It's official: Lobo elected, turnout under 50%

AFP reports in Spanish from an hour ago that the official winner of the November Honduran presidential vote is Porfirio Lobo Sosa, credited with 56% of the vote (1.2 million votes).

As the article notes, Lobo's election is largely unrecognized, although of course, US recognition is probably the most important to him. More important, as AFP notes, some countries will condition their recognition on what happens before Lobo's inauguration: if he takes power from the de facto regime, he may still face a lack of recognition:

Up to now, only the US, Costa Rica, Panama and Peru have recognized the elections, although other countries, such as Chile, are analyzing whether to take that step after January 27, depending on how the transfer of power goes.

[hasta ahora sólo Estados Unidos, Costa Rica, Panamá y Perú han reconocido las elecciones, aunque otros países, como Chile, analizan dar ese paso luego del 27 de enero, dependiendo de cómo se dé el traspaso de poder]

Even the countries in Central America that have already said they will recognize the election are making demands that Lobo is not able to satisfy:

Costa Rica and Panama have asked Lobo to seek the resignation of the de facto president, Roberto Micheletti, as a way to achieve international recognition, but the latter has said that he does not plan to leave before the 27th of January.

[Costa Rica y Panamá han pedido a Lobo que busque la renuncia del presidente de facto Roberto Micheletti, como una forma de lograr reconocimiento internacional, pero éste ha dicho que no planea irse antes del 27 de enero.]

And of course, as we have documented in a previous post, and as reported by the AFP, the final turnout-- which does matter internationally as a measure of legitimacy-- was less the 50%.

So, enjoy your new status, President-elect Lobo...

100.07% And Still Counting

The Tribunal Supremo Electoral's website reporting results started off today reporting that 100.03 percent of the vote had been counted. Upon returning to it later in the day, it now reports results at 100.07 percent! They say they won't declare the results official until at least Tuesday, December 23 but we can make some points now, even if the vote totals change a little later.

The TSE has now counted 2,297,465 votes for president, for a 49.94% turnout. This is almost exactly the percentage vote projected on election day by NDI-Hagamos Democracia. So much for the exaggerated claims of 62% voting. And so much for CNN's December 5 proclamation that their analysis indicated a 56.6% turnout.

For the record, compare this with the 55% voter turnout for the 2005 presidential election of José Manuel Zelaya Rosales reported by the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. (The same source reported a level of 46% participation in Honduran congressional elections in 2005.)

There are 700,000 more voters on the official voting rolls today than in 2005, but only 107,000 more total votes were cast than in 2005. A variety of analysts have noted that the voter rolls probably include some names that should be purged, and have also pointed to limited opportunities for Hondurans abroad to vote. But even these effects would not justify claiming that the 2009 vote was "massive", the term used by the de facto regime and echoed in pro-election statements by other governments.

Spoiled and blank ballots each individually beat out any of the third party candidates by significant amounts. In the TSE final count, Porfirio Lobo is credited with 57%, Elvin Santos with 38%, and no other named candidate received more than 2%.

Spoiled and blank ballots constituted 155,584 of the total number of ballots this year. Some proportion of these are self-evidently votes of protest against the regime. For example, in the La Tribuna article noting the null/spoiled ballots, you'll see a picture of a spoiled ballot. Written across it are the words "Golpistas hijos de puta", definitely a protest vote. Carlos Romero, director of elections for the TSE lamented the large number of spoiled ballots since the TSE had invested 50 million lempiras ($2.6 million) in training the electoral officials and public education specifically to reduce the number of spoiled ballots.

Taking the spoiled and null ballots into account, there were just over 2.1 million valid votes counted, about what Boz expected if the downward trend in voting participation continued as it had over the last 5 elections.

This is far fewer valid votes than the 2.4 million Boz proposed would be needed for the golpistas to declare the election a solid endorsement of the coup. At the same time, it is far more than the 1.5 million valid votes that Boz argued would indicate the call to boycott elections had a major effect. Instead, the valid vote count falls in the middle ground between 1.7 and 2.3 million valid votes where Boz suggested both sides could claim victory, as indeed they have.

