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.

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.

Yoro Mayors Lead Drug Gangs

Since 2014 three different Mayors in the Honduran department of Yoro have been identified as criminals participating in murder for hire and the drug trade in Honduras.

The Department of Yoro, readers will remember, is important to the Zetas.  It's where their drug planes historically have landed, both in clandestine airstrips and along established paved roads.

In July 2014, the Mayor of the town of Yoro, Arnulfo Urbina Soto, was arrested for drug trafficking, murder, rape, money laundering, and the possession of illegal weapons.  After a two year long investigation, the National Police alleged that Urbina Soto led a drug trafficking gang of 37 people that had been operating at least since 2009.  The National Police allege that Urbina Soto expropriated land in the small towns of Rio Nance and Rio Abajo, Locomapa, Yoro and converted them to landing strips for drug planes.

At the time of his arrest Urbina Soto, in addition to being Mayor, was a National Party operative, having coordinated the Presidential campaign of Juan Orlando Hernandez in 2013 in Yoro.  His daughter, Diana, is a member of the Honduran Congress.

Urbina Soto is not alone.

In August 2015 the Fuerza de Seguridad Interinstitutional (FUSINA) went to Jocon, Yoro, to arrest members of Los Solis, wanted for being hit men, murderers, and cattle thieves, among other crimes.  They captured five alleged members of Los Solis, but failed to capture the alleged leader, Mayor Santos Gabriel Elvir Arteaga.  Los Solis was established around 2000 by the Solis family, but when Elvir Arteaga became Mayor in 2009 he also gained control of Los Solis, according to Police, and only two Solis family members are thought to be still part of the group.  Mayor Santos Elvir is a member of the Liberal Party and still at large.

Thursday the Mayor of Sulaco, Yoro, was arrested on charges of homicide, murder, illicit association, and carrying illegal weapons.  Mayor José Adalid Gonzalez Morales is alleged to be the leader of Los Banegas, a group operating in and around Sulaco, Yoro, consisting of 30-40 members.  They are wanted for cattle theft, extortion, robbing buses and trucks, murder, and distribution of narcotics in Sulaco.  The investigation into Gonzales Morales began three months ago when police arrested seven members of the group.

Los Banegas are alleged to have killed eight people in and around Sulaco.  Gonzalez Morales is accused of killing peasant activist Secundino Orellana, who previously had been arrested and shot during peasant land protests.

In the 2013 elections, Gonzales Morales, a member of the National Party, received a verbal endorsement at a National Party rally by then Presidential Candidate Juan Orlando Hernandez, who called him "one of the best Mayors Honduras has ever had."

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.

Where are undecided voters likely to move?

Honduran presidential election polling has settled into a pretty clear pattern.

That has LIBRE candidate Xiomara Castro in the lead, with National Party candidate Juan Orlando Hernández close, but always behind.

Meanwhile, voters disinterested in any of the candidates running form anywhere from 22% to 31%. If you add decline to state to none of the above in the poll with the largest none of the above totals-- a July poll by Paradigma-- almost half of those polled (48.9%) are not saying they have committed to any of the candidates running.

And that brings the question: can we predict who probably will benefit from movement by those voters?

Our answer: no, we cannot. Paradigma and CESPAD, two of the polling sources, have no previous track record in Honduras for us to use to assess how it might do. Even if there was a wealth of prior polling, none of it would come from the first election after a coup d'etat that tore apart one of the traditional parties, and ushered in two new, and apparently reasonably popular, new parties.

But there are others who do think they can predict what will happen in the coming election. The Economist Intelligence Unit posted a note on the election September 12 (h/t Bloggings by Boz, who has his own post on the way the polling is shaping up, for bringing this to our attention).

The Economist/Intelligence Unit doesn't discuss all the polls we have summarized. We continue to caution that there are clear differences between polling agencies which suggest the best way to assess poll data is across time by an individual pollster.

But the thing we find most surprising is that despite the low level of absolute support for individual candidates, the tightness of the race between the top two candidates, and the large block declaring no preference or absolutely not in favor of any of the existing candidates, The Economist/Intelligence Unit analysis projects a final winner:

We maintain our forecast that Mr Hernández will win the November election as the PN Is likely to gain a larger share of the undecided vote on polling day. However, a low turnout could still result in a LIBRE victory.

Without any explanation of why they think more voters currently registered as undecided will turn to the Partido Nacional, we find ourselves troubled by this projection. We have discussed privately a number of scenarios that we can see happening-- but predicting how the undecideds will break seems, to us at any rate, without basis.

CESPAD-- the latest source of polling data to become available-- provides an illustrative example of how complicated such prediction is in Honduras, this year.

Let's start with how voters polled feel about the Partido Nacional-- which currently controls the presidency (under Porfirio Lobo Sosa) and the Congress (for much of the Lobo Sosa presidency, led by Juan Orlando Hernández). In a word: the people are not satisfied. Since February 2012, CESPAD has found that a majority of the people say that the current president is making things worse (47%) or has no effect on the country's problems (38%). Less than 10% said his administration was helping improve conditions.

Is it unfair of us, then, to doubt that the Partido Nacional is going to attract undecided voters?

CESPAD actually gives us a fascinating look at which voters are still undecided (or uninterested in any of the actual candidates) by party affiliation. (We will spend another post just on this topic. For now, though, we simply want to trace who might be expected to shift to Juan Orlando Hernández.)

About 17% of the Liberal Party members; about 21% of the Partido Nacional members; 11% of Anti-Corruption party members; and only 4% of LIBRE members, report being undecided. So where would the undecided voters that might go Partido Nacional come from?

