coup to be the cause of their actions, the constitutional bar against presidential re-election.

Two new national political movements, Libre (coming out of the coalition of resistance to the coup), and the Anti-corruption Party (led by a political outsider with substantial public visibility) ran candidates in the 2013 presidential election. Their officially recorded votes were more than the votes recorded for the candidate for the National Party that had regained power in the 2009 election. Because Honduras does not require any specific level of votes to win an election, the leading candidate from the National Party, with his minority of votes, was installed as president in 2014.

Of course, that doesn't take into account the widespread suppression of election workers, and the ensuing doubts about the validity of even the slim electoral victory the National Party gained. Since the installation of the current president, more and more details have come out about electoral corruption, and disclosures are rumored to involve family members of the sitting president.

Libre and the Anti-corruption party did not gain a majority of seats in the Honduran Congress in 2013, and the fourth major group, the Liberal Party, refused to join them in opposition.

So the National Party president has been able to pursue his aims for the last four years. While some reported decline in murder rates gets positive attention from international governments, on the ground, the level of violence in the cities is still high, and targeting of activists for the environment and human rights is just as much of a problem.

One of the most significant moves made by the current ruling party is the second feature that makes this year's election more significant than any since the current Honduran constitution was ratified, less than forty years ago. That was gaining the approval of the Honduran Supreme Court for presidential election. The Honduran Supreme Court justices are selected by the Congress, where the current president was previously head of Congress. The court whose composition he influenced then over-turned that part of the constitution.

So in this election, the sitting president is his party's candidate for election, with the ban on re-election removed, despite reports that almost two-thirds of the population oppose re-election.

Libre and the Anti-corruption Party have made a pact for the current presidential election, supporting a single candidate under the banner of alliance, Alianza. This candidate, the head of the Anti-corruption party, Salvador Nasralla, is also supported by one of the small parties that fill out the Honduran political landscape, PINU.

Unlike in the last election, when we were able to track multiple polls published in Honduras, we have little official polling data to draw on. The Honduran press landscape has changed: Tiempo, the one source we could count on for news that was not distorted to support the party in power, exists only as a shadow of its former self following the politically motivated prosecution of the family that owned it.

The last polling data published in Honduras in September, before a legally-mandated quiet period when no polls can be published, was sharply contested by the other parties. It reported the incumbent leading, again without a majority, drawing 37% of the vote. While there are more recent reports in newspapers in Mexico citing other polling companies, we have no information that would cause us to trust the polls they report. One was working for the National Party itself. The second came nowhere close to accuracy in the last election. None of the polls we have been able to review were published with sufficient information about methodology or margin of error, and we couldn't track any single poll over time as we did previously.

Private polling from Honduras that we have seen says that the National Party candidate is running behind the Alianza. So might common sense: Honduras has not been united by his presidency, trust in public institutions is no higher, the average Honduran is not materially better off, the country's GDP per capita has declined. The current president doesn't even have the support of all his party, many of whom continue to believe that the bar on re-election should be observed, even if it is legally not required.

And of course, the National Party candidate didn't actually gain the most votes last time. As long as the Libre voters and PINU voters from last time join the Anti-corruption voters, we would expect a plurality of votes for the Alianza. The role of spoiler will continue to be played by the remnants of the Liberal party, which could drain off enough of the voters opposed to re-election, ironically, to ensure a National Party victory. But we don't see it as a clear outcome, nor do Hondurans with whom we are in contact.

Which is why people in Honduras are convinced that there will be electoral manipulation. There are disinformation campaigns, like one this week claiming "Venezuelans" have entered the country to disrupt the election.

Venezuelans play the role of scary outsiders to raise echoes of ALBA, repudiated after the coup, to try to tar the Alianza with the ties of the Zelaya administration. The rumors that armed Venezuelans will commit violence also form a convenient pre-made cover story for any violence that might happen.

We also know of campaign workers for the Alianza who have been killed, as happened in the last election, when poll watchers for the opposition parties were not able to serve in all electoral venues.

But the main route to stealing this election that all Honduran observers expect is the same thing that occurred last time: manipulating the count of the votes at the level of the local ballot box. Stuffing of the ballot boxes was suspected last election from over-votes, when more people are reported to vote than are supposed to be registered. Intimidation of ballot watchers aided this, and there were notable correlations between over-voting and control of districts by drug families who supported the National Party.

The Alianza also suspects the possibility that the vote counts will be manipulated in some way at the level of the National Electoral Tribunal. The fear exists that software will somehow be open to corruption. One software vendor, owned by a National Party activist, was eliminated, but the lack of trust in the highest electoral authorities is palpable.

Sunday will mark a major turn in Honduran history. Either we will see the first re-election of a sitting president since the long dictatorship of Tiburcio Carías Andino ended in 1949; or we will see the election of the first president from a new party, formed in opposition to the political hegemony enjoyed by the Liberal and National Parties for most of the twentieth century, in between military dictatorships.

There will be international observers. How much they will see, how much they can watch, is questionable. The Alianza intends to have poll watchers at every electoral mesa, the local voting venues where votes are counted, the most likely place for false tallies to be introduced.

And we will be watching as well.

National Party intransigence blocks 4th vote on Honduran Supreme Court

The National Party has lost 4 votes to elect its slate of proposed candidates for the Honduran Supreme Court, and yet, proposes to do a fifth vote today on the same slate of candidates.  At least for the moment, the two party system in Honduras is finally breaking down, and neither the Liberal, nor the National Party's are adapting to the existence of an opposition.

The National Party will try for a fifth time today to force the Honduran Congress to elect its slate of 7 candidates to the Supreme Court.  It negotiated this slate with its rival Liberal Party, but there's ample evidence in the vote tallies that Liberal Party members are defecting and not voting for the entire slate, especially if you believe that the bribed candidates from our previous post voted for the official slate of candidates. 

Last night in the fourth round of voting,  5 candidates hit 85 votes, one shy of the number of votes needed to elect the candidate to the court.   Two received 84 votes.  One received 83 votes.  So its clear that its not just the Libre, PAC, and PINU members holding up the election of justices, as the Congressional leadership wants us to believe. At least two of the people counting the votes last night:  Eduardo Coto and Jenny Murillo, have been named as having received bribes.

