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.

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