Liberal Party voters not supporting their own party's candidate are overwhelmingly planning to vote LIBRE (about half of these rogue voters). Unless we assume that the undecided voters represent a much more conservative group within the Liberal Party, it is hard to imagine that 17% of voters breaking for Juan Orlando Hernández. The actual candidate of the Liberal Party represents the more conservative wing of that party, so we think it is unlikely these undecideds feel the Liberal candidate is not conservative enough, which would be the motivation to vote PN. If they cannot find it possible to vote LIBRE, there are other somewhat progressive options available. Or they can reject the entire system and vote Anti-Corruption Party-- as over 6% of Liberal Party Members are already planning to do.

The tiny percentage of LIBRE members who are not saying they will vote for Xiomara Castro indicate preferences either for the Liberal Party, or for an even more progressive minority party. Even if we thought all the undecided LIBRE voters were closet law-and-order pro-business conservatives, that would be a minuscule addition to Partido Nacional rolls.

Salvador Nasralla has support from 82% of the party he founded. Only 1% of the party members plan to vote Partido Nacional-- against about 3% each for the Liberal Party and LIBRE. Again, it seems highly unlikely that the 11% undecided/no preference party members think the Partido Nacional is their best choice-- the whole basis of the Anti-Corruption Party is that present politicians are too corrupt-- and the present politics of Honduras is dominated by the PN, and until recently, had as its most effective leader, Juan Orlando Hernández, as head of Congress.

That leaves us with undecided/no preference voters who said they were members of the Partido Nacional itself. This is a substantial number of potential voters-- 21% of party members. Presumably, what The Economist/Intelligence Unit is expecting is that these voters will settle for their party candidate in the end. Yet if we assume their reluctance to state a preference stems from a lack of enthusiasm for their party's candidate, we might consider whether they will follow the lead of the more than 20% of their fellow party members who have decided to vote for someone else. Here, the main beneficiary has been Nasralla, who has support from about 9% of PN members. Nasralla's Anti-Corruption Party is not particularly progressive/liberal in its politics; it is pro-business and solidly Honduran in its identity. The anti-crime theme of Nasralla's campaign is familiar PN policy. It is worth noting that rogue PN voters support Xiomara Castro in almost as high numbers-- suggesting some of the dissatisfied PN voters may be more progressive.

To sum up, we would echo what CESPAD analysts wrote:

The weakening of the traditional party loyalty, is tending to modify the historic balance of political forces. In the presidential candidacies there exists a clear migration of the vote of the Partido Liberal (PL) and of the Partido Nacional (PN) toward the new political movements. Xiomara Castro is the one that most attracts the vote from other parties: 23% of the Liberal vote and 8% of the Nationalist vote.

CESPAD doesn't offer much support for a claim that the Partido Nacional has support to gain:

Effectively, the electoral preferences for Xiomara Castro and Juan Orlando Hernández have grown since February of 2012 until July of 2013. Nonetheless, the pace of the growth has been greater for Xiomara Castro. Simultaneously there has been registered a growth in electoral sympathies for the LIBRE party (8 points) and a deterioration of the electoral preference for the Partido Nacional (PN) (falling 4 points). [emphasis added]

That seems to us to caution against assuming that the PN has some elasticity to count on. We won't be surprised if Juan Orlando Hernández is declared the winner come election day; but we don't think the data allow for anyone to actually say this is an evident outcome to expect.

The Liberal Party at 122

The Liberal party in Honduras just celebrated its 122 birthday, amid widely divergent views about the status of the party.

Founded February 5, 1891, the Liberal party grew from the Liberal league which had been formed in 1884.  Liberalism, based on ideas ideas espoused by Morazan, is described as a center-right political philosophy. 

The Honduran Liberal party is one of two founded in Central America that has persevered to the present, the other being the Colombian Liberal party.  The Honduran Liberal party itself is part of Liberal International, a federation of Liberal parties throughout the world, which promotes:

liberalism, individual freedom, human rights, the rule of law, tolerance, equality of opportunity, social justice, free trade and a market economy.

Since that definition starts with "liberalism" it is somewhat recursive, so lets unpack what liberalism is.  According to the 1947 liberal manifesto, liberalism believes

that liberty and individual responsibility are the foundations of civilized society; that the state is only the instrument of the citizens it serves; that any action of the state must respect the principles of democratic accountability; that constitutional liberty is based upon the principles of separation of powers; that justice requires that in all criminal prosecution the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, and to a fair verdict free from any political influence; that state control of the economy and private monopolies both threaten political liberty; that rights and duties go together, and that every citizen has a moral responsibility to others in society; and that a peaceful world can only be built upon respect for these principles and upon cooperation among democratic societies. We reaffirm that these principles are valid throughout the world.

The Liberal Party of Honduras seems to have lost its web presence, which used to be at www.partidoliberaldehonduras.hn, which now redirects to the Facebook page of Esteban Handal, a failed Liberal Party candidate in the primary elections for President this year.

A historic rift formed between the Catholic church and the Liberal party during the nineteenth century. During the rule of Francisco Morazan over the United States of Central America in the 1830s  Morazan, who advocated the true separation of church and state, made the state government stop enforcing the tithing of the population for the benefit of the church.

In recent times, Liberal parties have tended to split up fractioning into more social democrat factions, and more conservative ones.  Until the coup of 2009 the Honduran Liberal party had avoided this split, but as a result of the coup, about 55 percent of the Liberal party left to form Libre, the new political party headed by Manuel Zelaya Rosales.  That rift has left a small social democrat faction within the remainder of the Honduran Liberal party, along with a strong right wing faction, responsible for the coup, which controls it.