PAC has offered to negotiate a solution, but the National Party leadership continues to try and impose its will, with the help of the Liberal Party. At stake is which party, Liberal or National, controls the Supreme Court.  All of the current nominees are members of either the National or Liberal Parties.  None are members of PAC or Libre or PINU.  PAC is making the argument that justices should be selected not based on party affiliation, but rather on which would be best for the country.  So far the National Party doesn't agree.

Suborning the Honduran Congress

With the next round of voting to be held Tuesday, Radio Globo's David Romero Ellner has brought to light evidence of an elaborate con that funnels funds from the government to a trade association, and there to Congress members from opposition parties allegedly to vote for National Party Projects, including for their slate of candidates for the Supreme Court.

Reporter David Romero Ellner of Radio Globo is no stranger to conflict.  He was almost the first to publicize the IHSS scandal and to report its links back to the National Party and the Juan Orlando Hernandez election campaign.  He's currently awaiting sentencing having been found guilty of slandering a prominent National Party member in a trial conducted by the Supreme Court.

The con begins with a lawyer, supposedly named José Napoleón Panchamé.  He can't be found.  He supposedly contracted with the Associacion Nacional de Productores e Industriales de Barrios y Colonias de Honduras to fund projects Panchamé tells them to.  Romero has a copy of the contract they signed.  Romero alleges the funds come from the Tasa de Seguridad, the Oficina de Obras Sociales, and the 3 percent ISV tax.  The funding was actually used to pay Congress members from mostly opposition parties to support National Party projects.  In December alone, the Association issued 20 million lempiras ($952,000) in checks to Congress members.  However, there is also a check for 700,00 lempiras ($33,333) to Panchamé.

The news first broke last Wednesday (February 2) when Romero told Radio Globo listeners that Congressman Agusto Cruz Asensio of the Partido Demócrata Christiano (DC) and Dennis Sanchez of the Partido Libertad y Refundación (Libre) received checks drawn on the Banco DAVIVIENDA from the account of the Asociacion Nacional de Productores, a group Romero identifies as a front organization that channels funds from the National Party.  Cruz Asensio's check was for 99,800 lempiras ($4752) while Sanchez received 224,550 lempiras ($10,692).  Each received two sequentially numbered checks from the Association.

Cruz Asensio claims the checks are for services he gave to the Association, but will not explain what those services were.  Dennis Sanchez said the funds were a contribution to a fund for a water project for the community of Guacamaya, Santa Barbara, near Gualala, where he was born.

Nor are these the only two Congress members Romero implicates.  Today he named a further suite of Congress members, all originally members of Libre:  Héctor Padilla, Eduardo Coto, and Audelia Rodriguez.  Padilla received two checks on December 22 of 2015 which Romero alleges were for him to vote to amend the Honduran constitution to include the military police as a constitutionally defined part of the Honduran Armed Forces.  Padilla left Libre after that vote to join the Democrata Cristiana party.  Audelia Rodriguez received two checks, also on December 22, 2015 from the same source totaling $11,405.  She left Libre in May, 2015 because "being poor she wasn't welcomed."  Rodriguez and Padilla are both now independents, while Coto is a Democrata Cristiana.

Romero says that between 16 December, 2015 and 23 January 2016, that bank account issued at least 23 checks, including one to every member of Libre that has left the party:  Eduardo Coto, Jenny Murillo, Omar Rodriguez, Mariano Alvarado, Tatiana Canales, and Audelia Rodgriguez.  At least one unnamed member of PAC also received a check.

Suborning the votes of Congress is of course an illegal, if not long standing, practice in Honduras.  The OAS's MACCIH will have a long way to go to even begin to disentangle the corruption that is the current government of Honduras.

Supreme Court Elections on Hold

With another round of voting for Supreme Court justices seemingly at hand, lets examine what is preventing the election of a new Supreme Court in Honduras.

A successful candidate needs 86 or more votes.  The National Party has 48 members in Congress.  The Liberal Party has 27 members.  Libre has 31 members. PAC has 13, PINU has 1, the UD has 1, the Christian Democrats have 2, and there is 1 independent.

The first round of voting elected 7 justices:  5 Liberals, 2 National Party affiliates, and 1 independent.  No one got the required 86 votes in Rounds 2, or 3.

The National Party has adopted the position that the Supreme Court must be partitioned by political party, and because it is the current ruling party, it should have the majority of members.  They want 8 justices.  There is historical precedent.  That's how the election of Supreme Court justices has worked since 1982.  They insist that a particular suite of 8 candidates (6 National Party members, and 2 Liberals) be elected in the next round.

The Liberal Party is allied with the National Party over the election of Supreme Court justices.  They want 7 justices to be affiliated with their party.  They are settling for 6 justices under their agreement with the National Party.  They have also asked that the Chief Justice be a Liberal, just as he is right now.

PAC and Libre have both advocated for electing the best suite of justices.  They differ, however, on the qualifications of the current pool of 45 nominees.  PAC identified 16 candidates it felt were qualified to be Supreme Court justices from the pool.  Libre rejects all of the current pool of 37 remaining candidates.  Instead Libre seeks to turn the conversation to legislative reforms, referenda, and plebiscites.

Last weekend, the leaders of these four parties meet with President Juan Orlando Hernandez to try and negotiate a solution, but all of them stuck with their position, and they left the meetings without coming to an agreement. 

Yesterday evening the Honduran Congress yet again failed to elect any justices in a third round of voting.  Libre party members largely abstained from voting or filed null ballots.  PAC did likewise, though at least one member of this party voted for 3 candidates of the suite put forward as the solution by the National Party.  PAC accused that Congress person of betraying the party.  During the counting of the votes, several members became upset and apparently punched each other.

Today's Congressional session did not include a vote on the Supreme Court nominations.  Instead it dealt with the newly declared national emergency because of the Zika virus which has hundreds of Hondurans ill in the Hospitals. 

The issue remains on hold while negotiations continue.

Third Round of Voting for Supreme Court Underway

Something historic is going on in the Honduran Congress.  Today they are trying for the third time to elect the remaining seven justices of the Supreme Court.  The first round of voting yielded eight elected justices, five affiliated with the Liberal Party, one without party affiliation, and two affiliated with the National Party.  Mauricio Oliva tried to convene Congress the next day to elect the other seven justices, but failed because PAC and Libre declined to participate in the election, so no candidate could get 86 votes.

