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Summary
On November 28, 2021, Hondurans will go to the polls to vote in the 2021 general elections. What route will the country take? Host Karen Spring gives an overview of the basics about the election and then plays an interview with Honduran sociologist Eugenio Sosa.
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Transcript
Karen Spring:
Hondurans head to the polls for their general elections in less than a week, on Sunday, November 28, 2021. They will vote for candidates on three levels of their national government, President, Congress, and municipal authorities. There has been lots of discussions of a possible repeat of 2017. That is, general elections will take place in a climate of uncertainty, where many believe there will be another electoral fraud, or worse, another crisis.
This belief stems from many places, but a big one has been the high level of violence in this election period. This electoral period alone is already far more violent than the pre-election period in 2017. To date, 30 candidates running for office and their family members have been murdered in the last year. Just last week, two municipal level candidates were murdered, and at least three killed, in political rallies. What will happen in this country on Election Day? And in what context are Hondurans headed to the polls this Sunday?
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Honduras Now podcast. This podcast shares human rights stories from Honduras and connects them with global issues and North American policy. I am your host, Karen Spring, a longtime researcher and human rights activist that has lived in Honduras for over a decade. Welcome, and thanks so much for listening.
There are 15 presidential candidates on the ballot this election period, but, arguably, only two presidential candidates have a chance of winning. The right-wing National Party candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura, a socially odd man known to only wear blue jeans. Asfura is currently the mayor of the capital city, Tegucigalpa.
The second presidential candidate with a chance of winning is a progressive LIBRE Party candidate, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya. Castro is the spouse of President Manuel Zelaya, who was overthrown in the 2009 coup d’etat. Opinion polls about the presidential candidates and their chances have been mixed. Some polling services have reported Asfura as the favorite, whereas others have polled Castro as the top candidate. Since mid-October, two of three polls, including one from the Honduran civil society organization The Center for Democracy Studies, CESPAD, have Castro and the LIBRE Party pulling 17 percentage points higher than the National Party’s Titos Asfura.
On the congressional level, Hondurans will elect 129 representatives, the largest portion coming from the two most populous departments, Cortés and Francisco Morazán. The Congressional race is important because the next Congress will be charged with electing a new attorney general, a new assistant attorney general, 15 new Supreme Court magistrates, and three new magistrates of the Superior Auditing Tribunal, an institution that audits public financial accounts and is key in the first steps of any investigation into corrupt public officials.
On a municipal level, 298 mayors will be elected. Since the 2017 elections, Honduras has supposedly cleaned up its voting registry. In total, 5.1 million Hondurans out of 9.9 million have the right to vote under this new census. This is 1 million people less than in 2017. Now why are these elections important?
Some say that this election is one of the most important elections in Honduras’s history. The country is deeply polarized, and the two main presidential candidates, and what they stand for, are very representative of this divide. And National Party presidential victory will likely mean the continuation of the last 12 years of a corrupt narco state, headed by Asfura, a close ally of current President Juan Orlando Hernández. Asfura has been accused of embezzling $1.2 million from municipal coffers in his role as Tegucigalpa’s mayor.
A victory by Castro and the LIBRE Party would mean a possible departure from the intense neoliberal policies enacted by 12 years of National Party rule, one that has been heavily favored by US and Canadian economic interests. Castro and the LIBRE Party have promised to establish friendly relations with China, allow the distribution and sale of the morning-after pill, and overturn the legislation that created the Zones of Economic Development and Employment, ZEDEs, among many other changes.
To date, Castro’s bid has been joined by other political forces in the country. Independent presidential candidate and YouTube personality, Milton Benítez, known as El Perro Amarillo, announced his support for Castro. She’s also been joined by Salvador Nasralla, from the Partido Salvador de Honduras. This is the second time that Nasralla and Castro will team up in opposition to the National Party, the previous time being in 2017, when Castro stepped aside as the LIBRE presidential candidate, handing the candidacy to Nasralla under the banner of the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship. Castro has also received the support of Liberal Party presidential pre-candidate Luis Zelaya, who leads a faction of the Liberal Party, critical of the whole regime, and includes sectors of the business class that for a few years have grown increasingly critical of the National Party government.
Around the country polling stations are opened on November 28, from 8:00 am to 5:00 p.m., with the possibility of extending voting another hour if the voting lines are long. The Independent Electoral authority, which is the National Electoral Council, the CNE, will make their first announcements of the preliminary election results three hours after the polls close, so anywhere between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. on Election Day.