But by claiming "massive" voter turnout, now falsified by the TSE's own vote count; by trying to redefine the proportional turnout by arbitrarily deducting some number of voters they decided should not be counted; and by working so furiously to misrepresent the levels of participation; the de facto regime has shown that it felt it needed something far more definite than it got out of this election.

We would suggest that the relevant measure of whether this election met the expectations of the coup regime is somewhat different. Less than 50% of those listed as eligible voted in this election. Of that number, almost 7% turned in ballots that were blank or deliberately spoiled, meaning that the final presidential selection fell to about 43% of the electorate. The trend of alienation from governance that already existed in Honduras intensified with an election that was in no way free and fair.

The big difference this time: hundreds of thousands of people now count themselves as part of a resistance movement that will influence elections in the future. And that includes some large proportion of those who did not vote, or submitted spoiled or blank ballots, as well as those who stayed at home on election day. Porfirio Lobo has no mandate from the people, to add to his lack of influence in his own party and in Honduras' national government.

Keeping Them Honest

The TSE continues to play fast and loose with the numbers as it speaks in public and represents the election results to the press. On their election results website, they list a total of 2,080,959 votes counted, which they say is 90.52% of the votes. This would project as a total of 2.3 million votes (2,298,894 votes). However, in comments to the press here, Enrique Ortez Sequeira, a TSE magistrate, says that they've counted 2.3 million votes, and that there will be 2.5 million votes total, a record for Honduras.

By the way, this would be a participation rate of 47.8 percent, or exactly what the Hagamos Democracia projections said the turnout was, not the 63% they initially announced, or the revised 49% they released late last week. Looks like a victory for statistics and sampling.

There are approximately 5,000 ballot boxes out of 45,000 that are problematic, where people forgot to sign forms, or put the forms inside the ballot box before sealing it up, which the TSE has not yet opened or counted, but will examine today. Ortez Sequeira says they could finish them up today.

Meanwhile, in the TSE counting center, in the Marriot Hotel in Tegucigalpa, the computers had network problems yesterday and could not talk to each other, so no work was done between 9 am and 2 pm when the network came back up. Its rumored that networking problems are what prevented the TSE from delivering its initial count on election night.

More than 80 mayoral races have already demanded recounts, as have 23 races for Congress.

Numbers Dropping

Something interesting is happening as the official numbers trickle out of the TSE. You will remember that according to a Tiempo article from this morning, with 8,862 of 15,260 urns counted:

Candidate	number of votes
Porfirio Lobo	897,335
Elvin Santos	613,384
Bernardo Martinez	35.593
Felícito Avila	31,174
César Ham	29,006
Totales	1,605,442

This count, with 58.07% of the urns counted, yielded 1,605,442 valid votes, giving a straight-line projection of 2,764,666 valid votes in the whole election, for an expected number of 60% of the 4.6 million votes possible. That would agree with the otherwise unbelievable claim by the TSE that turnout would be over 60%, much higher than the 2005 election.

Now, we do not expect a perfect straight-line projection, since different districts can contribute different numbers of votes. But what has happened since is interesting and may come close to explaining why the TSE expected 60%+ turnout while the official exit polling group expected under 50%.

La Tribuna just reported a new set of numbers from the TSE in their Minute By Minute archive for today. This count is for 10,120 urns of the 15,260:

Candidate	number of votes
Porfirio Lobo	937,006
Elvin Santos	639,481
Bernardo Martinez	37,029
Felícito Avila	32,113
César Ham	30,334
Totales	1,675,511

This count, of 66.31% of the urns, yielded a total of 1,675,511 valid votes which projected forward would suggest 2,526,784 valid votes expected when all the urns are counted, or only about 54% of the 4.6 million voter electorate.