Over the weekend, all of the parties met to try and reach some kind of accommodation, but both the National and Liberal Parties are sticking with a partitioning of court membership allocated to only those two parties, where party affiliation is more important that the candidate's qualifications or independence.  This is the status quo.  This is how these two parties have conducted the Supreme Court appointments since 1982 when the Honduran constitution was enacted.  However, at least as of last Friday both PAC and Libre were rejecting the party quota system being argued by the two older parties.  Officially as of this morning there was no acknowledged agreement, though the Honduran press reported that PAC was considering a partitioning of the Supreme Court that included candidates they could support.  There are no PAC or Libre candidates in the pool of 37 from which the selection must be made, because the Nominating committee eliminated them and divided the slate of nominations between the National and Liberal party affiliated candidates.

In the voting today, Libre issued a communique in which it rejected the negotiations for the partitioning of the Supreme Court by party, and instead proposed a series of referenda and plebiscites, as well as approval of a suite of laws.  If Libre is able to maintain party discipline, its Congressional bench will cast no votes today.

Unlike Libre which officially adopted the position of not voting for any of the candidates, PAC had identified a slate of 16 candidates it considered qualified, of which one was elected in the first round of voting.  National Party operatives felt there was still a possibility of an agreement with PAC over a partitioning of the remaining justices, but officially, PAC said nothing publicly.

The voting is underway as I write this.

"Central American Spring"?

The Economist published an article  that provocatively asks in the headline if the 12 weeks of torchlight marches in Honduras is "A Central American Spring".

The paper quickly repudiates that idea in the body of the article. The Arab Spring was rapid and violent.  Rather than a violent uprising, the Economist quotes Central American Business Intelligence as expecting slow, gradual change in Central America.

Slow, gradual change is not what the people protesting want: they are asking for the current president to resign.

For 14 weeks in Honduras the indignados, those upset with corruption and impunity in Honduras, have taken to the streets in all the major cities, carrying bamboo torches (not unlike the patio torches one can buy here in the US), seeking a Honduran International Commission against Impunity (CICIH in Spanish) and the removal of Juan Orlando Hernandez. 

While there are no official crowd estimates, the marches clearly mobilize tens of thousands of people in both Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula alone. Also remarkable is the range of cities and towns where marches are taking place. They are substantial and peaceful.

In an attempt to defuse the crowds, Hernandez has called for facilitators and mediators from the Organization of American States and the UN to oversee what he calls "dialogue".  This is in lieu of asking for a CICIH, which would be appointed by the UN to independently investigate corruption and impunity in Honduras. 

Hernandez alleges his government's efforts to reform the government are sufficient if people just give the institutions a chance to operate.

But the institutions he wants the Honduran people to trust aren't operating.

A snail's pace would be fast compared to the Public Prosecutor's office, for example. 

A trail of checks document the movement of money from the Instituto Hondureño de Seguridad Social (IHSS) through at least three front companies in Honduras into the National Party bank accounts including those of the Hernandez Presidential Campaign. When journalists made this public in May, they used copies of the checks from the actual prosecutorial case file shared with them.  Despite this financial trail, no one has been charged, and no one even questioned, about these checks, checks that implicate the leadership of the National Party in corruption. 

There are actually indications that the Assistant Public Prosecutor, Rigoberto Cuellar, may himself be linked to an influence-pedaling scandal, but he is not as yet the target of any investigation.

This is the face of impunity in Honduras. It is why the indignados are marching. And they are marching for a specific remedy that exists in action in their neighbor to the north, Guatemala.

In Guatemala, people are also marching weekly. Here, there is already an International Commission against Corruption and Impunity (CICIG in Spanish), sponsored by the UN at Guatemala's request, and funded by voluntary contributions from a number of different countries. 

This unit, as noted in the Economist article, has been instrumental in uncovering and prosecuting corruption in the Guatemalan governments past and present. The transparency of these investigations served to mobilize the populace of Guatemala tired of corruption. 

The CICIG has in fact, sought to bring charges against the President and Vice President of Guatemala for corruption. Over 100,000 people gathered last week in central Guatemala City to call for the President to resign. Their demands have now been endorsed by the country's Roman Catholic bishops.

In Honduras, at least for now, President Hernandez is not only rejecting the idea of an independent CICIH, he's actively working to discredit the idea through the public pronouncements of his advisor Ebal Diaz, who has made up "facts" to discredit the CICIG.  Officially the National Party Congressional delegation is against the proposal as well.  Mauricio Oliva, President of Congress, called it "foreign intervention".

Almost every other political party in Honduras supports the call for the CICIH. LIBRE supports it; the AntitCorruption Party (PAC) does too. 

The Liberal Party recently held a "unification" meeting to align its congressional delegation with the thinking of its directorate. The idea of a CICIH was a key source of difference. The Liberals in Congress recently voted against legislation that would have put the call for a CICIH to a public referendum, legislation sponsored by LIBRE.  At the time they said they voted against it because they thought it would delay prosecution, particularly of former Zelaya government officials. The directorate of the Liberal Party was in favor of a referendum, making the defection of its Congressional delegation a major issue. In the unification meeting, the party members agreed to vote for a CICIH if it comes up again.  But it is unclear that the Congressional leadership will allow another vote.

Last Wednesday, the indignados held a national strike, calling for businesses to shut down and main traffic arteries in the country to be blocked. Roads were blocked for a time until the police broke up the protests, and some businesses shut down, but not most. 

Last Friday's march ended at the Consejo Hondureño de Empresa Privada (COHEP) building where marchers met with business leaders. Whether this will result in businessmen supporting the marchers' goals is an open question, but the fact that talks were entertained is significant. COHEP  supports the government; any change in support here would likely destabilize it.

Slow change indeed.

Protests, Claims of Conspiracy Against Juan Orlando Hernández

Juan Orlando Hernández, elected President of Honduras in November 2013 with about 37% of the popular vote, has ruled as if he had an electoral mandate.

For the last couple of weeks, however, things have been a little rougher in JOH's Honduras. Rough enough that English language media have taken notice.  

The International Business Times covered the story with a headline "Juan Orlando Hernandez Resignation Scandal", summarizing the issues concisely:

Hondurans demanded the resignation of President Juan Orlando Hernandez Wednesday during demonstrations across the violence plagued capital city of Tegucigalpa. Protesters outside the National Congress questioned Hernandez's involvement in a social security scam involving some of the nation's most influential businesspeople and politicians...

