Honduras Election 2005:

Honduras: New Electoral Law is systematically abused

None of the five parties participating in the Honduran elections has published its campaign budget

By Eva Rasmussen

01. September 2005

Equality, transparency and honesty are the basic principles at the foundation of the new Electoral Law in Honduras that is presently being put to the test in the election campaign scheduled to conclude on 27 November, when a president, the members of parliament and the country’s mayors will be elected. 

The general assay has already been carried out, and results are not encouraging. When earlier this year the two largest parties (Liberal and National) held primary elections for the first time in the history of this Central American nation, they systematically abused the law, as is documented by the Centre for Human Rights Research and Promotion in Honduras (CIPROE, by its initials in Spanish).

"The primary election was intended to broaden the spectrum, so new faces would emerge in Honduran politics, and it did actually create a bit of movement. However, we were unable to break with the old tradition that it is party bosses, the elite, that appoints the candidates", says journalist Thelma Mejía, a CIPROE researcher and independent consultant to MS in Central America. 

The presidential candidates

"Both candidates for the presidency in the two big parties, the nationalist Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo and the liberal Manuel Zelaya, are guilty of breaking the new electoral law", Mejía continued. "For one, they started their campaign for the presidency before the established date. For another, they use anonymous advertisements. However, the Supreme Electoral Court, which by law should penalise them, hasn’t done a thing about it." 

The candidate of the governing party, Pepe Lobo, not only has broken the electoral law, but also disregards the Constitution, which says that the president of the legislative branch, or parliament, is ineligible to run for president. 

"Lobo is president of the Congress and yet he refuses to resign, arguing that he was elected president before the Electoral Law and the pertinent clause in the Constitution were passed. Thus he claims that his retirement from Congress would be a retroactive interpretation of the law. This was duly accepted by the Electoral Court", Mejía told us.

With few exceptions, the primaries did not contribute to the emergence of new faces on the Honduran political scene. By law any Honduran may choose to run for office, but in practice it isn’t that way. In order to have any chance of being elected a candidate needs a party structure and money. And quite a bit of it, too. CIPROE research shows that the twelve groups that participated in the National Party primaries alone spent some six million dollars on their campaigns. 

However, this has not been officially confirmed. "None of the political parties has made their campaign accounts public. Although by law they are not obliged to so, it draws attention that thus far not a single party has chosen to publish information regarding campaign-related expenses", adds Thelma Mejía.

Quota of women

In response to pressure from women’s organisations the new electoral law establishes that thirty percent of all candidates must be women. However, no party has complied with this regulation. In some provinces there is not a single woman candidate. 

By law this should cost the parties five percent of the state subsidy to their electoral campaigns, but again, the Electoral Court has chosen to do nothing, claiming that this aspect of the law has been introduced on too short notice for the parties to fill thirty percent of their slates with women. 

A number of feminist organisations grouped together and have introduced a claim before the National Human Rights Commission and the Public Ministry against electoral officials for neglect of duty and discrimination in their failure to comply with the law. 

Pastors in politics

For the first time in Honduras pastors form part of the list of candidates, not as an outcome of the new Electoral Law, but by blithely ignoring the Constitution, which states that to be elected candidates must belong “to the secular state”. 

"Nonetheless, the Electoral Court has allowed has allowed these evangelical pastors to run for office", Thelma Mejía relates, adding that it would appear the country is moving ever closer to becoming a theocratic state: "These evangelical pastors exert influence upon a lot of people."

Campaign themes

No party has introduced a political programme going much deeper than their campaign slogans. 

"For the National Party the main issue is security. As is the case in Guatemala and El Salvador, Honduras has serious problems with youth gangs. Porfirio Lobo, the presidential candidate of the National Party, now in office, wants to deal with them by sheer repression, to such an extent that he is proposing the reintroduction of the death penalty," reported Thelma Mejía. 

"For his part, the liberal Manuel Zelaya tries to present himself as a humanist with a citizen empowerment programme, but it is not very specific. Both favour the free trade agreement with the United States, and each accuses the other of corruption."

According to the latest polls the two are running neck-to-neck. However, Lobo is on better footing with the media than Zelaya. He is more open and is willing to go to a radio talk programme, no matter how small the radio station or limited the audience, while Zelaya is more aloof, almost inaccessible, and interested only in the big media outlets.