Liberal party members assert the party has come together since the exodus of 2009 and will win the 2013 elections. Analysts disagree. 

Yani Rosenthal, himself a presidential candidate in the party primary this year, told a reporter for Proceso Digital that he didn't see the party as factionalized, but that it must unify now that the primary elections are over around its presidential candidate, Mauricio Villeda, who represents the far right in the party.  Rosenthal said:

Everything will depend on the capacity of the leaders of the party to unify the distinct factions which participated in the internal [elections].  If the leaders are capable of uniting it, the party can be first and win the next general election.

So far, though, the party has not rallied in support of Villeda, who of course was intimately involved in the de facto regime installed in the coup of 2009.

Edmundo Orellana, who belongs with some of the remaining few social democrats inside the Liberal party, doesn't see the party leadership consolidating authority; just the opposite:

There is no acceptance of the leadership of the Central Party Executive because there has been an exodus of Liberals to the Libre party and those that are still within the Liberal party feel marginalized in the organization....There is a distancing between the Liberal party organization and the candidate of the party.

Julio Navarro, a political analyst and Liberal party member sees no way the party can win in the 2013 elections.  For Navarro, there's a crisis of credibility in the party itself.  He further indicated:

The party leadership that arose out of the primary elections has not been seen; the presidential candidate does not appear interested in uniting the factions which participated in the primary election.

Navarro suggested that

to win, they have to regain credibility and confess, because those who ran the party made a mistake in June 2009.  They need to say a "mea culpa" for liberalism and blame the errors on whose who led at that time; they must recover the ability to organize and construct messages that convince the electorate to accept their political proposal.

But Navarro doesn't hold out much hope of this happening.  He noted that their party presidential candidate, Mauricio Villeda has the same problem that Elvin Santos had in the last election, held while the de facto regime controlled the country:

They believe because they are the most conservative that is sufficient to win elections.  Villeda assumes that because he is the most conservative candidate, against the menace of Juan Orlando Hernandez and Libre, that he'll be elected....this belief that he'll be elected could lead him to defeat.

The first political poll of the year showed that the Liberal party candidate would come in fourth if the election were held now, behind Xiomara Castro of Libre, Juan Orlando Hernandez of the National party, and Salvador Nasralla of the Anti Corruption party. 

That tends to support Orellana and Navarro's analyses. 

Proceso Digital assures us that most experts agree that the Liberal Party would come in third, though they fail to cite any specific experts.

The Liberal party remains stuck in the factionalism that resulted in the coup of 2009 where the ultra conservative faction of the Liberal party took out their party's more centrist president. 

Mauricio Villeda has not made any overtures to other existing factions within the Liberal party to try and unify it post primary elections.  Instead he's left it up to the factions to come bargain with him for a power-sharing role in the party, as Yani Rosenthal did.

The faction controlling the Liberal party thinks they will win simply because they are running the most conservative candidate from a major political party. Meanwhile, the Honduran people seems to have moved on.

How many more years of continuity will this long-established party have, if it cannot accept the evidence of lost elections and lost support?

Padre Milla, LIBRE, Drug-trafficking, and Honduran Politics

Every so often a story comes along that is so deeply rooted in the complexity of Honduran politics and culture that it seems almost impossible to explain.

Today on quotha, Adrienne Pine provides a statement from the Human Rights Alliance, an umbrella of Honduran rights groups, asking for expressions of solidarity with Father Fausto Milla.

Padre Milla formed part of the alternative truth commission, the Comisión de Verdad, a recognition of his extraordinary history and credibility in Honduran society. As his biography for the Comisión describes, after he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest by Pope Paul VI, he began his service to the Honduran people in Guarita, a traditional Lenca town in the department of Lempira. Later, while a parish priest in Corquín, in the Department of Copan, he worked for the rights of the Lenca people, and provided protection to refugees from conflict in El Salvador, including denouncing the Sumpul massacre in El Salvador in 1980, and was kidnapped and intimidated. As we wrote in our blog post on the Comisión, he

was jailed in 1981 by the Honduran military junta and went into exile in Mexico. In 1985, he returned to Honduras assigned to Santa Rosa de Copan, where he returned to the community organizing and human rights work he had been doing since before his exile in Mexico.

Hermano Juancito describes Padre Milla's preaching, including his linking of poor diet in modern Honduras and poor health, something he bases on his understanding of prehispanic cultural practices. Quoting the biography posted by the Comisión, Padre Milla now assists in

community development, human rights, food development, and herbal curing. Owing to this work he was accused of forming part of guerrilla groups.

After the 2009 coup, Padre Milla was a strong voice of protest. In 2011, he fled the country, following death threats, only to find himself drawn back shortly after.

Father Milla, in other words, has a long history of risking the anger of the powerful, beginning in the period from the 1970s to 1980s when Honduras made its transition from open military dictatorship to grim days under early electoral governments when extra-judicial killing thrived.

So where is the threat coming from today?

The Public Prosecutor's office.

Quoting the press release from the Human Rights Alliance:

El Padre Milla, ha manifestado su preocupación sobre un tema que afecta directamente a nuestros los pueblos como es el narcotráfico y el Ministerio Público (MP), lo ha citado a declarar.

[Padre Milla has expressed his concern about a theme that directly affects we, the people, which is drug-trafficking, and the Public Prosecutor has summoned him to make a statement.]

