By Tomás Andino Mencía
The original article in Spanish can be found at criterio.hn here
** A quick and rough translation **
Through a resounding and irreversible electoral outcome of 53%, according to the last report from the National Electoral Council (CNE, by its initials in Spanish), the victory of Xiomara Castro to become President of Honduras marks a milestone that, in historic terms, closes the dark period that began with the coup of June 28, 2009 and opens a new stage in which the popular majorities are placing high expectations, but whose real nature has yet to be defined. This victory of the coalition led by the LIBRE Party has generated high hopes that Honduras will switch over the coming two months of transition from a conservative government to a government of “democratic socialism” as it has been defined by Xiomara Castro. But will that really be the case? It all depends. Let’s take an objective look at the numbers.
What Was Won
In a country where, historically, the rate of abstention has been from 40% to 50%, on this occasion 68% of eligible voters participated, with 32% abstaining. In its update of November 29, the CNE reported that Xiomara Castro had a 20-point lead, with 51.45% of the ballets counted. According to its report, Xiomara received 53.61% of the votes, followed by Nasry Asfura, of the governing National Party, with 33.87%, and Yani Rosenthal, candidate of the once-thriving Liberal Party, with 9.21%. These results were close to those of several exit polls done the same day. (For example, the Synopsis polling company forecast 52% for Xiomara, 39% for Tito Asfura, and 9% for Rosenthal.) This result, which the final counts are only confirming, shows an overwhelming victory of the opposition coalition over the incumbent party at the presidential level.
In municipal elections the coalition has so far won 189 of the 298 races for mayor (63%). Even more significant was the catastrophic blow delivered to the governing party in the race for mayor of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, once a stronghold of the National Party where historically it had won seven of nine elections. On this occasion it collapsed with 25 to 30% of the votes compared to LIBRE’s 40 to 50%. The National Party suffered a similar crushing defeat in San Pedro Sula, the second largest city. In fact, the candidates of the governing party publicly acknowledged their defeat and congratulated the mayor-elects of the opposition.
This means that the coalition has an overwhelming correlation of forces in these two elective levels, which gives it the capacity to take measures from the presidential and mayoral levels that impact the well-being of the population, with which it will be able to have direct contact.
What Was Won to a Limited Extent
This victory was less resounding in the National Congress, though it was sufficiently positive to at least prevent the governing party from continuing to manage the state as it pleases.
This state power was controlled for almost all of the 20th Century and this part of the 21st by an alliance between the National Party and the Liberal Party that allowed it to easily hold an absolute majority of more than 50% of the representatives. On this occasion the trend indicates that this strategic control has been broken: The party in power won 42 seats and the Liberal Party won 20, while the Christian Democrats and the PAC, also allied with the National Party, won one seat each, for a total of 64 seats. That is, for the first time in the history of Honduras the dominance of the two main parties lost its usual majority in the Congress together with its lesser allies, and as a result has lost the strength it needs to pass or defeat legislation, do constitutional reforms, and appoint other organs of the state. In this sense, Honduras has been saved from continuing down its road to the abyss in the short and medium terms.
Though the count is not yet final, the trend reported by El Libertador in its December 1 edition is that LIBRE won 50 seats and the PSH won 12, that is, 62 seats for the coalition. To these must be added some 10 seats of the Liberal Opposition Alliance (which does not support Yani Rosenthal) to make a subtotal of 72. This would give the coalition the numbers necessary to assure a simple majority, with which it could implement the most important decisions that it offered in its governance plan and obtain the budget needed for that, so long as LIBRE’s allies join forces with it. With that happening, a part of the status quo that the National Party built would see its days numbered, and in that way the order established since the coup can be undone, at least partially.
However, this relation of forces means that, to appoint the Directing Committee of the National Congress next year, as well as a new Supreme Court of Justice, Department of Justice, and High Court of Auditors close to the opposition coalition, it would need the votes of the 12 Liberal Party seats that are loyal to Yani, who has acted as an ally of cachurequismo, and even then would still lack some votes. In that sense, the lack of a more ample majority is the principal bottleneck facing the government of the coalition in dismantling the regime completely and bringing the mafiosos to justice.
Conclusions
In brief, the results of this election have meant an important advance in four ways:
1. The people, with its massive electoral expression, have ended the shameful dictatorship that was imposed by the 2009 coup, having removed from the executive branch and the majority of municipal governments the criminal mafia that plunged the country into the most shameful obscurantism of the last 50 years.
