Caribbean & Central America - June 2013 (ISSN 1741-4458)

The supreme electoral court (TSE) officially called the scheduled 2013 general election on 23 May, six months before polling day on 24 November. Latest polls put the left-wing newcomer Xiomara Castro ahead, but the only certainty is that this contest promises to be unusual compared with the country’s recent democratic history, in which the two traditional parties have alternated in power.

Nine parties will compete in the 2013 election, four of which have emerged in the aftermath of the June 2009 coup d’état. Along with the ruling Partido Nacional  (PN), the other main traditional Partido Liberal (PL), and the smaller parties Unificación Democrática (UD), Partido Innovación y Unidad (PINU) and Democracia Cristiana (DC); the 2013 list includes four new outfits: Partido Libertad y Refundación (Libre), Frente Amplio Político Electoral en Resistenica (Faper), Partido Anticorrupción (PAC) and Alianza Patriótica Hondureña (Alianza).

Libre, the new political outfit of ousted president Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009), has been ahead in the polls all year with its presidential candidate, Zelaya’s wife Xiomara Castro. Castro ran as Libre’s consensus candidate in the 18 November 2012 open national primaries and won more votes (over 500,000) than any other candidate, taking 22% at the national level. The turnout for the primaries was a high 2.3m, or 56% of the local electorate of 4.1m (a further 1.0m voters live abroad, mostly in the US). Impressively, that almost matched the turnout in the previous November 2009 general election - 2.5m - itself a new record in Honduras.

The latest Cid/Gallup poll, published on 16 May shows Castro remains the current favourite, with 28% of voting intentions. In second place with 21% was the TV personality and sports commentator, Salvador Nasralla, who is running the PAC. The ruling PN’s candidate, congress president Juan Orlando Hernández, is third with 18%, followed by the PL’s Mauricio Villeda, the son of ex president Ramón Villeda (1957-1963), on 14%.  Notably, 19% of the 1,200 respondents surveyed in 16 of the country’s 18 departments were undecided/didn’t answer. The survey also had a high margin of error - 5%.

The big question is whether the support expressed for the new parties will translate into votes on the day. Despite Castro’s performance in the primaries, Libre has never contested an election and lacks the resources and established party machinery of the two traditional parties. For this reason on paper Castro is still considered an outside bet by some local political analysts. For instance, between them the PN and the PL still accounted for two thirds of the valid vote in the primaries, with the PN, despite fielding seven candidates in all, taking just over 40% overall.

Between now and November both parties will avail of their strong local provincial networks and their well-established electoral machinery. The PN administers 17 of the 18 departments, giving it a big advantage. Mauricio Villeda, the winning PL candidate, put in a strong showing in the primaries in those very rural areas Libre is targeting, taking up to nine departments. Villeda is currently touring the country, proffering a ‘sensible’ alternative to the current PN administration. Although the PL, formerly Zelaya’s party, was badly damaged in the aftermath of the 2009 coup and lost some support to Libre, since anointing Villeda as its 2013 candidate the PL has sought to recover itself and coalesce around its candidate, to little effect to date if the polls are to be believed.  

In stark contrast the presumptive frontrunner Xiomara Castro is nowhere to be seen, having been laid up for over a month following a recent knee operation. In her absence, her husband Mel has been the face of the campaign, but his radical and polarising rhetoric may remind some Hondurans just how divisive he was as president. Zelaya was a fairly unpopular figure at the time of his removal and his radical left-wing politics may alienate moderate voters disaffected with the PN and the PL. While the majority of Hondurans (disenfranchised and impoverished) clearly want change, this is by nature a conservative country; Bolivarian Socialism, which looks to be crumbling in the wake of the death of its founder, the late Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), may not have the shiny appeal it once did. Hernández was clear in a tour of his native Lempira on 9 June that the Left  - i.e. Libre - “doesn’t even believe in God”.  For good measure, he added that the PL was now in the hands of Libre, hinting that the two would eventually forge an electoral alliance dominated by Libre. This has been mooted for a while and arguably the two parties need each other – Libre could do with the PL’s party machinery and resources across the country; while despite Villeda’s best efforts, the PL needs a stronger candidate.

Given that Hernández has the support of President Porfirio Lobo and all the advantages of the incumbency, it seems surprising that he has polled weakly to date. There are a few potential reasons for this. First, his association with the unpopular Lobo may do him no favours. Second, his bullish performance as congress leader has raised questions as to his democratic credentials. Some critics would say his tendencies lean towards the autocratic. Third – and this is key  – he still lacks the full support of the PN, which remains badly riven between a top faction backing Hernández and a base faction (Salvemos Honduras), which includes many of the party’s provincial leaders, united around Ricardo Álvarez, the mayor of Tegucigalpa. Álvarez, who alleged fraud in the primaries, is seeking a ruling by the TSE allowing him to run as the PN’s ‘presidential designate’ in November. This worsening split in the PN has partially prevented the party from getting its campaign underway.

• Electoral alliance

Unificación Democrática (UD) and Frente Amplio Político Electoral en Resistenica (Faper) have formed an electoral alliance for the November race, fielding Andrés Pavón as their presidential candidate. Pavón is trailing way back in the polls. César Ham, the UD’s 2009 presidential candidate (he came third and was put in charge of the national agrarian institute by President Lobo), will run for the senate in November.

• Insecurity

In the Cid/Gallup poll, 26% of respondents cited insecurity and crime as their main concern, while 27% cited unemployment, which currently afflicts 1.8m Hondurans, up from 1.1m when Lobo took office in January 2010. On 3 June Security Minister Arturo Corrales announced the intervention of the two main anti-crime and investigative units run by the national police, Dirección Nacional de Investigación Criminal (DNIC) and Dirección Nacional de Servicios Especiales de Investigación (DNSEI). The two will be merged into a new Fuerza de Tarea Policial de Investigacion (FTPI), under the helm of Police Commissioner Alex Villanueva Meza, the current DNSEI head. Corrales alleged that the DNIC was institutionally corrupt and filtering information to organised crime. The US embassy signalled its support for the controversial move.