This is not to say that the Public Prosecutor has discovered a real law-enforcement mission. No; what they have discovered, not surprisingly, is a new way to harass a long-term critic, and at the same time, smear LIBRE, the new political party that will be running Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, former first lady, as its candidate for president.

Here's what happened: on June 29, media in Honduras published stories quoting Padre Milla as saying that corrupt ex-officials, and people involved in drug trafficking, were infiltrating LIBRE. He reportedly said

we know which candidates are going to be on the ticket of Doña Xiomara and that they have already occupied public positions to enrich themselves, corrupt ones, well known to the population...LIBRE are incorporating candidates known publicly as high-flying drug traffickers, they aren't sellers of baggies, but rather millionaires, of those of great authority within drug-trafficking... I don't want to enter into details, I want to ask that they back Doña Xiomara, but that more purity is demanded in the movement, that they take more measures of control, because if they place a candidate known by the people as corrupt in place, the people will not vote.

The quoted statements focus on the need for LIBRE to take measures to ensure that down-ticket candidates are not seen as illegitimate due to their previous political histories, for enriching themselves in public office, for corruption, and yes, for involvement in drug trafficking.

Proceso Digital provided clearer context for the statement, quoting Father Milla endorsing the project of LIBRE but saying it is a difficult thing to do given the political culture in Honduras:

This is an attempt to fulfill those grand dreams that motivate great numbers of people in the six months following the coup, I say that it is an attempt because it is not so easy in a country where for so many years damage has been done to the people with the tricks, the lies, the corruption, the impunity, the prepotency, of those who occupy any positions of service to the people, and in place of serving the people enrich themselves...it is not so easy to achieve a project in a uniquely pure form, it is easy to see that he that was a cat yesterday today seems like a mouse. It is not easy, because it isn't a question of the tail or the paw, but rather of something that is in the heart and in the mind of the person.

Padre Milla is asking LIBRE to live up to its aspirations-- not to accept politics as usual. How does this political intervention end up with Padre Milla being legally summoned to testify?

The reaction, predictably, has focused on a demand for Padre Milla to name names. Elvia Argentina Valle, one of the former Liberal Party congress members who was a prominent voice of protest after the coup, added to her demand for names a threat to proceed legally against him. She took his comments as particularly pointed at the movement within LIBRE that she leads, and said he has never liked the former Liberal Party members who form part of the new party.

Then, on July 4, El Heraldo trumpeted the return to the Liberal Party of a group of delegates, described as having gone to LIBRE and formed part of the movement within that party that Argentina Valle was defending. The Liberal Party candidate for president, Mauricio Villeda, tried to claim that if these defections from LIBRE were motivated by the comments of Padre Milla, they were to be congratulated-- presumably, because this showed they would not participate in a political movement with such doubt cast on it.

But here's the truth: drug trafficking is so pervasive in the halls of power in Honduras that any party is likely to harbor people corrupted by drug money. If you think of it from the perspective of these entrepreneurs, it is likely that they are in fact working to infiltrate all political parties: it would just be good business practice. If these delegates (from the Department of Yoro) returned to the Liberal Party for its anti-drug purity, they are likely to be disappointed. In any event, what seems to have actually motivated their defection was a realization that there weren't places for them to be candidates in LIBRE.

Whether it came about because of requests from within LIBRE, or from another direction, an article in La Prensa on July 5 reported the summons by the prosecutor's office, along with the objections of the Human Rights Alliance, which noted that Padre Milla was neither the first nor only public figure to make such statements, and none of the others has been subject to a legal summons.

What seems to be happening is political push back-- Padre Milla is being threatened with an impossible demand, since (as the Human Rights Alliance notes) his information may well come from privileged communications received in his work as a priest; and in any event, is more likely to be endangered by naming names than any highly-placed traffickers he might be forced to identify.

The only way for LIBRE to change the system is to act differently than established political parties-- that is what Padre Milla, a holy man, is saying. Pragmatically, a start up party in Honduras may not be able to afford such purity-- but it would be well to endorse the sentiment, even if it cannot carry through with a real disengagement from the most visibly corrupt political actors.

Bishop Santos's Presidential Bid

Bishop Luis Santos Villeda of Santa Rosa de Copan will turn 75 in November and must submit his resignation as bishop to the Pope. At that time, he will ask the Pope to allow him to run as a presidential candidate of the Authentic June 28th movement of the Liberal Party.

Its not that he wants to be president:

"I don't aspire to be president of Honduras. This isn't my idea,"

he told the Catholic News Service.

"Why do I get involved in politics? Because it is politics that has screwed the poor.... But it's politics that makes people poor, that leaves the clinics and hospitals without medicine, that robs money from the villages. It's politics that supports the rampant corruption in Honduras,"

he is quoted as saying. The press report adds:

"I can't be disinterested in the health and education of the children, the least of my sisters and brothers...I'll do it for the common good, the good of Honduras."

Santos made his original announcement of his candidacy on September 16.

That announcement brought a mixed reaction from within the Liberal Party, where some, such as Lino Tomas Mendoza, were excited by its potential to reunite the Liberal Party.

If the Pope grants his request, Bishop Santos will have to compete with a large group of candidates for the Liberal Party nomination. These include Edmundo Orellana, Mauricio Villeda, Yani Rosenthal, Wenceslao Lara, and Esteban Handal, to name but a few of the announced candidates.

Model Cities Law

The National Congress completed and passed Model City legislation last Wednesday and while the details continue to trickle out, the law is very different than the prototype they started with.