The Honduran Institute of Social Security funding scam allegedly involved officials transferring large sums of money from the nation's federal coffers to the ruling National Party during the 2013 presidential elections.

The Tico Times adds that the Partido Nacional is accused

of having accepted approximately $90 million from IHSS to finance Hernández’s campaign in 2013, a cut of more than $300 million in diverted funds from the IHSS.

The investigation of corruption at the IHSS is ongoing. What has been alleged, citing the Consejo Nacional Anticorrupción, is that funds were paid to false-front businesses that provided no services. Some of these businesses then wrote checks to the central committee of the Partido Nacional, which used the proceeds to fund the presidential campaign, according to Salvador Nasralla, leader of the Partido Anti-Corrupción.

Consejo Nacional Anticorrupción (CNA

Leer más en: http://www.elheraldo.hn/pais/710497-214/entre-320-personas-se-repartieronel-multimillonario-desfalco-al-ihss
Síganos en: www.facebook.com/diarioelheraldo y @diarioelheraldo en Twitter

The allegation that a large part of the money diverted financed Hernández' presidential campaign has fueled demands that he step down.

Which leads to the strangest part of this story: the pushback, which has tried to recast this all as plotting to undermine the president, even to carry out a military coup.

As the IHSS scandal was unfolding Marvin Ponce, a former member of the Honduran Congress, and current advisor to the president, claimed that there was a "conspiracy" to spread rumors about JOH involving the US government:

I am glimpsing a dangerous thing. There is a high profile TV company in the country that has had meetings in the Department of State and with the Department of Justice. They have initiated a very strong campaign against the president. What we are seeing is that there is a campaign through two routes, David Romero [a prominent Honduran broadcaster] with accusations, and on the other side a strong strategy by other powerful sectors of the country to force him to yield and to avoid his seeking re-election."

Ponce's claims of US involvement are, to be charitable, questionable. They would require us to credit that preventing presidential re-election (recently authorized by the Honduran Supreme Court) is more important to US foreign policy than supporting a government doing precisely what the US calls for in security, immigration, and economic policy.

But even these claims do not hold a candle to other rumors about supposed plotting against JOH.

These came from Hugo Maldonado, the current head of Honduras' Human Rights Commission, who claimed that political opponents of the Honduran president were conspiring to remove him in a coup d'etat.

The ex-head of the Honduran Armed Forces, Romeo Vasquez Velasquez-- who actually was responsible for the execution of the 2009 Honduran coup-- denied the charge vigorously, and colorfully:

He shouldn't go making things up, unless my wife and I alone are going to carry out a coup d'Etat. I'm not in the Armed Forces-- who am I supposed to commit a coup with?

That wasn't the only reporting that waded into dubious waters.

The Honduran paper La Tribuna published an article-- really more like a political speech by a very enthusiastic supporter of the Partido Nacional-- on May 14. In between boasting about the strength of the PN and of JOH, it sketches out a supposed plot fueled by methamphetamine use, backdated to March, in which political advisors to José Manuel Zelaya supposedly outlined a campaign to undermine Hernández, amazingly, through public protests in May about corruption.

The conspiracy allegedly involved David Romero, and Salvador Nasralla of the Partido Anti-Corrupción as well, thus tidily blackening the reputations of all three.

The one thing in this lurid story that has some truth to it is that both PAC and LIBRE are calling for JOH to resign due to the IHSS scandal.

Meanwhile, the Tico Times estimated 5000 people took part in the latest march in Tegucigalpa, a night-time torchlit rally that was supported by both LIBRE and the Partido Anti-Corrupción.

Investigations of the IHSS continue; and for his part, JOH is trying to stay above the fray, while his party launches counter-accusations, smearing opponents and suing Salvador Nasralla for "defamation".

Permanent Parallel Police Forces?

Juan Orlando Hernandez would like to make the Policía Militar de Orden Público (PMOP) a permanent part of Honduras by modifying the Honduran constitution.  He seems to be having problems convincing anyone outside of his party that this is either necessary or a good idea.

In August, 2013 the Honduran Congress, led at that time by Juan Orlando Hernandez, passed a bill (decreto 168-2013) creating the PMOP as an added branch of the Honduran armed forces.  Their mission, as defined, is essentially the same as the National Police.   Rather than being Military Police, that is a police unit located in the military, policing military bases, they are a Militarized Police, soldiers policing the civilian population of Honduras.  The argument urging their creation was that they were needed because one could not have confidence in the National Police because so many of them were linked to organized crime or corrupt in other ways.  At the time the PMOP were created, it was going to take 5 years to review and vet the 12,000 National Police officers. 

Juan Orlando Hernandez now wants to make them permanent, called for from within the constitution, the same way the constitution mandates the existence of the Honduran Armed Forces.  This would make it harder for future legislators to dissolve the PMOP, because a constitutional amendment would require a 2/3 vote of Congress two years in a row.  Hernandez stated:

"For me its important that the Militarized Police be permanent, because today I am the President, but if tomorrow someone else comes along and for ideological reasons dissolves the Militarized Police, we will fall back into the pothole that we all suffered; the Honduran people are not mistaken, if you ask the people who know the subject of security, in which they live all their days, they will tell you of the enormous support that the Militarized Police have."

Hernandez has portrayed opposition to this as either being unmotivated, or linked to support for the drug traffickers.  But Hernandez faces a lot of opposition on this issue.

There's never been a unified opposition in Honduras, especially not since the 2009 coup, but on this issue the political parties not in power, PAC, Libre, PINU, and the Liberals, have all stated their opposition to this move.  Its not that they're against the PMOP, they all have emphasized, its that they are against there existing two parallel police forces in Honduras with the same mission.  Mauricio Villeda, who was the Liberal Party's Presidential candidate in the last election, argues that the PMOP does not need to be added to the Honduran constitution, that as part of the Military it already has all the status it needs.  Villeda pointed out that creating a mandate for the PMOP within the constitution would be like creating a second armed forces, equal to the existing armed forces.  He suggested that this move has more to do with Hernandez wanting to continue in power after his term runs out.

Manuel Zelaya (@manuelzr), leader of Libre, responded on Twitter:

"We are not opposed to the PMOP; yes to them having a parallel mission"

Salvador Nasralla, leader of PAC responded on his TV program saying:

"The Armed Forces are already in the constitution which clearly establishes their obligations, PAC is not against the Militarized Police who should work until the problem of insecurity in this country is resolved.  We are against including [the PMOP] in the constitution and that they convert into a branch loyal to the President to defend him in his eager desire to continue in power clearly expressed in all the media."