Today I want to share a presentation given by Eugenio Sosa. Sosa is a Honduran sociologist and author and professor at the National Autonomous University in Tegucigalpa. He gave this presentation as part of a public forum organized by the Honduran diaspora living in the United States. I may interrupt his presentation in order to explain context and to clarify some details that I think you will find interesting. This is the interview with Eugenio Sosa.
Eugenio Sosa (interpreted):
I want to set out some key elements of the current political context that, from my perspective, have a direct impact on what may happen on November 28. They have a direct implication for those of us who are committed to a truly different country in Honduras. I’m going to elaborate on five or six points.
The first element is the characterization of the group that is governing the country and that is obviously seeking re-election in the electoral process. What is at stake in these elections? The first element that I want to highlight is, to what extent are people aware that this election is a competition, not with a simple right-wing party such as the National Party, but that is really a competition with a group that took over the National Party, and then took over the state, and, to a greater extent, the country. As one National Party supporter said back in the 1970s, the political elite were created in a crisis of decline, and that, now, this decline is most reflected in this current moment in the governing party. There was a generational shift in the National Party, and more young people are involved. But that actually led to a group leading the party that is really deeply linked to corruption networks, organized crime, with the same characteristics of an organized crime gang, that set up a government with dictatorial authoritarian characteristics. These types of governments normally, as Father Melo has said, do not leave power with votes only, but must be forced to leave power in different ways. So this is the group that we are up against, and they’re looking to stay in power. This group is supported and continues to be supported one way or another.
There are basically five or six main pillars of this support: First, networks of corruption and organized crime. They are implicated or form part of these groups. The second are the wealthy businessmen or women. But above all the banks. Without a doubt, I think that the wealthiest people in this country want the party to continue in power. The armed forces have also played an important role. The US State Department, and I won’t say the entire US government, but the US State Department, with its ambiguity, has been complicit in this government, and obviously with the darkest and most conservative sector of bipartisanism. That includes the National Party sector, but also an important part of the Liberal Party. The second pillar that is obviously another issue in this electoral dispute, is LIBRE. That, for me, isn’t just the LIBRE Party, but instead a type of coalition. The coalition is a group of some very progressive sectors, some that are identified with the left, others from more of a Liberal Party tradition, to even sectors of the right that are more moderate, and more right-wing, but really just don’t want to see this country continue declining. More or less, this is the spectrum that is part of the coalition, and it seems to me that the coalition headed by Xiomara Castro, isn’t just strictly left-leaning or headed in that direction. Instead, her candidacy is diverse, politically and ideologically. This is the group that is seeking to change the government.
This has an important contextual element. What foot does the National Party have to stand on when seeking re-election? There are more or less three elements that I’d like to highlight. The first is that the National Party faces an enormous problem. From my point of view, they can’t even get, at least according to different opinion polls, the number of votes that the National Party normally achieves. The National Party’s traditional votes, or the people that always vote for them, which, by the way, is the largest of any other party, that presidential candidate cannot retain those votes, because inside the same party, there is a lot of discontent. But the party is seeking to achieve all the votes from the people that have traditionally voted for them in the past elections, either by taking them to vote, or by getting votes from people that they have supported with jobs or economic support.
The second thing is that the National Party has a lot of money. A lot of money. Just recently, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration gave 1.3 billion lempiras that the National Party is distributing in cash, or in suitcases of money, handing out 7,000 lempiras, or 285 dollars per family. And obviously, the gift of money comes with the electoral commitments to the party. But it’s not just the Central American Bank for Economic Integration that is giving money, but also the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank, that have all granted loans to the government in the last few months. There is a large amount of money at play in this electoral process, in addition to at least 163 million dollars controlled by the Ministry of Social Development.
Karen Spring:
Okay, so this is an important point. All over several cities in Honduras, crowds are gathering outside banks. Dozens and dozens of people are making the lines. Just yesterday I drove by the main entrance of a mall located in front of the Tegucigalpa airport, and a long line of mostly women were standing waiting to get inside the mall. These long lines of people are the people receiving these payments that Eugenio Sosa refers to. The payments are from the government which is controlled by the National Party. So knowing that Honduras is months away from the elections, these international financial institutions are giving the government a ton of money to hand out to basically buy votes. This money is, by the way, Honduras taking on more public debt. In August and September of this year alone, the international financial institutions, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, have together given the Honduran government 279 million dollars for social assistance programs. Several millions of that chunk of money was supposed to go to victims of the back-to-back hurricanes from last year.