This was one of the first laws that Congress passed with its new electronic voting system. Instead of debating and passing the law as a whole, Congress debated and voted on each of the 72 individual articles of the law. They also added four new ones. Paul Romer, the Stanford economist whose brainchild this is, was available in Congress all week during the debate and consulted on the legislation without charge.

The new law firmly establishes that any Región Especial de Desarollo (RED) or Model City is part of Honduras and cannot be alienated. The territories encompassed will be subject to the constitutional clauses about national sovereignty, territory, national defense, identity papers, and foreign relations. This explicit bow to Honduran sovereignty was necessary to gain the support of the Liberal Party members of Congress.

Congress will be able to create a RED from either an unpopulated region, or from urban regions that request conversion through a binding local referendum.

Congress will vote on and approve charter legislation for any proposed RED. Congress made it particularly difficult to change approved charters, reportedly to keep from having to respond to jockeying for gains.

Any RED approved will have an Executive Governor, responsible to a "Transparency Commission", appointed for a seven year term.

Here's where things get strange. The Transparency Commission will consist of elected foreigners who reside in the RED. The Transparency Commission-- a group of non-Hondurans-- will function as the governing council of the RED.

An Auditing Commission will be responsible for the day-to-day administration of the RED and will report to the Transparency Commission.

Finally, the law calls for a "Norms Commission" which will function to set the laws and regulations of the RED. It will function somewhat like Congress. Its members will be elected by residents within the RED.

The RED will have its own judges, though in part, they will enforce the Honduran Penal Code. It will have its own police force. It will be able to administer airports and ports freely. It will be free to set its own currency and taxes, though some taxes will also be imposed by the Honduran government.

A RED will have its own labor law. By law, 90 percent of the jobs in a RED must be filled by Honduran citizens. Each RED can set up its own education system and health care system. The import of automobiles into and out of the RED will be regulated by the RED.

Hondurans will, by law, be able to travel freely into a RED, but foreigners will require special immigration procedures. These were not spelled out in press coverage.

So what should we think of this version of the idea? we have previously covered the reasons we think model cities is a bad fit for Honduras-- even if we set aside all the qualms we have about corporatizing governance, it does not seem to us that model cities will deliver on their hype. The places held up as illustrations of the potential benefit from conditions not present in Honduras.

Reaction to the new law in Honduras also is negative-- including from sectors that might have been expected to be more positive.

COHEP, the business council, hates the law, calling it unconstitutional and filled with inconsistencies. According to COHEP it does not provide sufficient guarantees for investors, be they Honduran or foreign.

The law is unclear about whether absolute title to the land involved transfers to the RED, and thus whether they may transfer title when they sell or lease it to others within the RED. COHEP believes title does transfer. This could, depending on the location of any proposed RED, contradict Honduran laws about foreign ownership of lands near the coast or international borders.

From our perspective, the law simply concretizes a lot of the concerns we and others have expressed.

It provides no protections (either through labor law, or social protections like payments to IHSS) for the Honduran workers who work in any future RED.

It is up to the RED to set labor law, including protections for workers, and to establish its own health care system. The law is vague about who will have access to that healthcare system, if created. Nor do employers have to provide health care for workers.

The law is equally vague about an educational system, and whether it would be only for residents, or potentially also for employees who work in the RED.

But regardless of concerns like these, or even those of the Honduran business community, the enabling legislation has been sent to Porfirio Lobo Sosa for signing and publication in La Gaceta.

There is one enthusiastic supporter of the law: Paul Romer told El Heraldo that in six months all kinds of investors will be coming to Honduras to take advantage of this legislation.

Honduras is indeed open for business-- what is utterly unclear is whether predictions like these will actually prove to be accurate; and if they do, whether Honduran workers will benefit or see their social supports erode even more.

Open Letter from the Liberal Party

When we last heard from the Liberal party on July 15, the Central Executive Council had formed a subcommittee to write a letter to Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales asking him to put aside their differences and to come, rejoin, and help unify the Liberal party. The Executive Council president is Elvin Santos Lozano, the father of the party's presidential candidate in the last election. He said,

we are going to invite ex President Zelaya to participate in the unity program; if he doesn't want to, we aren't going to beg anyone.

Eduardo Maldonado, secretary of Central American Integration of the Executive Council also hoped to bring into the fold the "Liberals in Resistance". Maldonado said,

Liberals in Resistance is liberal, it will continue to be liberal, and we will look to incorporate this important director Manuel Zelaya Rosales because he represents a part of the membership of the Liberal Party of Honduras.

They did this out of political expediency. Without some kind of reunification, the Liberal party will remain a minor political party. Honduras will essentially become a one party system because none of the parties, outside of National Party, will have sufficient support to win national elections.

Over a week later they were reported to still be struggling with a draft letter to Zelaya, even after his lightning response, sent to Radio Globo announcer David Romero, which we blogged about here, that he would talk to them when they expel the dictator and pronounce against the coup

Late today El Heraldo published the text of an open letter from the Central Executive Council to the membership of the Liberal party, rejecting Zelaya's conditions for talking with them and calling for unity and reconciliation of the membership.

The original text of the letter, which is translated below, can be found here.

Honduran Liberals,

The Liberal Party, through its central authorities, has demonstrated its political maturity over time to bring itself to one and all of its members, militants, men and women, to declare about the events of June 28, 2009.

We understand that our party for more than a decade has been showing a slow deterioration produced by the incorrect application of its laws, improvisation, personal ambition, abandonment by the directorate, which has provoked a profound crisis taken advantage of by some irresponsible persons, because they want to change the direction of Liberalism, whose actions were done under their name; we, all the members of the party, are not guilty.