The opposition has said it would welcome Hernandez putting this measure to a public referendum, as Hernandez said he might do if Congress fails to act.

The National Party is completely behind Hernandez, but lacks sufficient members in Congress to make this happen without some participation by those in other parties. Oscar Alvarez, head of the National Party caucus in Congress, claimed on Sunday that they had 80 solid votes for the change.  Since there are only 76 National Party members in Congress, that must mean he's managed to convince 4 members of the opposition to vote with them.  However, this bill needs 86 votes to pass to become law.

The current Congress has until January 24, when their session ends, to act.

Denial, Anger, and Bargaining: The Liberal Party of Honduras and the Stages of Grief

The Kubler-Ross model of grief has five stages:  denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.  The Liberal Party in Honduras is somewhere between denial and anger after the November 24, 2013 elections. It seems poised to fragment more as it attempts to come to terms with its losses-- of party members, and of the offices of president and head of congress.

Let's start with denial. The Liberal Party wants to blame LIBRE (and to a lesser extent PAC) for all of the problems that beset Honduran society.  This despite the fact that the National Party has ruled Honduras for the last four years, and the Liberal Party ruled it for seven months after the coup of 2009, in which Liberal party members illegally removed from office the last Liberal Party president.

Which brings us to anger. The 2009 coup ripped apart the Liberal Party. A particularly conservative part of the party took control. The more liberal members of the party largely abandoned it and went on to form the Frente and LIBRE. As the election results from November 2013 show, about half of the supporting electorate left it as well. That has the remaining Liberal Party angry at others who it blames for its diminished position in Honduran politics.

If Kubler-Ross is right, the party needs to move on, and we can expect to see bargaining and depression before they finally reach acceptance.

Bargaining does seem to be the order of the day.

Since 2009 the Consejo Central Ejecutivo del Partido Liberal (CCEPL), which runs the party, has been in conservative hands, with Elvin Santos Lozano, and more recently Mauricio Villeda Bermudez, serving as President of the Executive council.

The Party leadership has not delivered a consistent message to its newly elected Congressional delegation about what it should be doing vis-a-vis the organization of the upcoming session of Congress.

Mauricio Villeda, the losing presidential candidate for the party, told congress members to wait and consult with the people, represented by the municipal mayors who were also elected in November. The municipal mayors have now spoken: they told the Congressional delegation to negotiate with the National Party for a Liberal president of Congress, in return for acting as allies (which would give back to the National Party the voting majority, but not the ability they have had to amend the constitution).

Today, another conservative member of the Party, Benjamin Bogran, who was its coordinator for the past election and is Secretary of the party, advised the party members in Congress to make no alliances, except with the people of Honduras.

Rumors have been flying suggesting that some Liberal Party Congressmen are following the mayor's wishes and talking with the National Party leadership about maybe having a Liberal Party president of Congress in exchange for an alliance between the two parties.

Other factions in the party, such as that represented by Yani Rosenthal, current head of its Congressional delegation, see that as death for the party.

However, the conservative faction that currently controls the Liberal Party blames LIBRE and PAC for all their problems, and sees this as a case of better the devil you know than the devil you don't know.  Bogran said that he could not support an alliance with LIBRE or PAC because "the two of them were conspiring to destroy the Liberal Party".

That's strong, and clearly angry language, but it is also misplaced anger. It is the current leadership of the Liberal Party with its swing to the right of the political spectrum that is responsible for its current loss of significance, but they cannot see it.  They're in denial.

As it struggles to stay significant, and remain a viable party that can attract voters, the best political strategy for the Liberal Party would probably be to not form any alliance, denying both the National Party, and the opposition block formed by LIBRE and PAC the required majority to pass legislation. That would allow the Liberal Party to effectively be the swing vote in policies from all sides.

Bogran seems to be suggesting that something like this actually is the leadership's position when he instructed the Congressional delegation to make no alliances except to do what is best for the Honduran people.  The party seems to be struggling to control its Congressional delegation, with Bogran's words an attempt to reign them back in and under party control.

Will it work?

It hasn't so far.  Almost half the Liberal Party delegation reportedly has had some kind of talks with Juan Orlando Hernández and the National Party directorate about leadership positions for Liberals in Congress.

Villeda seems to have lost control of the directorate of the Party. Vos El Soberano reports that Carlos Flores Facussé (ex-president, owner of La Tribuna)  has taken control of the party behind the scenes, comparing it to the coup Flores Facussé's father staged against Villeda Bermudez's father in 1963.  Reportedly, Flores Faccussé wants the party to be a viable platform from which to launch his daughter on a future presidential campaign. Villeda Bermudez has remained silent, and has been out of the country since before the New Year.

Congress meets to organize on Tuesday, January 21. The new Congress will be sworn in and elect a provisional directorate. That provisional directorate then will name the permanent directorship of Congress, those who will run the body for the next two years.  This must be done by Saturday, January 25.

It should be an interesting week.

Congressional Maneuvers

On the same day on which the National Party Congressional delegation announced it will let Juan Orlando Hernandez choose its Congressional leadership, the Congressional delegations of the Anti-Corruption Party, LIBRE, and PINU signed an accord to work together on certain projects in Congress.

Wilmer Velasquez, a National Party Member elected to Congress in November, told the Honduran press that the National Party Congressional Delegation had met and decided to let Juan Orlando Hernandez select its candidates for Congressional leadership. 

This is supposed to be a sign of unity, though he admitted there were several names being floated for president of Congress.  Velasquez told the press that Hernandez was in the best position to choose who was best for Honduras. 

Any nominees will still have to gain a majority of the votes of all Congress members.

At the same time, the Congressional delegations of the Partido Anticorrupción  (PAC), Libertad y Refundacion (LIBRE), and Partido Innovación y Unidad (PINU) came to a meeting organized by PAC's presidential candidate, Salvador Nasralla, and agreed to work together to achieve certain goals.  The full pact can be read here.

Election law changes are one of these goals. The allied parties will seek to mandate electronic voting to disrupt the traditional forms of election fraud. 

Also among the agreed-upon goals:

• a rollback of the tax package the current Congress just put into effect
• try to regulate the salaries of government employees 
• work to democratize the Congressional rules and reform the election law
• an overhaul the anti-corruption law

This does not mean they will always be working as a bloc with a combined roster of 51 members of Congress, but that they will work together on the specific issues agreed upon.  