2. In the short run the coalition will be able, by executive power, to restrain the application of legislation that is currently in force that is favorable to the darkest interests of the oligarchy and the mafias of organized crime, because it is able to change the personnel of key posts in the governmental bureaucracy that serves the interests of those mafia groups.
3. The traditional two parties suffered an historic defeat that keeps them from having the majority in the National Congress needed to continue passing laws and budgetary provisions with which they suck up public funds for their dirty corrupt schemes, continue benefiting the groups of economic power, and surrender national sovereignty.
4. The opposition coalition has strong possibilities for gaining a majority in the National Congress that would permit it to govern.
But there are serious challenges for the coalition:
1. In the short term the winning coalition will face its moment of greatest risk, given that the currently governing party and the dark side of the Liberal Party hold, during this period of transition, the power of the executive branch, the legislative branch, the municipal governments, and the armed forces, and for several months longer the Supreme Court of Justice, the Department of Justice, and the High Court of Audits, for which reason it can be expected in those months that the oligarchy will use this advantage to carry out a massive looting of the public institutions, destroy evidence, and also block and put in check the government on several fronts.
2. The simple majority won by the coalition in the Congress is fragile because it depends on all of its members of Congress remaining firm and on the support of members of the Liberal Party who do not have a natural commitment to it. It should be taken into account that the practice of buying votes by the government is a risk that in the past has caused important losses for the opposition.
3. The coalition will not be able to count on a sufficient majority in the Congress and for that reason may find itself unable to dismantle the judicial architecture and the neoliberal capitalist model that was constructed during 12 years of the coup regime and that functions for the benefit of the ruling oligarchy and mafias. This carries the risk that the coalition will be tempted to diminish the expectations of its plans to soften that bottleneck in the Congress, which would worsen conditions for the population and reduce, over the long run, its own political support.
What To Do
The first thing is to abandon the bad practices of under-the-table deals and secret meetings with the governing party that have become customary, because there is no scope whatsoever for trusting the oligarchy. These practices can put at risk the alliance that has been forged up to now and would endanger the fragile majority in the Congress.
The second is that, in this period of transition from the old to the new government, the coalition must organize careful watching of the public institutions to expose and stop their being looted by the departing government. The workers and neighbors of those institutions can be organized to sound the alarm in the event of lootings.
The third, of top priority, is that, once the new government is in office, it consults the people that gave it victory, by implementing procedures of mass participation that allow it to have the people as an ally to confront the state bureaucracy, the legislative branch, and the conservative groups which will certainly take the offensive to put the new government in check. Only by means of a powerful mobilization and organizing of the people in support of the causes that reflect their interests will the conservative mafia be able to be defeated and the reigning order of things be able to be broken. To achieve this the people must be called to participate in participatory procedures like plebiscites, referendums, open town halls, and, above all, in a continual and growing mobilization in support of its historic causes, a process in which it will naturally be able to identify as its principal enemy the retrograde forces in the Congress and in the rest of the central and municipal state institutions.
The fourth is for the coalition to use the advantage of its simple majority in the Congress, in the executive branch, and in the municipal governments to take measures that directly alleviate the social and economic crises that the majority of people are suffering, especially measures to deliver the population from the paralysis in which it has been left by corruption, the pandemic, and the hurricanes. It is critical to deliver tangible and visible achievements to the population and to not give in to pressure to prioritize helping the business leaders.
The fifth is to use the power delegated by the people to the government to stop repression by the armed forces and national and municipal polices forces, thereby enabling the people to mobilize freely. For this it is necessary to immediately restructure the main levels of command in the armed institutions to prevent even a military coup.
The sixth is to get free, over the long run, of the straitjacket of the existing political institutions, especially the bottleneck of the National Congress, beginning with resisting the temptation to give priority to negotiations that end up ignoring the causes that interest the people, and over the mid term, begin the process of calling an Original Constitutional Assembly that directly consults the Sovereign and that becomes a democratic institution with the powers needed to do away with the current laws that are hindering changes.
In sum, a government that wants to benefit the people will not be able to do it with the old conciliatory political practices, with the ancient existing state machinery, and in the absence of popular participation. A new kind of state is needed in which the popular masses are the protagonists. Only if measures like this are taken will the new government be able to break beyond the limits that the oligarchic political model has imposed on it to govern and imagine another possible Honduras. Otherwise, the people will eventually become disappointed and the correlation of forces that is supporting it will be lost.