As a result of this outbreak of actions, the full Central Executive Council agreed at a news conference, to arouse Citizen Manuel Zelaya Rosales so that, by profound reflection, he would rejoin the party, prioritizing those high ideals of the liberal flag, its doctrine, its statutes, leaving to one side personal or group ambitions to convert Liberalism into the reunifying and transforming force capable of implementing changes and profound transformations for the Honduran people.

Unfortunately, we have as a public reply from Citizen José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, a series of conditions for which this political institution is not authorized; in consequence, we are freed of our historical responsibility and this leaves the political road open for him; our party is a political institution that has free membership and voluntary withdrawal.

Throughout history, the party has always needed the granitic unity of its members, it's not important which ideological group or thought which they belong to, and only accepts as a legitimate source of public power and exercise of sovereignty the will of the people expressed at ballot boxes, freely, justly, and equally; the Party ideologically nourishes itself on social liberalism and the fundamental popular sovereignty.

With the unity of the Liberal Party, the Honduran democratic system is strengthened. The actual crisis is a breeding ground to promote anarchy, the party condemns caudillismo, colonialism and dictators; it opposes regimes that go against the will of the people and defends the rule of law.

The Central Executive Council of the Liberal party of Honduras, as the highest representative of the party, makes a fervent call to Liberals so that together we raise the flag, red, white, red in favor of party DIALOGUE. We strip any petty ambition, recognizing our errors and by honest and sincere consensus, we will encounter the UNITY AND LIBERAL RECONCILIATION as the only way to reach power.

Liberals "ALWAYS FORWARD, NOT ONE STEP BACK"

Tegucigalpa, M.D.C. 02 August, 2010

Central Executive Council of the Liberal Party of Honduras

The Frente and the Liberal Party

As the previous posts should indicate, there was considerable tension around the assembly of the FNRP that was held in Tocoa this weekend.

Under the headline Second Day of the National Assembly: the debates and the wager on the unity of the FNRP continue, Vos el Soberano provides a report that starts with the following quote:

"Before being a Liberal I am of the people and the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular, that is the future.”

Ubodoro Arriaga Izaguirre, Delegate from the Department of La Paz to the First National Assembly of the FNRP.

While that tells the whole story in a nutshell, the report goes on to specify what happened:

Liberal leaders withdrew from the National Assembly of the FNRP on not succeeding in impose their delegates named outside the Departmental Assemblies of the Resistance.

Specifically cited as speaking for the Liberal Party were Carlos Eduardo Reina, Orfilia de Mejía and Rasel Tome, who "took the floor to explain to the departmental delegates their reasons to self-exclude themselves". According to this report they clarified that they "do not renounce" the FNRP, just participating in the provisional National Coordination to be elected today.

On the one hand, this is not that different from what COPINH and the Feminists in Resistance did. But timing is everything. Making a principled statement in advance that you are not interested in being part of a formal structure you consider dubious, and withdrawing when things don't go your way, are as different as, well, making a principled stand and saving face.

Reporting describes an unsuccessful attempt to install 29 extra delegates representing Liberals in Resistance over and above those elected on a state by state basis:

Yesterday, in hours of the afternoon and night, the leaders of the sector called Liberals in Resistance tried by every means to impose and inscribe 29 delegates in addition to those elected in departmental assemblies of the Resistance...

The trigger for rejection by the departmental delegates was, according to this report, an attempt to appoint the ex mayor of Tocoa, Adán Fúnez. The latter participated in open resistance to the coup up until one week before the November election, when, Vos el Soberano (citing news reports in El Heraldo) says

with the intention of relecting himself in office, he appeared in a center of the golpista sector of the Liberal Party to ask, publicly and on bended knee, pardon for having participated in the activities of the Resistance.

One can see why he was an unwelcome person. It is almost unbelievable that experienced party politicians would have such a tin ear as to think this would go down without choking.

Rasel Tome is given the principal responsibility for the attempted to expand delegates:

Within hours of yesterday it was possible to confirm that Rasel Tome had unilaterally ordered his sympathizers to expand the departmental delegates from two incumbents and an alternate to four incumbents and an alternate (two additional hand-picked delegates) against the decision of the last Assembly of the Resistance celebrated in Siguatepeque that established the number of delegates at 56 for logistical and budgetary reasons.

The report emphasizes that with the departure of the Liberal leaders, debate continued, underlining that the FNRP is not about winning traditional elections:

the political wager of the FNRP will not be the electoral processes, so as not to continue accepting elections Honduras-style, and it was decided that the fundamental task of the moment is the installation of the National Constituent Assembly with the conditions that the popular movement proposes.

In addition, it was made clear that the guarantors of this political process unleashed by the coup d'Etat are not the political parties, but the popular and social movement.

Undoubtedly there will be political analysts willing to argue that the activists of the Frente are being unrealistic and should have trimmed their ambitious project to fit into the goals of the Liberal Party faction.

But the message the Frente is conveying is that politics in Honduras is completely broken: if the system is dysfunctional, taking it over will not help.

"How Democractic Should Democracy Be?": Oscar Estrada

Note: The original in Spanish was posted today on Quotha, with the first half translated there in a comment by Charles II and the second half in a comment by me. In the following translation, I make slight changes to the original translation of the first half.

For those of us who didn’t go to the national assembly of the FNRP in Tocoa because we weren’t elected as delegates by our organizations or simply because we weren’t active in any organization other than the Frente, the accomplishments of this week still seem unclear. In the afternoon, the assembly will have ended and we hope that everything will be more broadly known. Meanwhile, various ideas occurred to me which I think are important to explore to better understand the “conflict” which we live internally.