What seems to be happening is that the original projection of turnout, based on the returns from just a few central municipios, especially the area around Tegucigalpa, overestimated the turnout in the rest of the country.

As these additional ballot boxes are counted, the percentage of valid votes is decreasing, approaching the levels reported by the exit polling company, whose sample was from across all of Honduras. At the same time, the number of null and blank ballots counted, as a percentage is increasing (6.94% versus 6.3%).

Or: polling wins. But will it trump propaganda?

TSE and exit polls "Only differ in abstentionism"

To recap: last night, at the official TSE press conference, the exit polling service announced turnout projections of under 50%; while the TSE itself said they thought the turnout would be over 60%.

One does not even have to delve into the on-the-ground reports by international observers and resistance activists, who saw light turnout where they were watching polls, to worry about why the two TSE numbers are so far apart.

In an article this morning in Tiempo on the declaration of Pepe Lobo as winner, the second paragraph says that

En la presentación de los resultados se produjo una polémica porque mientras el Tribunal Supremo Electoral proclamó que el abstencionismo fue del 38. 7 por ciento, la Fundación Hagamos Democracia, que tiene un centro de cómputo similar al del organismo electoral, dijo que fue de 52. 4 por ciento.



[In the presentation of the results a controversy was produced because while the TSE proclaimed that abstentionism was 38.7%, the FHD, which has a center of computation similar to the electoral organism, said that it was 52.4%]

This is reporting on the same press conference we listened to live last night. The Fundación Hagamos Democracia is the exit polling entity in Honduras under contract to the TSE.

Later in the article Tiempo notes that

Ortez Sequeira leyó el informe de la Fundación Hagamos Democracia que establece que a esas alturas Porfirio Lobo Sosa tenía el 55. 72 por ciento de los votos frente a 38. 50 por ciento de Elvin Santos, resultados que a su juicio son similares a los del Tribunal Supremo Electoral y que únicamente difieren en el abstencionismo.



[Ortez Sequeira read the report of the FHD that established that at these levels Porfirio Lobo Sosa had 55.72 % of the votes against 38.5% for Elvin Santos, results that in his judgment are similar to those of the TSE and that they only differ in abstentionism.]

Well, duh.

So let's take a close look at the votes Tiempo reports, announced at the same time by the TSE:

Candidate	number of votes	percentage of total
Porfirio Lobo	897,335	52.29%
Elvin Santos	613,384	35.74%
Bernardo Martinez	35.593	2.07%
Felícito Avila	31,174	1.81%
César Ham	29,006	1.70%
Votos Blancos	42,998	2.51%
Votos Nulos	66,537	3.87%
Totales	1,716,027	100.00%

Take a good look here at the number of blank and null votes: 109,535 out of 1,716,027 reported; 6.38% of the votes cast are ambiguous, and this should include protest votes.

So the percentage of valid votes represents either 41.22% of the eligible voters (if we take the exit polling as our guide, and deduct the invalid votes) or 54.92% (if we take the declared turnout estimate of the TSE, which international media have accepted, and again, deduct the invalid votes).

We would suggest people need to look carefully and skeptically at the real vote counts as they come in.

By people, we mean scholars and interested public, obviously, not the US State Department, which would recognize the election no matter what.

While Tiempo has been the sole newspaper abstaining from pro-coup reporting, it is not pro-resistance either; it seems genuinely to be trying to uphold some ideal of reliable journalism.

What the election results reported there are telling us is that, far from transparent, the more than 60% participation rate the TSE wants us to circulate (which differs from their official polling agency's estimate of under 50%-- which would be in keeping with normal expectations, given previous trends) has to be looked at skeptically.

It is good propaganda: but it literally is unbelievable.

Reduced Expectations

Today the Supreme Election Tribunal (TSE) began setting expectations about voter turnout for the election in Honduras. They also began better explaining the discrepancies in the number of voters on the official voting list, versus the population numbers for Honduras.

