Caribbean & Central America - August 2017 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Former president (2006-2009) and left-wing opposition leader Manuel Zelaya has confirmed that his electoral alliance would seek to install a constituent assembly if it won the November general election. “It’s one of the points within our proposal, to rethink the constitution”, his colleague Belinda Martínez acknowledged, stressing that there would be a proper process including a prior public referendum. She expressed confidence that Hondurans would be supportive, noting that the existing 1982 constitution contains “many contradictions that allow for its constant violation”.

This may or may not have been a veiled reference to the April 2015 supreme court (CSJ) ruling to declare ‘inapplicable’, on human rights grounds, one of the ‘untouchable’ constitutional articles prohibiting presidential re-election. It was this very same article that the CSJ had previously invoked as justification for the removal of Zelaya in 2009 over his effort to hold a non-binding ‘consultation’ to ask voters if they would like a referendum to approve a constituent assembly.

President Juan Orlando Hernández is now availing himself of the 2015 ruling in a bid for a second term in November, much to the chagrin of Zelaya. Initially, Zelaya had vowed that if Hernández opted to run again then he too would also cast his hat in the ring, in protest at the supreme court ruling. The reality, however, is that Zelaya is not popular and probably unelectable. Instead, his newish leftist party, Libertad y Refundación (Libre), has joined with the traditional left-wing Partido Innovación y Unidad (Pinu) and the also-new Partido Anticorrupción (PAC) to form the Alianza de Oposición contra la Dictadura, which is fielding as its candidate the PAC leader and third placed 2013 presidential contender, Salvador Nasralla. A well-known TV personality, Nasralla is more popular than Zelaya (or his wife Xiomara Castro, who ran for Libre in 2013 and initially was touted to run again this year), and polls have indicated that he is the best-placed candidate on the Left to challenge the right-wing conservative Hernández, of the traditional Partido Nacional (PN). The other main presidential contender is former university rector Luis Zelaya, who is running for the country’s other traditional party, Partido Liberal (PL, Zelaya’s former party).

As per the Alianza’s plan, if Nasralla were to be elected in November, his government would be a mere transition administration, pending the drafting of a new constitution. Martínez was at pains to emphasise that the Alianza was not aiming for the ‘Venezuelisation’ of Honduras and was merely focused on the country’s needs. “Our policy is for Honduras, we have seen the needs of the people, this is why we are suggesting these reforms. The Honduran people are ready, and this could generate the well-being so needed here. Currently there is no work, young people only aspire to leave the country”, she noted.

However, the PN was quick to pounce, noting Zelaya’s continued alignment with Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, including his strong declarations of support for Maduro’s (internationally-contested) new constituent assembly. Congress president Mauricio Oliva (PN) accused Zelaya of wanting to make the Honduran legislature “disappear” and criticised him for “more of the same”. Certainly, Zelaya appears unable to get past this permanent insistence on the need for wholesale constitutional change in Honduras. While some reform almost certainly is required, there is little indication that Hondurans themselves have any appetite for a brand-new magna carta, and there is a strong degree of rejection, not least in the powerful private business sector, towards any left-wing constituent assembly initiative.

• Hernández ahead

Since last year, polls have consistently put Juan Orlando Hernández out front in the presidential race, and his re-election appears almost certain, amid economic recovery and some improvements in citizen security. The Alianza’s bid for a constituent assembly is quite likely to reinforce conservative support for Hernández, while Manuel Zelaya’s defiantly radical left-wing rhetoric may push moderate voters towards the PL instead, which offers a more conventional alternative.