The Liberal Party, which historically had a moderately progressive origin, has been controlled by the right for at least the last 60 years. I previously wrote on the 17th of June, about the role which the Liberal Party played in the most key stages of Honduran history, such as the ‘54 strike, the coup d’état of ’63, the different military governments of the ‘70s, the dirty war of the ‘80s, the neoliberalism of the ‘90s, and about how always, with rare individual exceptions, it bent itself to the interests of the national oligarchy and transnational capital. And while the labor code, voluntary military service, and certain legal changes were given in Liberal administrations, it would be remote from history to try to say now, that the changes that have been achieved in social matters correspond to the political will of the Party alone, making invisible the social and popular movements which drove those changes. One should understand that in Honduras, nothing is ever done except through pressure.

The crisis which the Honduran people lives in actuality originates in essence in a struggle of classes [class war]. It is the product of the erosion of an economic and political model which favors the most wealthy, displacing from wealth a broad sector of the population which lacks representation within the power structures.

The Liberal Party as a an institution never, through its individual leaders, owners, and caudillos, will be able to understand the urgencies of the dispossessed classes of the country, simply because they belong to another class, and therefore to another Honduras. This is not to say that there aren’t Liberals who belong to the popular classes. It’s clear that there are such and that they understand very well what it is to be poor in Honduras. But those who take decisions, those who today urge the rescue of the party, because without it they are nothing politically, those are NOT of the same class which filled the streets in repudiation of the coup d’état.

This is the basic contradiction of the Liberal Party in Resistance. To form a part of the FNRP and to propose to “rescue” the Liberal Party which amounts to rescuing the bipartisanship reigning for more than 100 years. To rescue the Liberal Party, the same Liberal Party would have to seize the Party. [To rescue the Liberal Party they will have to seize the Party, the Liberal Party itself.]

It has not been clear up till now what would be the strategy for the Liberals in Resistance to rescue their party. At times they can be seen seated in the gringo embassy, then in the office of Rosenthal and their goal seems remarkably similar to that of Elvin Santos or Micheletti: to return to power in the next elections.

They, the Liberals in Resistance, now accuse a faction of the left of the Frente of not being “inclusive” on blocking them from “storming the assembly,” placing 29 delegates more than those which by agreement they had obtained in the previous assembly in Siguatepeque. This strategy reminds me a great deal of the assemblies of the 90s in the UNAH, when it was a common practice to bring 100 delegates from another campus, normally from the north of the country, to flip the results and to impose a directive according to the interests of the caudillo of the student front and it was naive to think, that with all those years of experience, we would not have learned.

The ideological separation within the Frente has been evidenced basically among what the Liberals call "los bloqueros", in reference to the bloque popular, but that is composed as well by the parties of the left (PSOCA, TR, MND, OPLN, CNRP, BP, unions, guilds and social movements) on one side and on the other the Liberals, who independently of the name that they use continue being a party of the right with all the practices and vices of traditional politics.

We have all always said that the FNRP is a diverse and pluralistic organization. And although pluralism as a concept can seem sound to us, what is certain is that this has pushed us to accept, on some occasions, actions contrary to the will of the base, both by political organizations as well as by individuals, that far from unifying in their political pragmatism have weakened us.

I would put as an example the decision of the UD to participate in the elections of last November, legitimating the same and their inflated results, and later to participate in the Government of National Unity of Lobo Sosa, permitting him to say internationally that his government is of Reconciliation since he counts among his ministers one that is "of the resistance". This action, accepted by that mistaken sense of plurality, has brought a great political cost for the Frente and will continue doing so.

On the other side, and as a prelude to the assembly, the COPINH launched a communique that has had a certain replication, both by the Feminists in Resistance, as well as by some independent authors. The basic propositions of the public communique of COPINH, far from representing differences in the objectives of FNRP, show a discussion that sooner or later it will be necessary to have.

What those communiques demand, more than representation in the leadership of the Frente, is a different vision of power. It is a call to attention to the traditional left that continues thinking about democratic centralism, the political bureau or the negotiations of realpolitik distant from the will of the base. It is a questioning about the concept of popular representation and democracy as an expression of the will of the majority (denying voice to minorities). It is a demand, to the entire FNRP, that it see power as something that is constructed from the base, from below, because the history of the peoples has demonstrated to us that in the end, a revolutionary government without popular power is nothing more than a reactionary government with a populist discourse.

While all this happens, the machinery of terror does not stop. Lobo journeyed to Miami on a lightning visit to meet with Insulza in relation to the return (in August, according to CODEH) of the expresident Manuel Zelaya, as a prior requisite for there to be total recognition of Lobo Sosa in the extraordinary Assembly of the OAS at the end of July.

"We are near a solution, but I don't believe that it is possible to speak of a solution still nor to be overly optimistic", said Insulza.

And that's something the un-government understands very well, because its master Colombia has demonstrated it, that international recognition is one thing and internal legitimacy is another very distinct thing.

In Tocoa, the same municipio where the Assembly was carried out, "various police and military commandoes advanced toward the land where more than 190 families in the Bajo Aguan are found" according to a report of COFADEH, violating in this form the accord signed by the president with MUCA the past month of April, throwing fire on the powder keg of the national agrarian conflict.

