Lobo's solution to inaugural illegitimacy...

is to deny that either Roberto Micheletti or President Zelaya has any role in the process.

As a story in Tiempo, published December 23, puts it:

The President elect, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, affirmed yesterday that the person who should hand over the presidencial sash next January 27, the day on which he will assume power, should be the president of the National Congress.

[El presidente electo, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, afirmó ayer que quien deberá entregarle la banda presidencial el próximo 27 de enero, día en que asumirá el poder, debería ser el presidente del Congreso Nacional.]

Most interesting is his rationale: he says that passing on the power of the presidency is legally the business of the legislature.

This is historically, technically accurate: see the surreal photo in the story in the Nuevo Diario, published January 27, 2006, showing then-congressional head Roberto Micheletti investing President Zelaya with the presidential sash.

But that isn't the whole story, of course. As coverage at the time emphasized, the acts of inauguration mark the passage of power from the previous president to the newly elected one.

Lobo still has this difficulty to solve: while he can duck being given the regalia of power by Micheletti, he still has to be deemed to be receiving power from the previous president.

So who is that? All of the world-- including those few governments that have declared the November elections legitimate-- recognize José Manuel Zelaya Rosales as the legal, constitutional president of Honduras. The Honduran Congress, whose president will place the sash of office on him, twice voted otherwise, asserting that Roberto Micheletti is now the constitutional president. Lobo himself may wish this would go away as a problem-- but it is hard to see how.

And in Honduras, the previous president is expected to give his support to the transfer of power, attending the inauguration. In 2006, the mere rumor that the departing president, Ricardo Maduro, would not attend the inauguration was newsworthy, so much so that the official coverage remarked on his presence:

The exiting Honduran president, Ricardo Maduro, who initially called into question his attendance at the investiture of Zelaya in response to rumors that he would be received with boos, finally confirmed his presence and assured that he would do it "with his head held high".

[El presidente hondureño saliente, Ricardo Maduro, quien en un inicio puso en duda su asistencia a la investidura de Zelaya ante los rumores de que sería recibido con silbidos, confirmó finalmente su presencia y aseguró que lo hará "con la frente muy en alto".]

What we have here is an attempt to argue that the symbolic investiture is the important thing. But pragmatically, practically, the transfer of power is what the symbols are supposed to represent. Power-- which we should remember requires control, authority, and legitimacy-- is what is at issue here, and where the next president's power comes from is going to remain a problem.

As an anthropologist, I know that symbols matter, so having Micheletti out of the picture frame is important. But politically, Lobo remains trapped with no acceptable answer to the question, whose power is he going to receive on January 27?

[Thanks to chela for the heads' up on this story that I might otherwise have overlooked in a comment on a previous post].

PS: The little trip down memory lane to find a photo of the investiture of President Zelaya in 2006 also produced this interesting tidbit:

Thousands of Hondurans filled the National Stadium in Tegucigalpa, with a capacity of some 40,000 persons, to witness the passage of command from the exiting government official, Ricardo Maduro, of the National Party, to Manuel Zelaya, of the Liberal Party, both conservatives.

Miles de hondureños llenan el Estadio Nacional de Tegucigalpa, con aforo para unas 40.000 personas, para presenciar el traspaso de mando del gobernante saliente, Ricardo Maduro, del Partido Nacional, a Manuel Zelaya, del Partido Liberal, ambos conservadores.

A useful reality check in the face of over a year of propaganda, leading up to, facilitating, and then justifying the coup d'etat.

TSE announces 61.3% Participation; other estimates range lower

(Corrected at 8 AM EST) The Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) headed by Saul Escobar, reported in national broadcast at 10:00 pm, that turnout was 61.3%. He also reported they had preliminary, unaudited, results, from about 8,600 polling places (out of 15,300), that they had counted 1.7 million votes for all offices so far.

However, these were unaudited results because the system they had set up to verify the numbers transmitted by cell phone, which appears to have been to make a digital recording of the call, failed, so they have not been able to check that the numbers digitized and entered into the vote counting computers matched the numbers called in by the various polling places.

The TSE is spinning this turnout as just what you would expect given the recent trends, which they said was in line with a 6% per election decline in each of the last several elections, even though this is a supposed increase.