Outraged that these institutions were giving so much money to the government, knowing fully well that an election was less than three months away, the Citizen Forum, which is made up of Honduran human rights leaders and academics, wrote a public letter to President Dante Mossi of the Central American Bank for Economic Integration. It reads:
“It has become known that the Central American Bank for Economic Integration approved, to be dispersed immediately and without prior conditions, a loan to the Honduran government for 70 million [dollars], supposedly to help 234,500 affected families with 7,000 lempiras for emergencies. That may be a noble and perhaps necessary purpose, and such alone should be applauded were it not for the suspiciously announced disbursement of the money a few days before the November 28 elections. Logically, many of us conclude that, as has long been the custom of the ruling party, that that money will be distributed by political party activists to poor and needy people with the condition that they vote for said party. The individuals that have signed below energetically demand that the bank refrain from dispersing this loan, or at least suspend its disbursement if it is already happening, and thus already interfering in the Honduran elections. We call this to the attention of all citizens in general, to the international community, and the bank’s directors and the partners of the bank, so that they see the responsibility that the bank’s board of directors incur if the public crime that we anticipate in fact occurs.”
When I asked one of the leaders that signed on to the letter if they had received a response from the bank, he said, Yes, it wasn’t even worth reading. They just repeated the same line as always. To read that full letter to the bank, head to the Honduras Now Twitter feed or Facebook page. Now let’s get back to the interview with Eugenio Sosa.
Eugenio Sosa (interpreted):
All of this money from these international banks is being distributed widely, and with a lot of effort up until the day of the elections, distributing and seeking to buy votes. And, sure, we cannot forget that a fundamental part of the current context is that Honduras is drowning in poverty, drowning in unemployment, and a persistent poverty that obviously continues. The pandemic has made it worse, then the hurricanes, and now there are many families with enormous material needs.
The third point of support that the National Party has, other than money, is the campaign strategy they’re using. In reality, the National Party’s campaign is a campaign of hate. They are using the topic of anti-communism and the topic of abortion. What they are trying to do by discussing these topics are two things: Reaffirm the traditional votes that they receive, and also encouraging their traditional supporters by telling them that voting for them will stop communism. On the other hand, this hate campaign has a secondary effect, which is to prevent people from voting independently. The hate campaign seeks to stop important sectors of society that reject the re-election of the National Party, and that are very anti Juan Orlando Hernández and don’t really want this party to continue in power, from voting, out of fear.
Now, going back to the pillars that I mentioned, the third pillar that I want to discuss is where complication in the electoral process could occur. For me, I think the weakest link in this electoral process is the way that this central electoral authority, the National Electoral Council, or CNE, is conformed. The CNE has significant logistical problems. There have been changes in aspects of the electoral census. There are problems with the companies in charge of the technological aspects of the voting process. There have been internal disagreements. They have not presented a robust system to transmit electoral results from the voting tables. And, later, there were disagreements between the three CNE counselors in making decisions. There isn’t consensus, and instead, there are confrontations, like about the companies contracted for the electoral process or the way in which results will be transmitted.
Karen Spring:
The National Electoral Council, the CNE, is one of the two new electoral bodies. After the 2017 elections, the CNE was created, along with the Electoral Justice Tribunal, which hears cases about electoral-related disputes. The CNE has three counselors that head the institution, one from each of the three major parties, a representative named by the National Party, one by the Liberal Party, and the other by the LIBRE Party. This is the first time that LIBRE has had any representation inside the official electoral authority. So, to say the least, the CNE is a politicized electoral institution. For a decision to be made about almost anything related to the electoral process, two of the three counselors must be in agreement. What has been happening is the LIBRE Party is on one side of an issue, the National Party representative on the other side, and the Liberal Party representative goes back and forth as a tiebreaker. The big question is, what political force will dominate? The governing party with support from the Liberal Party representative? Or will the Liberal Party representative side with the LIBRE rep in case of a dispute?
Eugenio Sosa (interpreted):
The CNE representative appointed by the National Party didn’t support the inscription of the alliance between Xiomara Castro and Salvador Nasralla. After, with two votes against and one in favor, the three CNE counselors rejected the inscription of Roberto Contreras, a popular candidate for mayor in the city of San Pedro Sula. So the CNE’s political confirmation is the weakest link.
But also you have to watch carefully what the Liberal Party representative does inside the CNE. Initially, many thought that the Liberal Party would more or less maintain a close alliance with the LIBRE position inside the CNE. But, in reality, with the decision not to accept the candidate for mayor in San Pedro Sula, that tells us there is a dangerous scheme happening. This could cause a crisis inside the CNE, and this is a significant controversy over electoral results. So the CNE is the weakest link, because one of the things that could happen is that if the National Party feels like it’s losing the elections, it could provoke an anticipated or early electoral crisis, either early in the same electoral process, or a crisis at the moment that the tables are counted, or at the moment that the results are electronically sent from the voting tables to the central headquarters in Tegucigalpa.