Adrienne Pine, over on Quotha, observed that something about the 4.6 million person official voting list, and the 7.6 million person official population just didn't add up. Today, Saul Escobar, president of the TSE, admitted that the real voting census is 3.4 million, but that there are an additional 1 million registered voters outside the country. The voters in the exterior have not come out to vote in the last two elections.

Escobar's number of 3.4 million is 44.7% of the population. However, to complicate things, an El Heraldo article from yesterday tells us that 49.3% of the population (3,737,976 persons) are under 18, the legal voting age, leaving 50.7% (3,844,125 persons) over 18, and a total population of 7,582,101. The missing 444,000 voters presumably are the disenfranchised who are not registered to vote. If Escobar is correct and there are around 1 million registered voters outside the country, the true population of Hondurans is more than 8.6 million, but unknown.

The de facto government has been calling for a massive turnout. In 2005, the turnout was 56%. That was the lowest turnout since the 1982 constitution entered into effect. Today the TSE began to set our expectations for how massive a turnout to expect.

Roberto Micheletti said that he had information there would be an 80% turnout. The TSE president, Saul Escobar, expects a 60% turnout, slightly higher than the 2005 election, but hardly massive. Anonymous TSE officials told another La Tribuna reporter that they expected between 2 million and 2.4 million voters, or, at best, 52.6% turnout, which would be even lower than the 2005 election. This official said, "it would be bad if we barely got over a million voters, but we hope for at least 2 million, a number similar to the 2005 election."

So the TSE is reducing our expectations for voter turnout, from slightly better than the last election, to slightly worse than the last election.

Militarized Elections

Militarization is a reality. Today, Sunday, passing the turn off to Gracias on the western highway, not only were there police and troops but there was a machine gun on top of the cabin of a pick up with a soldier in the back. This is a place where there are often Transit Police check points (seat belts, non-functioning lights, etc.) But recently it has also been "manned" by the military and police (not just transit police).

So wrote a commentator on another of our blog posts.

Honduran elections have been militarized by definition since 1998. Article 272 of the Constitution spells it out:

to guarantee the free exercise of suffrage, [the Armed Forces] store, transport, and watch over the electoral materials and security of the process.

To that end, the President puts them at the control of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) one month before the election until the election is called and a winner declared.

So, we come to this year's elections. This time things are different. On June 28, the Armed Forces actively intervened in the constitutional government, and as their statements after the coup d'etat showed, they did so based in part by assuming they had a special active role in protecting the Constitution, and that this extended to deciding what kinds of political perspectives they would allow.

Since then, the Armed Forces has been deeply involved in suppression of civil rights in the country, changing forever the way those members of the public who have been threatened will see them.

Now Colonel Roger Alexis Turcios, who is in charge of the logistics and planning for the election, was asked if anything made this time different than in the past. He replied, "The security measures that we are taking this time are stronger and more strict". In the name of security, the military have expanded their role in this election.

12,000 police and 11,000 soldiers are assigned to guard 15,269 polling places. As part of the extended security measures for this election, the military were authorized to call up, arm, and equip an additional 5,000 reservists. "There are 11 military regions and each has a commander responsible for security in his region, and has his orders and plans," said General Bartolome Funez Castellon.

Because of their fear of an election boycott, the TSE has trained the 530 public prosecutors, as well as military and police officers, in what constitutes electoral crimes. General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez said, "we know that there are people that are inducing the public to not go and vote, for which they are committing an electoral crime, contrary to what they should do which is to urge lots of people to get out and vote ('vayan masivamente a votar') because we have chosen the democratic system which is the best in the world."

Vasquez Velasquez also said "We are doing sweeps at a national level, of reconnaissance, and also intelligence work, to detect if there are any problems in any areas and treat them with viable solutions."

Over the weekend, the police and military set up checkpoints around the country, where all vehicles including public transportation were stopped, and everyone's papers checked.

Friday the de facto government ordered a nationwide disarmament, so today these checkpoints started frisking everyone and confiscating any weapons found, even if the bearer has a licence to carry the weapon.