Already, La Prensa reports in their Minute by Minute column a turnout of 61.3 % which would be an increase, not a decrease, from the previous election. This would lead one to expect approximately 2.8 million votes.

So, what does this mean in terms of legitimacy of the election and effectiveness of the call for boycott by the Frente de Resistencia? Even by the TSE's numbers, which are unaudited and preliminary, and don't match with press reports, that's a 38.7% abstention rate.

The TSE had hired a polling firm to do exit polling. They presented a report the TSE conference as well. They sampled 1000 polling places (of the 15300) and reported only a 47.6% participation rate (at a 98% confidence level). This report is more in line with what the Frente de Resistencia. The polling firm further reported they saw a 7% decline in voting over 2005. The results reported by the TSE are based on their sample precincts.

Thus we can expect a great deal of interpretation being projected into the void.

El Tiempo, in a story projecting Pepe Lobo as winner, reported that the TSE had counted 570,954 votes from 4159 polling places "selected strategically to have the tendency in all the country". This is a sample of 27.2% of the planned polling places. While it would not scale directly (since other polling places could have larger numbers of voters) it is curious to see 1/3 of the polls yield only 500,000 votes, and still have claims for 62% turnout, which would project 2.8 million votes overall.

This would be implied by the turnout estimate Bloomberg reports, citing TSE magistrate Danny Matamoros (although it is unclear when Matamoros made this statement, whether before the 10 PM announcement over radio that we report on here, or after). Matamoros is widely quoted as claiming long lines of voters led to the indelible ink running out, which makes him seem rather invested in portraying this as a huge electoral turnout. As in most elections, we are likely to need to wait sometime for official figures, and meanwhile, unofficial claims will likely be taken up and repeated as if they were established facts.

The next thing to watch for are reports of the differences between votes cast and valid votes, to detect any effect from deliberate null voting.

For now, if the TSE's approved exit polling projection reported at 10 PM can be taken at face value (rather than the unsupported claim made at the same time), there was no massive turnout of Honduran voters yearning to use the ballot box to move beyond the coup. At best, there was a continuation of the long-established gradual discouragement of eligible voters about the worth of voting, which we have previously suggested is itself a kind of unorganized protest against elected government.

But it is also reasonable to propose that there was a measurable effect from the campaign to boycott the vote, whether we use Boz's numbers (and say that about 100,000 voters stayed home in protest) or suggest a different target number would have been reasonable in such a politicized election year.

That the results would favor Porfirio Lobo was never in question. The actual numbers are unvailable on the TSE website as of 8 am this morning, and the website for vitural observers that gave access to the cameras, is not broadcasting images of the count.

So much for the TSE's promise that they had a triple backup system that would prevent any delays in delivering the results. They made the results official without having actually successfully counted the votes.
RNS and RAJ

Shoddy reporting or more lies from the VOA?

A story posted today on the Voice of America website manages to perpetuate two major falsehoods in the space of just twelve paragraphs, and also fails to accurately represent the split between countries committed to recognizing tomorrow's vote and those that have publically declared they will not do so. Not a very good scorecard: 3 major problems in 12 paragraphs: barely 75% correct.

First, the story claims that

Both Mr. Lobo and Mr. Santos support Mr. Zelaya's removal from power

Yet both Elvin Santos and Pepe Lobo have maintained a (largely unconvincing) claim not to have supported the coup. Lobo has, in campaigning, been quoted as saying once elected he will reach out to Zelaya.

Then, even worse, the story says

Both candidates also signed a pledge to respect the outcome of the vote and honor the constitutional ban on running for re-election. Mr. Zelaya was removed from office after pushing for a referendum to reconsider the ban.

To echo Greg Weeks, what would it take to get the media to stop repeating this inaccurate claim?

So, two outright incorrect statements. Then comes the misleading or incomplete report on recognition:

Brazil and Argentina have said they will not recognize the election because doing so would legitimize the coup. Costa Rica and Peru have suggested they are ready to recognize the vote.

Hmm. Now, who is missing from the list of countries that have said they will recognize the vote? I don't mean the US-- the previous paragraph says this has "divided Latin America", thus leaving the US position to one side. But what about the original statement by Panama's president Martinelli that has been widely trumpeted up till now?