And we must remember, for those that don’t know, there is a law in the Honduran constitution that says, if the CNE has problems in counting the results, or if there’s a controversy, the National Congress could declare the institution not apt to count the electoral results, and it could attribute that responsibility to the Congress itself, or to finish the vote counting and later declare a winner as seen by Congress. If it got to this, it really would be terrible.
Another relevant aspect of the current context is the role of the high ranks of the Honduran military. What will be the role of the military’s high level officials in these elections? Currently, the high level officials in the military remain faithful to Hernández and to the National Party. They have demonstrated that by recently traveling to Nicaragua with Hernández to sign an agreement with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to recognize the maritime borders between Honduras and Nicaragua. And even though there’s a general uneasiness at the middle and lower ranks, the question is, if there is a crisis, which side will the military leaders support? My personal opinion is that they will not be happy with a LIBRE government. They will not be in agreement with a woman or Xiomara as their commander. This most likely scenario is that they will support a continuation of the National Party, because, other than holding the responsibilities of past political crises on their shoulders, just look at what they did in 2009, and also in 2017.
For me, the position of the United States isn’t totally clear. Some say that the US is developing a more flexible position. It seems like they would accept that there could be clear election results. But we are haunted by the nefarious ghost of US chargé d’affaires Heide Fulton, who endorsed the 2017 fraud for the US. Also, now the United States plays a rather ambiguous role, where on one hand, they criticize corruption, but then appear to fully back Juan Orlando Hernández and his government.
Karen Spring:
Just this weekend on November 21 to November 23, Brian Nichols, the US Assistant Secretary for Western Hemispheric Affairs in the State Department, was in Tegucigalpa. The purpose of his visit was “to guarantee transparent, free, fair, and peaceful elections that reflect the will of the people.” [link?] Nichols and his team met with the Honduran Minister of Defense, the Minister of Security, the head of the Honduran military, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Honduran Ambassador to the US, amongst others. Is this a sign that the US wants to avoid another 2017 electoral crisis?
Was this trip simply a response to the US Congressional letter signed by 13 US senators and 16 Congressional Representatives, and sent to the US Secretary of State on November 17, demanding transparent, free and peaceful elections? I guess time will tell.
Eugenio Sosa (interpreted):
And, finally, I want to say that Honduran citizens still feel a lot of uncertainty. They are convinced that there will be a victory, that the alliance or opposition coalition will win, but that they have enormous doubts that the group in power will accept a defeat. And above all, that the government will try to continue in power if the election results are close. There are enormous doubts that the opposition will have the political power to force a recognition of the results, and enormous doubts about having the political force to force the government party to accept the results. Close to 50% of the population think that there will be fraud, that think that the election results won’t be accepted, that think that there will be an eruption of protests, and that, obviously, there’ll be a lot of repression throughout the country. And, well, this makes one believe that there will be a post-electoral crisis similar or worse than the one we had in 2017. This is the context of the elections. And as I said before, I didn’t speak about the state of the economy or how poverty and employment are, but instead the elements that directly influence the political context.
Karen Spring:
That was sociologist Eugenio Sosa, in a presentation organized by the Honduran diaspora in the United States. I will post a full link to his presentation in the show notes.
As elections are just around the corner, I’m gearing up to receive an international electoral observation mission coordinated by the US organization, Global Exchange, together with the Honduran think tank, the Center for Democracy Studies, or CESPAD by its acronym. I will be one of the point people on the ground, assisting the electoral observation mission and then kicking into full gear should another electoral crisis take place. I certainly hope this isn’t the case. But if it is, doing post-electoral crisis work normally involves documenting human rights issues and violations, going to jails to see people that are arrested for protesting, checking in with any protesters injured in the hospitals, and, of course, trying to put everything that is happening into English and getting it out via social media.
You can follow what’s happening moment-to-moment on my Twitter feed at Honduras Now. As always, show notes will be posted at HondurasNow.org.
Thanks, everyone, for the support, especially to my sponsors and my donors. My podcast hosting service doesn’t actually let me see who donates. But thanks to each and every one. Some folks have written with specific episode requests, and I love getting the requests and hope to get to the recent ones as soon as we get over this electoral hump. Keep sending more.
That’s the show for today. Stay tuned for more about the elections. And, as always, hasta pronto.