Notably missing from either announcement was the Liberal Party, which declined to participate in the PAC sponsored meeting. 

Yani Rosenthal, current head of the Liberal Party Congressional Delegation (until January 20) said the party was between a rock and a hard place.  He faulted internal party decisions for the Liberal Party not having a clear position on the new Congressional leadership, citing Mauricio Villeda's call ordering Liberal Party Congressional Delegates not to participate in Congressional leadership discussions. 

Villeda's order came after twelve party members had held conversations with Juan Orlando Hernandez on the topic.  Rosenthal said that there were problems for the party no matter what it does.  If they ally with the National Party in Congress, for many that would be a death knell for the party.  An alliance that includes LIBRE would mean joining with a party that damaged the Liberal Party.  Another possibility would be to not ally with any party, but according to Rosenthal that, like all the other possibilities, would mean rejecting some of the current party values in order to maintain viability as a political party. 

Separately, Manuel Zelaya Rosales announced he was stepping down as coordinator of LIBRE as part of the separation of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia and LIBRE.  He has occupied this office since July 2010.  Zelaya will remain part of the Frente, and is part of LIBRE's new Congressional Delegation.

All of these moves are crystallizing the new political landscape in Honduras, against a background of furious legislative action by the current, National-party dominated, lame-duck congress, intended to give Juan Orlando Hernández as much as possible before he faces a Congress that will not automatically do what he wants.

Detecting Voting Fraud in Honduras: El Paraíso, Copan

Since the Honduran election ended, we have busy here: we captured the Tribunal Supremo Electoral's election results, and placed them, along with the Voto Social vote count, in a database.

That means we are in a position to analyze apparent voting pattern across the country. And there are some glaring anomalies in the voting. 

None of these is more apparent than the case of voting in El Paraíso, Copan, where the voter turnout, according to the TSE numbers, was 85%. That would be exceptional participation, compared to previous Honduran elections, and is far above the average levels of participation in this election.

El Paraíso is an interesting place. Its Mayor, Alexander Ardon, is widely considered to be a member of the Sinaloa cartel in Honduras. In a report on organized crime in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, the Wilson Center reported:

Honduran police intelligence says that El Paraíso, Copan Mayor Alexander Ardon works with the Sinaloa Cartel.  Ardon has built a town hall that resembles the White House, complete with a heliport on the roof, and travels with 40 heavily armed bodyguards.  Cameras monitor the roads leading in and out of town, intelligence services say. And there are reports that the Mayor often closes the city to outsiders for big parties that include norteño music groups flown in from Mexico.

One correction: it's not just norteño music: it's narcocorridos that characterize the bands flown in to El Paraíso.

Voting was definitely distorted in El Paraíso on November 24th. 

One election monitoring group reported that 50 election workers from out of town staying in a hotel were locked in the night before the election, surrounded by over 100 armed men who threatened to shoot them if they tried to leave the hotel and assume their poll duties.  Another such group got out of the hotel, but were stopped along the way by armed men, who slashed their tires and told them if they continued onward, they'd be killed.  The group in the hotel was freed late in the day on Nov. 24 by Officer Erazo Mejia of the police, but were later locked up in another place and their election credentials stolen.

Adrienne Pine has an account from one of these poll workers whose tires were slashed.  The group waited until 4:40 AM for police to come and help them obtain new tires, then drove on to their polling places.  This group were representatives of LIBRE.  They were met at the polling place by a group of armed men who controlled the location, not the military, who they report just stood around.  The LIBRE group was told it was not welcome there.  Shortly thereafter there was an altercation between the local police and the armed group, which kicked out the police, then confiscated the identity cards and election credentials of all the LIBRE workers, before kicking them out.  The armed group tried to get the LIBRE representatives to sign the ballot tally forms, at gunpoint, but at least some still refused, and all were thrown out of the polling place.  At the doorway to the polling place they saw individuals questioning voters before they entered, and they report that if the prospective voters were not voting for Juan Orlando Hernández, they were not permitted in to vote.

LIBRE formally asked the TSE to invalidate the tally sheets from those precincts, but the TSE counted them.  You can see one such acta here. 

Here's how to read it.  The polling station was issued 320 ballots.  That means that there are 304 citizens eligible to vote there, plus up to 16 party representatives (which adds up to 320 ballots).  In the vote count, they reported 308 valid votes, plus 16 nullified ballots, which is 324 ballots, four more than they were issued or should have needed.

Not only did the TSE count this acta, signed by 4 poll workers and two alternates (none of them LIBRE members): it ignored the over-vote. 

This means that somehow, in the TSE's vote counting software, the check for more people voting than ballots issued either isn't implemented properly, isn't implemented at all, or someone at the TSE ignored the system to OK this acta. 

Given the OAS report of its audit of the vote counting software, it is not unlikely that an over-vote test either wasn't implemented, or didn't work. 

This tally sheet was not even subject to special scrutiny (escrutinio especial), or it would have been issued a new, less informative vote count sheet, looking like the one found here for acta 314. 

Another example from the same region is MER 2670.  They were issued 377 ballots to cover the 361 eligible votes plus 16 party representatives.  They report the total ballots cast as 348. But the individual candidate's votes, plus blank and null votes, add up to 404!  This would mean they had a voter turnout of 112%!

MER 2687 should have qualified for special scrutiny as well.  Actas with similar mistakes were scrutinized and replaced elsewhere, but not in El Paraíso for some reason.  The acta for MER 2687 reports 320 ballots issued for its 304 eligible votes plus up to sixteen party representatives.  Six people signed the acta and on the line where they report how many people voted, they reported six. This acta, in reality, reports on 304 votes, including blank and null votes. Six of those votes were presumably by poll workers, so the effective turnout is 98%.

The TSE accepted "6" as the count of voters who voted and used it in counting how many citizens voted, which means the numbers it reports for this MER are false.  Apparently the software does not check that the number of votes is equal to the number of people who voted, a required sanity check for any such vote counting system.

MER 2691 also shows anomalies. They were issued 222 ballots for 206 eligible voters plus up to 16 poll workers.  In total, 210 votes were reported cast, and six of those were by poll workers.  That means that only 2 of the precinct's eligible voters supposedly didn't vote. That would be extraordinary.