And of course, the mention of Brazil and Argentina leaves out the explicit statement of Guatemala that it also will not recognize the election.

Is there something that links Panama and Guatemala (other than that they are Central American) that justifies not including them?

And of course, the entire Rio Group is on record as being opposed to the election. Do they have to come out, one by one, to be counted?

Reporting like this is inevitable, it seems. But it seems especially regrettable that it is coming from the VOA, which describes itself as

a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. Government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

and is widely recognized as speaking for the government.

"You don't punish the next guy"...

so says Shelley A. McConnell, described as "an assistant professor of government at St. Lawrence University and a former analyst at the Carter Center" in an article in the New York Times.

I beg to differ.

The "next guy" referred to here is the projected winner of the November 29 presidential election, who, if current polling holds, will almost certainly be Porfirio Lobo Sosa, of the National party. If he were without culpability in the current crisis, it might make sense to portray him as an innocent victim who should not be held responsible for what the architects of the coup wrought, or the intransigence of Roberto Micheletti that has blocked all attempted solutions.

But Pepe Lobo is more than the prospective presidential winner: he is a participant in the vote on June 28 through which the Honduran Congress unconstitutionally removed President Zelaya from office, and without legal basis, elevated Roberto Micheletti, then head of Congress, to the role of head of a de facto authoritarian regime born out of a military intervention.

More: Pepe Lobo is the one person who might be able to swing Congress into action even now to vote on the restoral of President Zelaya, and if reports by many media sources are to be credited, had made some sort of agreement with US diplomats to do just that as part of gaining President Zelaya's signature on the Tegucigalpa Accord.

Arguments that Lobo cannot risk alienating his voter base by supporting a vote on Zelaya are extremely unconvincing. He has a solid lead in an election where his main opposition provides the perfect illustration for the word "feckless": Elvin Santos, caught between the President he once served as Vice President, and the rival for the nomination who he managed to surpass only due to legal chicanery that almost defies description. (See this post for details). Who, since realizing the coup wasn't increasing his popularity, has tried to have it both ways: stating that he wasn't for the coup, exactly, although he isn't against the outcome, more or less...

If Pepe Lobo had called on the party he leads to convene an extraordinary congressional session a week ago, no matter what the outcome of the vote, we would not be in the situation we now are. Yes, the Frente de Resistencia would still have called for an election boycott, based on what in my opinion are accurate assessments that the election to come is a farce (if not an actual fraud in the making).

How on earth can anyone in the world pretend that the Honduran Armed Forces, guilty of kidnapping the President, complicit in violent repression of free speech, and so far from their apolitical mandate that the silence of their Chief is seen as a political statement, could possibly guarantee freedom of participation to the very people who have been beaten, tear-gassed, and in some cases, raped? Remember that the victims of this violence include the independent candidate for the presidency who only recently withdrew from the race: what kind of atmosphere exists, and doesn't the differential discouragement of dissenting voices guarantee that the outcome of the November election will be biased towards those who enjoy the status quo?

But if Congress had voted, even to reject the restitution of the constitutionally elected President, the terms of the Tegucigalpa Accord-- that ever-so-flawed illegitimate offspring of the San Jose Accord-- would at least not have been made an object of ridicule. And the clarity of such a decision would at least have potentially opened a path for the Verification Commission to oversee the formation of a unity government from which we might hope Micheletti also would have been persuaded to step aside.

So who should we not be punishing-- who is the "next guy" who has no guilt here? what about all those Honduran voters-- the 40% plus who do not think that the elections will solve anything? those who find themselves with no candidate to vote for, and no assurance that if the candidate they elect acts in ways the entrenched power elite doesn't care for, the Armed Forces won't again be called out by their real masters to clear the way for a more acceptable dictator? Can we not concede that the Honduran people are the "next guys" who shouldn't be punished by having the world accept that Honduras is not a State in the Rule of Law?

So again: I beg to differ.

And I cannot help but suspect that, like most of us in academia, Professor McConnell's remarks were rather more extensive than what is reported by the Times, and that she also would like a little more contextualization about what such a statement might mean.