Foreigners are being asked to justify their reason for being in the country.

When people come to vote, they're going to pass a line of police about 300 feet (100 meters) from the polling place. Each polling place will be surrounded by a group of soldiers placed 150 feet away. There will be additional guards protecting election materials that will be stored nearby.

Inside the polling place will be "custodios", people designated as responsible for the management and provisioning of election supplies. Each of these will be a soldier who will authorize the release of more ballots, or indelible ink, from the nearby stores.

Now, this takes place against a background of threats against those who wish not to participate in this election, despite the fact that the constitutional call for obligatory voting has never been enforced by individual prosecution. As early as August, this was already emerging as a troubling theme linked to support for an enhanced role for the military in elections.

It takes place against a background of letters sent to municipal mayors throughout the country, directing them to send in lists of those identified as members of the resistance, on the theory that being a member of the resistance implies an intention to engage in some form of anti-electoral violence (as opposed to advocacy for electoral boycotts, which do not meet the definitions of anti-electoral offenses as specified in the electoral law).

And above all: it takes place against the background of the military coup d'etat and military repression since then.

This is the reality of the "free and transparent" elections that are promised for November 29.

Elections: reject, accept, or other?

In his usual thought-provoking way, boz offers a counter to the more widespread progressive position on the upcoming Honduran elections, outlining

the case for not rejecting elections in Honduras (note the double negative is on purpose), even if elections are not an ideal solution.

His argument has the following points (and I urge others to read them before reading the rest of my post; go ahead, I can wait): moving on; new leadership; beyond the presidency; don't prejudge; most Hondurans want elections; imperfect elections recognized all the time; and, for my purposes, the money paragraph:

Better than the alternative. Canceling or postponing elections is a serious action. If they're canceled, and the de facto government refuses to reinstitute Zelaya, then what? Micheletti remains as president? New president is named by Congress? Assuming the coup government won't let Zelaya return, the options other than elections are worse than holding an imperfect election. Those options definitely lead away democracy, while elections at least open the possibility for reestablishing democracy.

I want to suggest that whatever the merits of the other points, this one misses another possibility: maybe there are more than two alternatives; more than the two bad choices of recognizing an election conducted under extreme repression and violation of the rule of law, or rejecting it and with it the possibility of a future resolution for the innocent millions.

Zelaya and his government have suggested one such alternative, which boz rejects. That would involved rescheduling the election, allowing the outcome of congressional consideration of reinstating the president to precede the election. The main legal problem with rescheduling the election for sometime between now and the mandated inaugural date in January is that it violates the constitution, but not a clause that is unchangeable. The main pragmatic problem with rescheduling the election for later is that it is expensive. But this is surely something the international community could help with.

But boz's concerns with this involve neither of these, but rather, a purely political issue: what happens if the congress does not vote to reinstate Zelaya?

Under the terms of the (now-repudiated) Tegucigalpa/San Jose Accord, this was a risk President Zelaya accepted, so at that point, if he objected, it would be reasonable for the international community to change their position on the elections.

I think there should be no mystery about what would happen in this hypothetical scenario: the negotiation for the unity and national reconciliation government would have one fewer option for who should head the government, being forced to choose between Micheletti or a third party.

(This is, for me, one of the main reasons proceeding with forming that government before the decision about Zelaya is made makes no sense. If we accept that a unity government is negotiated between the parties, not imposed by one on the other, then one of the things up for negotiation is who would head it? a decision on Zelaya was therefore critical since without that, how would negotiators know if he would be accepted as head? for that matter: how do you ask prospective cabinet ministers to serve in a government whose head they do not know?)

Now, as I said, the call for postponing elections is one alternative to recognizing the November 29 exercise or rejecting it. The constitutional issues are open to solution by passing a congressional amendment to allow a delay in this year's election. But let's accept that getting Congress to do this is even more unlikely than getting them to vote on restoring Zelaya in advance of the election (which I personally think they are reluctant to do not because Zelaya could disrupt the election, but because voting on the record could be used against them in the campaign).