And the repression continues and while this week in Tegucigalpa we say goodbye to two known fighters of the Bloque Popular (dead of natural causes), Luis Morel and Oscar Padilla, on the north coast they assassinated in front of his house Julio Fúnez Benítez (57), union member of SANAA and member of the frente, and Jorge Alberto Castro Ramírez, of 41 years, horchata vendor in the numerous marches of 2009.

Oscar Estrada
11 de Julio de 2010

"I am a liberal in resistance": A letter from Manuel Zelaya June 11

As we have previously noted, former President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales occupies an awkward position in the politics of resistance in Honduras.

As a symbol, he can be used against the resistance by politicians who dismiss calls for fundamental restructuring by labeling the resistance as "zelayistas", reducing what is happening in Honduras to a repeat of caudillismo-- the cult of a strong leader that permeates Latin American political history. Since the resistance includes groups and individuals who were and are critical of Zelaya, this over-simplifies and misrepresents reality, even if it does make it easier to digest Honduran reality (and thus return to the international status quo of ignoring it).

Yet repudiating Zelaya would alienate large segments of the Honduran population for whom he was not simply a symbol of change, but an actual agent of change-- making petroleum affordable, increasing the minimum wage, and giving opportunities for people to voice their own opinions and tell their own stories. The cuarta urna campaign gained its popularity from the sense it gave to these people that the system could be changed to allow their votes to actually count for something.

And then there is the specific quandary that Zelaya presents for the Liberal Party. As has been stressed numerous times, Zelaya and Micheletti were both members of the same party. Their differences dramatized the range of opinions contained within that party. Liberals in resistance are a major group, although again, politicians interested in dismissing the wider significance of calls for constitutional changes use that to claim that the resistance is simply a within-party movement.

From these differences have come a number of tensions, which sometimes rise to the surface in statements by resistance movement members and segments, some openly acknowledged in writing, others taking place in less public media. A good sense of the debates is being provided by ethnographer Adrienne Pine's posting of field notes from her ongoing research in Honduras. In a recent post, she points to a letter from Zelaya himself published by Vos el Soberano as an intervention of particular importance in the current situation.

In contrast to previous statements that have been criticized for collapsing Zelaya's own situation with the broader goals of the Resistance, this new letter is a straightforward exhortation to keep focused on the campaign for the constituyente; notably, it is addressed to the Resistance, the Liberal Party, and a broader group that might not identify with either but may have become politically conscious. It states clearly that the Liberal Party has destroyed itself and that liberals need to work within the Resistance Movement. It cautions against premature identification of candidates for office under the current system, and places support firmly behind the Resistance and the assemblies it is holding to formulate proposals for a new constitution.

While it does not entirely avoid the personalization of the coup and its aftermath that has made previous statements by Zelaya fodder for critics, it is a powerful distillation of the themes of the present movement to reformulate the Honduran constitution. It makes it clear why Zelaya is an important political actor, even in exile.

Dominican Republic June 11, 2010

Comrades (men and women) of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular,

Correligionaries of the Liberal Party,

Compatriots with liberty of consciousness,

With the good intention of contributing to fortifying the unity of the diverse political forces that make up the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular allow me to express [the following]:

The military coup d'Etat that we suffered together with the people the 28th of June 2009, when they expatriated me by the force of arms, produced the worst tragedy for Honduras in this century, but at the same time, it engendered the birth of the force of the Resistance, which today is obliged to remain united in the face of the enemies of democracy.

Since I was subjected to tortures and abuses in the diplomatic seat of Brazil in Tegucigalpa, we warned in a missive to the people about this necessity when we said:

“… The Resistencia is the new belligerent force in Honduras, and it should be the axis to coordinate and bring together the progressive political forces, that without losing their own identity, will oblige the dominant elite to recognize that the Hondurans do not have bosses and that we want to be free ”

In respect to the actions of the political forces, I reiterate what I said on that occasion:

“I am a liberal in permanent resistence and I will continue being so, of those that practice their true doctrine, opposed to military dictators and antidemocratic regimes, those that forged this coup d'Etat ceased to be Liberals and the people punished them at the ballot box, the National Party never would have been raised from the defeat that we delivered in 2005, without the leadership of the Liberal Party, conspiring with the oligarchy and the Pentagon, arming the military coup to remove me from the political stage…”

The Liberal Party only has an option for power within the Resistance, outside the resistance it is weak and is condemned to failure. To not be united in the Resistance is newly to deliver to the oligarchy the country and power.

We must be alert, the enemies of the people cause to circulate items with tricks and lies, with the goal of dividing us. The promotion of premature candidacies is part of their strategies to divide the Resistance from the Liberal Party and so liquidate the opportunity for liberty that today is presented to us after fifty years.

The homeland in this moment calls us to struggle for unity and for the Constituyente, and we should say without fear:

“Elections Yes… for delegates to the Constitutional Assembly”

Our struggle today is for true independence, and for the refounding of Honduras, where the worker and the poor will be freed from those who oppress them.

We should struggle without respite for a new Constitution that will guarantee democratic liberty.

The new Constitution should have clear contents that arise from proposals presented in the Assemblies of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular, and that gather the aspirations and needs of all the sectors.

By the 15th of September, anniversary of our Independence, we should have these proposals and broaden the period to that date for the collection of signatures for the sovereign declarations to demand the National Constitutional Assembly and my return.

The suffering of the victims of this crime against humanity, with the loss of lives of our martyrs who condemned the coup d'Etat, cannot be in vain, nor pass into oblivion.

Without justice there is no reconciliation, No to impunity!

“Coups d'Etat, never again”

“Everyone for the constituyente”

Manuel Zelaya Rosales