After all, this is the same person quoted October 29 as saying

There is a great deal at stake for the inter-American system in how the crisis in Honduras is resolved...If ousted President Zelaya is not restored to office despite a region-wide condemnation of the coup, it will call into question the utility of the Inter-American Democratic Charter and indeed the concept of collective protection of democracy through the Organization of American States.

That is an opinion I can agree with. Those are the stakes that are going to require more than a sigh and acceptance of the status quo come January 28, 2010.

Porfirio Lobo Sosa: Do Something

Honduras Held Hostage, Day 137

Porfirio Lobo Sosa complained yesterday because the OAS will not be sending election observers to the November 29 election. No one has more to lose in this election than Lobo Sosa. He is the front runner, the one expected to win the election and inherit this mess. He said, "There is a reality, the 29 of November we have elections, the process must be transparent, it will be large because the people are very intelligent and the people know that this political crisis is contributing greatly to the suffering today."

Unfortunately for Lobo Sosa, Micheletti is betting everything on the international governments recognizing the elections as "free, transparent, and fair," something that the international community is nearly unanimous in rejecting.

Lobo Sosa recognizes this. He says "the international countries are holding this country hostage because they have frozen aid to put pressure on the discord that there is on high and that which came from it."

But then Lobo Sosa gets it wrong, saying "I have told them, amd what I insisted, is that they have to understand that they have to be in solidarity and that they shouldn't punish the Honduran people, punishing the poor by freezing projects, and now they want to punish them prohibiting that they go to elections....what's important to me is that finally the Honduran people pronounce."

No one wants to punish the Honduran people, and Lobo Sosa understands that, so his stance is disingenuous. The international community does not want to prohibit the Honduran people from having an election; they want them to have a "fair, free, and transparent" election, and the conditions for that are not present as long as the de facto government rules Honduras.

Lobo Sosa could solve this, as a pragmatic politician, by using pressure, behind the scenes, to push Congress to act, but instead sits on his hands and complains. Congress, especially Saavedra, and Micheletti, are Lobo Sosa's worst enemies right now. He could gain prestige by bringing about an end to the international crisis by simply pressuring his Nationalist colleagues to call the Congress into an extraordinary session, but he chooses not to. He doesn't have to coordinate how they will vote, but merely to get them to act to move things forward, but he fails to act.

Instead, Lobo Sosa asks the Verification Commission to act, to pronounce on who is responsible for the state of the accord, and what needs to happen.

Sorry, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, that's already happened, or haven't you read what Ricardo Lagos has to say about what Micheletti did to sabotage the agreement?

So yes, as you say "here there is a reality, November 29 nothing is going to keep the people from going to the polls"-- nothing except apathy and the perception of illegitimacy. In 2005, 45% of the people didn't vote for a candidate for President. Even fewer voted for Congress. What percentage of people will fail to vote this time around?

You're going to win, so why not act to ensure people think you're legitimate?

Move Congress to call a session and vote on Zelaya's restitution. Make yourself a hero.

Presidential Candidates call for Dialogue

Pepe Lobo, presidential candidate for the Nationalist Party in Honduras, is calling for dialogue, say's El Heraldo's Minuto a Minuto column. "Now that Zelaya is in the country, there's nothing that dialog cannot solve. Both of them need to put aside any intransigence," he said of Micheletti and Zelaya.

UPDATE 1 pm PDT: Lobo has now threatened to withdraw his support of Micheletti if he does not talk with Zelaya. Lobo told Channel 5, Tiempo reports, that if Micheletti isn't willing to be flexible, to talk with Zelaya, to compromise, then his support (for Micheletti) ends here.

In all, 4 of the Presidential candidates, Pepe Lobo, Elvin Santos, Bernard Martínez, and Felecito Avila, the ones who have the most to lose if the world doesn't recognize the results of the November 29 elections, have issued a unified call for dialogue. "We call on Zelaya and Micheletti to talk, and perhaps they'll hug and as candidates we stretch out our hands, so that they will do that for Honduras" they wrote in a statement issued this morning.

The National Congress suspended its session scheduled for today, and will not meet until next week. At that time, José Alfredo Saavedra, de facto President of Congress, says they will take up the statements by Porfirio Lobo Sosa, who said that his party will not continue to support Micheletti if he does not establish a dialogue with Zelaya. Saavedra noted that the San Jose Accord is a sacrifice by both leaders, and a viable solution to this conflict.