I still have problems with boz's suggestion that we accept an imperfect election and the will of the (slim) majority of the Honduran people, and get on with an election so new leadership can be put in place; and accept the (counter-factual) assertion that the Supreme Electoral Tribunal is independent of the Micheletti government; and acknowledge that the candidates running were all selected prior to the coup (ignoring the barriers placed in the way of many candidates by the imposed restraints on civil liberties) and that there are local and congressional elections at stake as well as the presidency.

I do not see that what follows is that accepting the November 29 elections under the de facto regime will actually accomplish what he hopes they will:

New people make it more likely we can move past the ugly politics of the last five months.

Unfortunately, the two major candidates still in the race are by no means "new people". Each is closely tied to the coup, and either will suffer from the legacy of his participation in government before and after June 28. The coup will remain a spectral presence in Honduras long past January 2010, just as previous coups continue to shape the attitudes of the people.

I think there is a fundamental contradiction in the utopian hope boz expresses that

elections at least open the possibility for reestablishing democracy.

Depends what we mean by "democracy": and it is this very thing that has been at issue in the Zelaya administration's attempt to move from a rigged representational democracy to a democracy with broader popular participation.

Elections held under an illegal government taint the outcome for a considerable proportion of the population: and yes, the number who do not want elections is a minority, but it is a large minority.

Democracies are at their best concerned with ensuring that even minorities believe that the process that brought political opponents to office was fair. And I think there is no doubt that for those who oppose the de facto regime and want to see the president who was elected in 2005 restored to complete his term in office, the very notion of democracy has been damaged in ways that a recognizably more-imperfect-than-normal election will not heal.

So here's another option to add to the either/or of recognizing/rejecting the November 29 elections: if we agree that international observers will make little difference on the ground; and accepting that the de facto regime will play out this election no matter what; and acknowledging that the TSE will validate election results that a large number of Honduras will think resulted from fraud, no matter what else happens; there is still a kernel of truth to this one sentence in boz's post:

I think dealing with Lobo or Santos once they have been elected by a majority of Hondurans will be easier than dealing with Micheletti.

Yes. So why not wait until whoever is "elected" in November is inaugurated in January before making any moves to recognize the government?

Recognizing the elections of November legitimates the de facto regime and whitewashes the coup d'etat of June 28.

This would weaken, not strengthen, any claim to democratic representation that might be made by the president-elect.

Meanwhile, it does absolutely no harm to that future Honduran government-- and much potential good-- if they remain unrecognized between November and January. The international community could use that time to discuss what conditions would need to be met by the (now safely elected) government of 2010-2014 to ensure that Honduras merits re-admission to the OAS, and acceptance as a legitimate state. And the lack of recognition of the de facto regime could allow the next government to move away from the authors of the coup in a clearer way. Think of the rhetorical power that might come if the person declared the winner of the November election condemned the coup d'etat that cast doubt on his election.

Among the issues I would like to see on the table in such a scenario would be acknowledging that the coup d'etat was extra-legal; dismissal of the politically motivated prosecutions of opposition government officials that has ramped up under the de facto regime from an already unacceptable level; and repudiation of the militarization of society that has led to deaths, beatings, and intimidation for thousands of Hondurans-- a minority, yes, but a minority that deserves protection under the law, and a minority that disproportionately represents sectors such as social activists, gender rights activists and people of alternative sexual status, indigenous leaders, and union activists.

As long as we are engaging in hypothetical arguments about possible routes to democracy, I prefer one that does not include ever giving Roberto Micheletti and those propping him up, including the military, the imprimatur of the international community.

Boycott

There are 2,896 candidates up for election in November in Honduras, at all levels of government from President and Congress to mayors, and aldermen. While two of the presidential candidates, Cesar Ham (UD party) and Carlos H. Reyes (Independent), have said they will not run without a return to democratic order in Honduras, few at other levels of government have made public statements about the elections.

