Registration of Slates of Candidates

On Wednesday, all factions in all the political parties in Honduras had to register their slate of candidates for national, departmental, and local office.  In all, some 21 movements within the political parties registered slates of candidates. 

There were a few surprises.

LIBRE, the political party formed earlier this year from groups within the resistance, consists of five groups:
28th of June Movement (headed by Carlos Zelaya)
the Popular Revolutionary Force (headed by Juan Barahona)
the Progressive Resistance Movement (headed by Rasel Tomé)
the People Organized in Resistance (headed by Mauricio Ramos)
the 5th of July Movement (headed by Nelson Avila)

LIBRE had wanted to declare Xiomara Castro de Zelaya as their consensus candidate, but Honduran law requires there to be a primary election to select candidates for every level of office within each political party.  So all five groups listed Xiomara Castro de Zelaya as their presidential candidate, and a retired police commissioner, Maria Luisa Borjas, as candidate for Mayor of Tegucigalpa. 

The Liberal Party this year consists of 3 movements:  Yanismo (candidate:  Yani Rosenthal), the United Liberal Front (Esteban Handel) and the Liberal Villedista Movement (Mauricio Villeda, memorable for his role as a Micheletti representative in failed negotiations for a solution after the coup of 2009).

The Nationalist Party this year fragmented into 8 movements:  the Blue Heart Movement (candidate:  Eva Fernandez), Saving Honduras (Ricardo Alvarez, current Mayor of Tegucigalpa),  For a New Honduras (Loreley Fernandez), the Authentic Nationalist Movement (Fernando Anduray), the United Blue Movement (Juan Orlando Hernandez, head of Congress), the Movement for my Country (Miguel Pastor),  The Democratic Reserve Movement (Jose Osorto), and the Barnica Action Movement (Víctor Hugo Barnica).  Only three of these (Alvarez, Hernandez, and Pastor) are considered to have a chance at the nomination.

In addition, there is the Anticorruption Party (candidate:  Salvador Nasralla) and the Patriotic Alliance of Honduras (Romeo Vásquez Vélasquez).

The Frente Amplio Politico Electoral en Resistencia (FAPER) has two movements:  Solidarity, Organization and Struggle (Andres Pavon, of the human rights organization CODEH),  and the Movimiento Amplio Reformista (Guadalupe Coello).

The Christian Democrat Party has a single movement, the Christian Democrats in Action Movement (still selecting a candidate).

There were no reports of slates of candidates for the UD Party.  Previous reports indicated that the UD party was considering an alliance with LIBRE, or perhaps FAPER. Also no report of any slate for the PINU party.

In all, more than 53,000 people will be proposed for political office across all the parties in Honduras.  All of these individuals will compete in the primary election, to be held on November 18, 2012. Because of the addition of new parties and movements within them, the level of participation is higher than in previous elections.

And that creates a problem. 

To support all the parties and movements, the Honduran Supreme Electoral Tribunal needs 40,000 rooms spread across the country to host the election, and they are short some 18,337 rooms.  Furthermore, some of the locations already contracted don't have sufficient rooms for all the parties.

The parties have until August 6 to continue to submit changes to their lists of candidates, and the Election Tribunal will rule on accepting both the movements and their candidates by August 26, 2012.

National Party Split

The fissure in the National Party has become an open split.

Ricardo Alvarez, the Mayor of Tegucigalpa with presidential aspirations, and Miguel Pastor, current head of SOPTRAVI, have formed a caucus of 25 Congress persons from the National party, splitting with Juan Orlando Hernandez, and promising a legislative agenda of their own. Three of the four fired Ministers have pledged to join the group as well (Oscar Alvarez, Armando Caledonio, and Nasry Asfura).

This split has the effect of denying the National Party a straight line ability to pass legislation without consultation. While still large, with 46 members, the National Party caucus loyal to Juan Orlando Hernandez no longer forms a majority.

Congressman Antonio Rivera Callejas, a member of the newly formed caucus, loudly denies that it has anything to do with presidential politics.

According to Callejas it has everything to do with the lack of support given to the Ministers who Lobo Sosa recently fired. "They were the people who were lending credibility to the Lobo Sosa government," Callejas told El Heraldo.

On the other hand, La Tribuna reported that Callejas completely undercut his denial when he told them

"This is the beginning of a legislative alliance between the Congress people supporting Ricardo Alvarez and Miguel Pastor, and for now it is only for legislative affairs, but I hope that later on it will become an electoral alliance."

Mario Barahona, another member of the caucus, said

"Miguel Pastor and Ricardo Alvarez are a guarantee of triumph and we understand this..."

Barahona went on to explain that it was, in fact, an alliance of those who support the political aspirations of Miguel Pastor and Ricardo Alvarez and to complain of being marginalized and mistreated by Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Juan Orlando Hernandez thought the cause was presidential politics:

"I'm very sorry that we haven't finished even the second year of governing and we are already in this debate, but such are politics,"

he said, when consulted about the split. Celine Discua, head of the National Party caucus in Congress said that this was "treason, and in the past, we've seen what happens to traitors."

This is a break. We would argue that their words are confirmation that Presidential politics was indeed the cause, more than two years before the election. What it will mean legislatively remains an open question.