"Candidates 'support' the San Jose Accord, but avoid referring to Zelaya"

Reuters, continuing a pattern of English-language media incompletely reporting the actual positions of Honduran coup supporters, today assured us that the major candidates for the election back a negotiated solution to the constitutional crisis, stating

The candidates said they supported the efforts of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias to resolve the crisis touched off by the June coup that forced Zelaya into exile....The candidates stressed they were not speaking on behalf of the de facto government....

Reuters, to do it justice, did note that they "stopped short" of calling for the return of President Zelaya, which is of course the non-negotiable first step in the Arias-negotiated San Jose Accord.

Leave it to the Spanish-language media, though, to make clear what really is happening here: Candidatos “apoyan” el acuerdo de San José, pero evitan referirse a Zelaya, was the headline in Costa Rica Hoy's article on the meeting of Oscar Arias with the Honduran candidates.

The headline and part of the Costa Rica Hoy story parallels that from the Spanish news agency, EFE, but EFE's report goes on in some detail about the actual statement signed by four of the five candidates who traveled to Costa Rica. This statement said that to "subscribe to the Accord of San Jose could offer a measured solution to the crisis".

Sounds good, right? Well, maybe not:

Cesár Ham, of the leftist UD party, refused to sign because he said that there needed to be a clear statement calling for the restoration of Zelaya and censuring the violations of human rights by the de facto regime.

Liberal Party candidate Elvin Santos asserted yet again that he backs the San Jose Accord, but added that "both parties should evidence a level of sacrifice". Like most de facto regime supporters, he "supports the process and what may result from it", as if the existing Accord is not the product of a completed process, awaiting signature, but simply was a discussion paper.

National Party candidate (and likely next president of Honduras) Porfirio Lobo Sosa, agreed that it would be nice if there were a real continuing dialogue in which both parties would be flexible.

Christian Democrat Felicito Ávila said any Accord that was signed would have to be in agreement with the Constitution, a familiar argument used by de facto regime adherents to make it seem like they are cooperating when in fact they are stonewalling.

The prize for honesty goes to the candidate from PINU, Bernard Martínez, who said the candidates recognizing the San Jose process was fine, but also, the November elections have to be internationally recognized.

Pepe Lobo concurred, saying the election is unrelated to the events of the coup.

And Elvin Santos called for ending all sanctions, since the condition of the country cannot resist the pressure and lifting sanctions cannot wait for the election of a new president, thus suggesting that he believes the elections will solve the whole mess-- and that recognition will inevitably follow the election.

This of course is a widely-shared interpretation of the fuzzy language from the State Department that may have been intended to threaten not to recognize the election, but instead is seen as defining conditions for recognition ("transparent and free" elections). So we see candidates claiming the elections will be transparent and free, ignoring the lack of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and threats to freedom of the press, not to mention human rights violations and the intimidating prospect of Armed Forces guarding polls in the wake of military repression.

Nor was the head of the de facto regime exactly absent from the scene, choosing today to characterize Oscar Arias as a "puppet" in remarks reported by Telesur. The puppet master? the "international community". Or to quote Micheletti, Arias

one day appears saying lets go to elections and the next day says no

So yes-- great news! everyone believes a process of negotiation would be a good thing to continue while the election campaign goes on because elections will magically heal the polarized nation and restore constitutionality.

"Between them they've buried the bipartisan system": Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle

In an editorial today in El Tiempo, the Minister of Culture continues his commentary on the spectacle that is the post-coup reality in Honduran politics, endorsing an emerging coalition of progressives:

Pepe and Elvin: The Gravedigger Clowns of the Film

It comes to pass that now, no one took part in the coup, except the no-counts that don't know where to hide. Many businessmen say that they did not, as if their words haven't remained in print and their voices recorded and their handiwork and external lobbying betrayed.

The political leaders of the coup say that neither were they. Carlos Flores says that he was not, that "it was Teté". Pepe goes crazy and Elvin declares 35 days after that "he is not a golpista" and that he condemns "the form" although he condones the basis. A sector of PINU finally repudiates their golpista congress members. But it is obvious that formally speaking the Congress, which is also called "Congre-Zoo", carried out the coup and the congress members responded to their political leaders. That's why the people shout in the street, "golpista congresspeople, trash, out" and when they can they kick them in the street. Without a consensus of the political leaders there would be no coup, since Micheletti, who they are now leaving solo, neither invented the coup nor would have arrived at first base when sent to bat without them.