MER 2693 shows the same issue.  They were issued 179 ballots for 163 eligible voters plus up to 16 poll workers.  They report 166 votes, and only 5 poll workers voted, meaning that only 2 of their eligible voters didn't vote.  The same can be said about MERs 2711, 2712, and 2713.

Voter turnouts in the 80-100% range should be suspect.

No poll watchers reported such extremely high turnouts anywhere in Honduras.

But in the 47 MER that comprise El Paraíso, 51% (n=24) reported voter turnout above 90%.

Only 36.1% (n=17) MER in El Paraíso reported a voter turnout of less than 85%.  If we set the threshold lower, to 75%-- still a great turnout level for Honduras-- then only 27% (n = 13) had voter turnouts less than 75%.

These are extraordinary levels of voter participation.

Extraordinary-- and suspect under any circumstances. But not troubling to the TSE in Honduras.

Where the Recount Process Stands

Readers of English language media may have seen stories quoting a  press release from the Tribunal Supremo Electoral claiming that LIBRE failed to follow through yesterday on an agreement about starting the review of the Actas in the disputed presidential election.

But just reporting the TSE's press release is neither the whole story, nor is it accurate.

You are unlikely to have seen any reporting on LIBRE's response to the TSE press release, which is that David Matamoros, head of the TSE, was mistaken when he said the process of recounting the votes would begin yesterday, because there has been no agreement as to the procedures to be used for the process.

According to Matamoros, the process of rescanning the original tally sheets (Actas) to compare them with the scanned images in the TSE election counting system and contrast them with the certified versions of the Actas under LIBRE party control was supposed to begin yesterday. 

But in this procedure, there's no mechanism for a recount or handling suspected errors, only comparing versions of the Actas.  Nor was there a procedure for handling the 2000+ actas for which there are no scanned images, but for which the TSE has recorded vote counts.

Oscar Rivera, the elections overseer for LIBRE, told Proceso Digital that LIBRE indeed met with the TSE on Tuesday to arrange for the recount.  The TSE representatives presented a proposal for the way to proceed with the recount, but said if LIBRE was not in agreement, for them to propose an alternative. 

Rivera said

We received the proposal and the same night (Tuesday evening) we gave a formal reply to the Tribunal in which we asked for other mechanisms to assure the Honduran people that Honduran democracy would be respected and that the TSE was a serious [professional] organization, but with the reply that they gave us, they haven't convinced us.

Enrique Reina, campaign coordinator for Xiomara Castro, added

They haven't said what they will do when an Acta contains anomalies and we asked that if an Acta is inconsistent in some way, that they recount the votes [in that ballot box].

Oscar Rivera went on to note that there were other mechanisms that LIBRE could use in the election law to get the Actas validated.  He noted that they were awaiting a formal reply from the TSE magistrates that addressed their request of December 2, not the unilateral approach presented by the TSE in their press release.

So, for the moment, a recount is in a holding pattern while the TSE and LIBRE negotiate a process acceptable to both.

There's Going To Be a Recount (Of Sorts)

This morning Xiomara Castro and the LIBRE Party filed a formal set of complaints about the vote counting process and its lack of transparency, documenting errors and discrepancies in the formal counting of the tally sheets of the over 16,000 Mesas Electorales Receptoras (MER). 

LIBRE representative Ricki Moncada then read the document to the assembled press.

The Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) head David Matamoros agreed to a public recount of the Actas: not the votes themselves, just a recount of the votes as recorded on the tally sheets.

This, of course, is a compromise.  Ballot boxes will not be re-opened; individual votes will not be recounted. 

It's a vexing compromise because some of the problems that LIBRE alleges include alteration of the Actas themselves, which they say they can document. 

Remember that the election procedures gave the political parties a number of ways to get copies of the scanned/reported Acta at each step.  The party representative at every MER was supposed to be given a copy of the scanned Acta to take back to the party. Once the scanned Acta hit the TSE's computers, a copy was supposed to be sent to each party, and to the foreign vote auditors.

LIBRE says it has Actas sent to them by the TSE with scan dates of the early morning hours of the election day, bearing data that looks like the test data used to validate the system in earlier runs.  LIBRE also says they have copies of Actas that don't match the Acta image in the TSE central computing database, with different signatures and vote tallys.

Since the election itself on November 24, there has been a public recount of the scanned actas going on at this site:  http://conteo.votosocial.org.  In addition, there has been a Facebook-coordinated effort to identify Actas that contain problematic information or were mis-recorded in the TSE's vote counting system. 

Through these independent projects, more than 1600 problematic Actas had been identified by Saturday, November 30.

There is a further 2000+ Actas which the TSE has "sequestered" because of unspecified problems, for which vote counts, and images, have not been released.  Then there are a series of MERs for which vote totals are recorded, but no Acta image is posted.

I have been involved in the public recount of the Actas, entering the values from the scanned images of the Actas into a system that then recounts the votes once 3 separate reviews of the transcription agree that the data are correct. I also have reviewed Actas flagged on the Facebook page as problematic.  I can say first-hand that I found inconsistencies in more than 500 Actas I've reviewed over the last week. 

Some of the inconsistencies were transcription errors: the TSE had an enormous problem going from the hand-written numbers to recording those numbers in their MS-SQL database.  Over time, the TSE seemed to be correcting these transcription errors, though in a non-transparent fashion since they never acknowledged a single one of them.  Many still remained as of this past Saturday.

More troubling, though, is that the vote totals on far too many Actas added up to more than the number of people who were reported to have voted in that particular MER. 

Each Acta contains a field "Ciudadanos que votaron", which the TSE training manual documented as being calculated by taking the total number of ballots at the start of voting, and subtracting the number of blank ballots remaining at the end of voting.  The starting number of ballots and the calculated "Ciudadanos que votaron" are recorded on the official tally sheet.  The total number of votes being reported on the tally sheet should add up to the number of "Cuidadanos que votaron" but very frequently it does not. Based on my experience of trying to review the results, minor errors of 1, 2, and 3 over-votes are common, while over-votes of 50 or more happen less often. 

Reviewing and recounting the Actas alone will not correct these over-votes.  They merely become  enshrined in the result.

The public vote count shows results that differ from the TSE count, though not enough to change the outcome of the election.  But there are still 4.4% of the Actas which cannot be validated because the TSE released no image of them. This is enough to affect the margin between the two leading candidates, which might reflect the tighter race that most observers expected.

