Caribbean & Central America - November 2009 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Porfirio 'Pepe' Lobo Sosa, the presidential candidate for the opposition Partido Nacional (PN) is the firm favourite to win the 29 November vote.   He may also have the final say over the restitution of the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya.

In a national 13-19 October survey of 1,420 adults, 59% of respondents (or three of every five), expected Lobo, of the traditional Partido Nacional (PN), to win the presidential race. Lobo only barely lost the last election to Zelaya in a heavily contested vote in 2006. The poll also indicated that the PN now has more public support than the ruling Partido Liberal (PL) for the first time since 2003 (50% vs. 48%). It is also slated to do well at the municipal level: the PN's mayoral Ricardo Alvarez is on 47% support in the capital Tegucigalpa.

Meanwhile the PL, Zelaya's party, still in power under the de facto president Roberto Micheletti, has been splintered by the 28 June coup d'etat, with party supporters not fully united behind its presidential candidate, Elvin Santos.

Lobo, who along with Santos voted in congress on 28 June to remove Zelaya following his forcible ouster and removal from the country by the armed forces, clearly has most to gain from international recognition of the pending elections, which in late October prompted speculation that he had reached an under-the-table deal with the US state department's Tom Shannon to ensure Zelaya's restitution under the US-brokered Tegucigalpa-San José Accord (see previous story). The PN, which controls 55 seats in the 128-seat congress, could muster the 65 votes necessary to “reverse the coup" with the support of the 11 deputies representing smaller parties.

The congressional leader of the main opposition Partido Nacional (PN), Rodolfo Irí­as Navas, said on 5 November that the PN would vote as one bloc on the issue of Zelaya's restitution. That may well be, but Lobo and the PN may not want to risk losing votes by taking responsibility for what even a heavily constrained Zelaya might try to do if returned to power before the elections. The failure of the Tegucigalpa-San José accord to enforce a timeframe on congress to reach its decision means that it will probably delay the vote until after the elections. Congress is in recess, and so an extraordinary session is needed.

Lobo and Santos have trodden a very fine line over the crisis but their antipathy to Zelaya has been clear. Like the de facto government, both men argued strongly that the elections were convoked prior to the coup and that therefore they should be seen as separate from the coup. Lobo has campaigned without reference to Zelaya, focusing on bread and butter and security issues. Zelaya's remaining supporters, grouped under the Frente Nacional de la Resistencia, comprising trade unionists, teachers, women's groups and other civil society groups, insist that the issue of constitutional reform is not off the agenda. Lobo has not ruled out tackling constitutional reform down the line, but he is firm in that the 'artí­-culos petréos' which prevent presidential re-election and ringfence the constitution itself, cannot be touched. A traditional centre right politician, he might, for political closure, take Honduras out of Venezuelan-led regional leftist alliance, Alternativa Bolivariana para las Americas (Alba), although this would presumably mean the loss of its benefits under Petrocaribe (under which Venezuela provides discount oil and other financial support to its allies).