Airport Misinformation

La Tribuna reported this morning that the Lobo Sosa government promises to build two airports in the Department of Copan, one at Rio Amarillo and one at La Concepción. Really? Is that even financial feasible? Who will fund it? We have our doubts about this story.

Tiempo, on the other hand, reported yesterday that the government will call a representative assembly of the municipalities of the Departments of Copan, Lempira, Ocotepeque, and Intibuca to decide where to build the airport. La Tribuna published an article yesterday that agreed in detail with what the Tiempo article reported.

Confused? Either La Tribuna is, or we are.

The story yesterday was prompted by a meeting between two of the presidential designates, Maria Antonieta Guillén and Victor Hugo Barníca, the Minister of Tourism, Nelly Jerez, and the Secretary of Public Works, Transport, and Housing, Miguel Pastor, and a delegation from Santa Rosa de Copan and La Concepción headed by Monseignor Luis Alfonso Santos, the Bishop of Santa Rosa de Copan. The Alcalde of La Concepción, José Tulio Sánchez told reporters that the land owners there were willing to donate 40 manzanas of land for the airport, saving the government about $5 million, the asking price for the land in Rio Amarillo, if it chooses to build the airport at La Concepción.

Yesterday Guillén was quoted as saying

"There are two options, one alternative is Rio Amarillo and the other is La Concepción; the smart decision of the President is not to exclude one or the other but to consider both possibilities in terms of analyzing the convenience of building either airport."

Yesterday the story was that the central government would not make the decision, the communities would make it.

Today the message La Tribuna reports is that Guillén told them that the government would build both airports to avoid a confrontation between the municipalities of the region. Except that it's not at all clear she said exactly that, since the rest of the article is full of phrases about weighing the benefits of each, and that those benefits would be discussed in a regional assembly by the 25 of March.

Guillén is cited as the source of another dubious piece of information in the La Tribuna article. She is reported to have stated it would cost over 400 million lempiras to construct the road from La Concepcion to Santa Rita to connect that airport with Copan Ruinas. Yet a year ago, an article from Hondudiario reposted in an Internet forum cited the cost of 24 kilometers of road as 116 million lempiras. Where did this inflated estimate of 400 million come from? Proceso Digital has an answer: they attribute that bit of information to Miguel Pastor and SOPTRAVI. Using the cost to produce a lane mile of roadway in individual states in the US, this estimate is roughly the same as it would be to construct a similar length road in Louisiana, using US prevailing wages and material prices. For Honduras it seems rather high.

We think today's La Tribuna article is wrong; its simply internally inconsistent and we think Miguel Pastor would do well to question that 400-500 million lempira estimate for the cost of constructing the road in light of the previous estimates around 25 percent of that cost.

Rainbow Tour?

Strange news continues to come out of Porfirio Lobo Sosa's trip to New Orleans. Earlier today it was the information in the previous post, about Lobo Sosa stating that Zelaya was trying to prolong his stay in power.

Now comes the strange news, reported in La Tribuna, sourced to the Secretaria de Obras Publicas, Transporte, y Vivienda (SOPTRAVI) director Miguel Pastor, that Porfirio Lobo Sosa has "received the highest award from representatives of the World Trade Center".

"The president was the subject of an award that is given only to personalities such as former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Henry Kissinger and personalities over the years to highlight his struggles to achieve peace in the hemisphere."

Say what?! Lobo Sosa struggling for years to work for peace in the hemisphere? Miguel Pastor continues:

"It is the highest award that is given by the World Trade Center, here in the city of New Orleans, that fills us with pride and sincerely, the President felt very excited to receive it."

OK, that allows us to somewhat decode what this really is. Porfirio Lobo Sosa has won some sort of prize/award/certificate of recognition from the World Trade Association of New Orleans, a business association whose mission is to facilitate the addition of "wealth and jobs in Louisiana through international trade, port development, and allied activities...". There's no mention of an award in their News section, or their Twitter feed, nor anywhere else that Google can find, nor previous mentions of awards to Reagan or Gorbachev or Kissinger, but maybe Miguel Pastor only meant to people like them, putting Porfirio Lobo Sosa in their league. Good PR move, Mr. Pastor.

Pastor continues describing Lobo Sosa as having sustained important meetings that will generate international support. Among these were meetings with leaders of Louisiana universities, who offered fellowships for Honduran students in the sciences and medicine. He also met with security companies that offered to sell him technologies to make Honduras safer, according to Miguel Pastor. Finally Lobo Sosa worked to encourage international investment.

Later today Lobo Sosa moves on to Florida where he will give a speech at the University of Miami. In the meantime, for those wondering about presidential succession in Honduras, María Antonieta Bográn de Guillén is acting president in Honduras in Lobo Sosa's absence.

I'm strongly reminded of Eva Peron's "Rainbow Tour" to Europe in 1947, where she attempted to meet with numerous dignitaries and heads of state, with mixed results. It was a political failure (except for her meeting with Franco in Spain), made into a public relations success in Argentina. Lobo Sosa's calendar in New Orleans was hardly earth-shaking but it was a good solid set of contacts, more appropriate to a cabinet level official or lower-level government bureaucrat. His highest-level meeting was with Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. To paraphrase from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about Eva Peron, it seens like for Porfirio Lobo Sosa, some sort of coming home in triumph is required no matter how manufactured.