Then there's the issue of database security.  Anonymous Honduras has twice penetrated the vote counting center, and currently (late afternoon on December 2) has replaced the TSE's main web page with their own.  Their penetration made it clear they could have easily, and invisibly, changed the results in favor of any candidate they wanted to.  From details like their ability to show administrative tables, it seems that they had complete control over the database, and the TSE was apparently none the wiser.

So, there will be some sort of a recount of the Actas, with representatives of the political parties present to agree that the data entered into the system is what is on the Acta. The TSE has no idea what the procedures will be, or how they will do this, but something will happen. 

It's a step in the direction of transparency. But not the kind of recount that would put to rest, ultimately, the kinds of doubts that have been raised.

The New Political Landscape in Honduras

On Friday, La Prensa connected the dots on the new Congress, quoting statements from Xiomara Castro that suggest LIBRE party leadership is (while pursuing complaints of irregularities and inconsistencies in the official vote count) moving on to the next stage: functioning as a major opposition party in a new, multi-party political landscape.

Castro... pointed out that LIBRE has converted itself into an "important political force" by the number of congress-members that it gained in the unicameral Congress, made up of 128 members.

"We broke the chains of two-party rule, today we are located in the first place, today we have demonstrated that the people fought and will fight for the platform of LIBRE".

As previously noted, the Partido Nacional is projected to have 47 congress members; Libre will have 39; the Partido Liberal will have 26; and Salvador Nasralla's Partido Anticorrupción is expected to have 13 congress members, with the final three falling, one each, to the long-established smaller parties: PINU, the Christian Democrats, and the Partido de Unificación Democrática.

La Prensa adds a contrast with the existing congress that is worth quoting: 

In the present Congress, presided over and absolutely controlled by Hernández, the Partido Nacional has 71 diputados, the Partido Liberal 55, and the other three minority parties shared 12 seats, which had given total control to the conservative binomial that has governed this country for more than a century.

La Prensa is clearly anticipating less total control over the incoming government. That leads us to consider possibilities. LIBRE/PN coalitions seem unlikely (although some press reports earlier this week contained speculation about such an alliance).

We note with interest the opinion of Raúl Pineda Alvarado:

“The ideal is if there exists an agreement with all the political parties, but in any case the natural alliance that the nacionalistas could make is with the Partido Liberal”.

Pineda Alvarado is an ex-congress member for the Partido Nacional. So his comments give us insight into the pragmatic approach we might expect from within his party. His views are echoed by a re-elected Partido Nacional congress member, Antonio Rivera Callejas, who says that the PN could make alliances with the more "democratic" part of the Partido Liberal.

Rivera alludes to the marked division between the present day Liberal congess members, some of whom have stayed in line with the presidential candidate, Mauricio Villeda, and the other that has had more affinity with LIBRE. In the case of the first 26 virtually elected congress members, many of them re-elected, all belong to the first group, that is to say, they are "villedistas”.

Thus, we can expect an attempt to form a coalition of the two traditional parties on one side, with a possible 73 votes giving it a majority in Congress. Partido Nacional commentators add the three single representatives of the small parties, projecting 76 votes.

But that presumes that the entire Liberal party delegation does not see advantage in using its seats more flexibly, to advance its own political projects.

Earlier today, La Prensa suggested that the Partido Anti-Corrupción will form an alliance with LIBRE, in opposition to the two major parties. Despite ideological differences, both parties were mainly motivated by rejection of the existing power structure, which both characterized as fundamentally corrupt. Quoting PAC member (and projected congress member) Virgilio Padilla, La Prensa wrote

We believe that the opposition has to plan a block that can oppose the officialism of the government, and that can only be an alliance constructed with the Partido Liberal, Libre and PAC... We are disposed to establish an alliance that will defend Honduras, an alliance that represents the interests of Honduras, an alliance that will impede intervention in the Judicial Branch, because if the Partido Nacional is going to control all the powers of State, impunity is going to continue.

Salvador Nasralla, the presidential candidate, is said not to have ruled out any alliance, but La Prensa concludes alliance with the Partido Nacional is unlikely.

A three-way alliance would give LIBRE-PAC-Partido Liberal control of congress with 78 votes.

LIBRE and PAC alone would not be able to form a majority, with 52 votes. But they could make it much less simple for the Partido Nacional to pass its legislative agenda, even if they did not have formal support from the Partido Liberal.

Which more or less means that the husk of the Liberal Party, presided over by Mauricio Villeda, may have more power as a losing party than Villeda would have had if elected president with a minority of the national vote.

Proving Electoral Fraud Takes Time

We just had a twitter exchange with Alberto Arce, reporter for the AP. Here it is:

1. albertoarce ‏@alberarce 1h

   ¿por qué los periodistas tenemos esa mala manía de pedir pruebas de las cosas que la gente denuncia?.
2. Honduras Cult Politi ‏@HondurasCultPol 8m

   @alberarce why do proofs have to be provided faster than the TSE counts the vote? Maybe press could consider giving people time to respond

   
   
3. albertoarce ‏@alberarce 36s

   @HondurasCultPol I am not reporting fraud if those who claim it dont show the evidence. LIBRE said they won with 2.8% of the vote counted.

albertoarce ‏@alberarce 4m

@HondurasCultPol this is what I do. Report the findings of the intnal observers, the official results and wait.

As we added: we are fine with you waiting. Not so fine with the press setting the timeline for action.

Here's the issue for us: the TSE should be providing accurate counts. The international community is acting as if the TSE is providing accurate counts. So the approach is: prove these aren't the real numbers.

There are ongoing efforts to do just that. We are doing our own analysis, and have found that there are discrepancies with at least 500 actas so far.

Whether these errors result in a systematic undercount of LIBRE and/or PAC votes, or systematically add votes to the Partido Nacional, is not clear yet. Getting this kind of convincing, systematic documentation takes time.

We don't expect Alberto Arce, or any other reporter, to claim fraud. We just would hope that the international press could be a little more nuanced in reporting this story. If you are used to European or US electoral systems, it is hard to give credence to how things are done in Honduran elections-- to the essential fragility of the vote count system.

The TSE needs this long to tally part of the vote; demanding that the proof of inconsistencies be presented faster than the TSE counts can seem like taking sides to those frustrated by the process itself. And yes, that will make people in Honduras suspicious and critical of the press.