Paraphrasing Swift I once commented to President Reina that I raised horses because they seemed more noble and rational than politicians. He didn't contradict me and he didn't disagree with me. They should be better than us. And they are the worst breed. I mentioned previously (in "J'accuse") the principal political actors of the coup, and among the witches and alchemists, those generally known, Rafael Callejas and Carlos Flores Facussé, now old politicians, that have once sworn the Constitution that now they are smashing and, exercising their criterion of excellence, the presidency of the Republic that lies here, prostrate, but confronting the repressives with gallantry 45 days later.

Although he competes with Arturo Corrales, Flores is the most cynical. As he says he is writing a memoir I want to assist him. He got in as a congressmember with the blessing of rodismo[*] and intervened many times in the drafting of the constitution that now he broke saying that it was to preserve it. He achieved renown because he wanted to launch himself as a candidate when he was a cabinet minister in the presidency of Rosuco [Roberto Suazo Cordova], on whose orders he also went to the Congress, accompanying Mich [Micheletti] with a proposed law for the Congress to declare itself a constitutional assembly and reform the stony articles, that now he passionately defends.

So many things one could say about Carlos Flores, dangerous and irritable, who many people fear. And that he believes himself loved. Son of a golpista, father of a golpista. Godfather of the usurper and of the judges, attorneys, prosecutor and head of the coup bench.

Carlos has been trying to put this behind him since the day of the coup, when he saw what was coming, saying to anyone who would listen "it wasn't like that man and I told you, but you didn't heed me". Since the week now past he began to publish in his press the adverse opinion of the coup of my teacher Gautama B. Fonseca. But surely you conspired, Ingeniero. We all know what you said to the rest and your role of sponsor. The golpistas that you visited, the media barons, but also the joint command, the "capos" and their deputies, was public.

Your newspaper fabricated the golpista propaganda that prepared the work and set the stage. Your editorials and your little pills always have been golpista even when they wanted to seem unaware in their cynicism. You are a villain, Sir, there is no way to evade the infamy of history. Your father was more cautious. Your own writings condemn you. History will not pardon you, it takes apart propaganda.

The other politicians who conspired will have an identical destiny, although they also try to distance themselves from the coup, Elvin Santos and Pepe Lobo, no one is going to vote for you, Sirs. You are going to have to invent the votes when polls give each one of you one-third favorable in your own parties, versus negative opinions from half. It is now very late to go around repenting. And no one is going to pardon you. You were at the negotiating tables and we all know that you, as candidates of your parties, could have put the brakes on Congress. Pepe wants to pass as ready and lost his second opportunity, Santos lost the only one that he is going to have. Between the two they have buried the hundred-year-old bipartisan system.

No well-born liberal should vote for Elvin Santos, the gravedigger of the greatest party of the isthmus. I have known various bad candidates, but none so fatuous and so destructive as this incontinent Cantinflas, this wet clown.[**] No one should receive him in an honorable house, on pain of being marked. No one should listen to his pleas. No one should speak with him nor turn to see him nor buy a white t-shirt in his malls.

But we don't have to cry for this system that seems that it is going to endure forever, and that we are never going to have parties that will propose ideas, different proposals, real commitments to the people. It could be that there remains, in sight, above the mud with which they cover it, a tight fist, calcined and cracked from the sun, extended saluting those names. The golpistas opened the system so that this new alliance can be established of social organizations and the UD and the varicolored red-and-white progressives, committed to the people, that will win the next elections strikingly and will write glorious pages of our history and a new constituent.

*rodismo: A reference to the conservative movement in the liberal party named after Modesto Rodas Alvarado.


**"payaso mojado": I was tempted to translate this "crying clown", but chose the literal "wet clown" both because of its pairing with "incontinent Cantinflas" and in reference to a story by Daniel Alarcón, "City of Clowns", in which the image refers to a clown literally pelted with water balloons. The image is not uncommon in Spanish as that of a pathetic figure of ridicule.