Earlier this week, the leadership of the UD party indicated they would not participate in the november elections without the restitution of Zelaya. The majority of the leadership of the Party of Innovation and Social Democratic Unity (PINU-SD) issued a statement rebuking their candidate for President, Bernard Martinez, for supporting the coup, and indicating that it would not participate in the November elections unless there was a restitution of democratic order in Honduras. This faction of the PINU-SD party indicated that 100 of its candidates for office would not participate in the November elections without a return of the democratic order.

However, the report in Tiempo this morning that a faction of the liberal party held a convention yesterday, and that 300 of its candidates will not participate in the election if Zelaya is not returned to power comes as something of a surprise. Six of them are candidates for the Congress (El Heraldo says 26). All of these candidates stood for election in the internal party elections last November and won. They come from a variety of factions within the liberal party, including those of Roberto Micheletti, Elvin Santos, Eduardo Maldonado, and José Nolasco.

This scares the de facto government. Why else would they continue to issue threats to throw those who boycott the elections in jail? Denis Gomez, one of the alternates for the Magistrates of the Supreme Election Court (TSE), said yesterday "we will have to, according to articles 209 and 210 of the Law of Political Organizations, process in court those who try to boycott [the elections]". This crime is punishable by imprisonment for four to six years. He points out that the political parties will be able to subsitute for any candidate that withdraws, but laments the cost to the government.

A simple boycott, not participating in the election, is not punishable under articles 209 or 210 of the "Ley Electoral y de las Organizaciones Politicas". The threats are either empty, or involve a more active definition of "boycott" than that advocated by those boycotting. Article 209 is the relevant article.

209. Coercion and Electoral Threat
The following are sancioned by imprisonment of four to six years:
1. Anyone, not legally authorized, who impedes another, with or without the use of violence, from exercising their political rights.
2. Anyone who does not permit or otherwise blocks the election organization from the public sites necessary for it to function.
3. Anyone who alters or blocks legitimate campaign materials.
4, Anyone who impedes election officials in the fullfillment of their job and
5, Anyone who impedes the opening of voting, or causes it to be interrupted, or to have to move.

Article 210 is about falsification of election documents and so appears to be an empty threat like so many of those of the de facto government.

So what kind of boycott is Denis Gómez anticipating? He might be thinking about pickets outside the polling place, of school teachers who refuse to end the school year early and turn over their classrooms for voting or the removal and alteration of the campaign signs rampant in the country as a violations of Article 209. The one thing he can't be thinking about is people boycotting by staying home and not participating, because that is not a punishable crime in Honduras.

UN withdraws from Honduran Elections

UN Secretary Ban Ki-Moon annouced today that the UN would temporarily withdraw its technical support of the Honduran elections scheduled for November 29. The UN will do this because the turmoil there means the elections will not be credible. The technical support in question included training polling station staff and a quick court project. The value of the assistance was $1.3 million.

Elections, Constitutions, and Laws: how "obligatory" is voting?

As the resistance calls for non-participation in the November elections, signs accumulate that this tactic is of concern to the regime, no matter how much they say otherwise. There are intimations that of intentions to prosecute people for not participating in the election or for encouraging others not to do so.

The rhetoric on this topic echoes an overall tactic of the coup regime that is worth exploring both in relation to the specific pressure on the population to vote, and in order to reflect on the use by the de facto regime of claims of constitutionality as their first resort, instead of, as constitutional authorities would expect, a last resort.

The specific case first: the vote, we are told, is obligatory. Constitution Article 40, which defines the duties of citizens, lists as point number 3 "ejercer el sufragio", "exercise suffrage". More common cited is Article 44, which says in full

El sufragio es un derecho y una función pública. El voto es universal, obligatorio, igualitario, directo libre y secreto.

Suffrage is a right and a public function. The vote is universal, obligatory, egalitarian, direct, free, and secret.

Now, I have noted before that the obligatory nature of the vote has obviously not been enforced, given that participation rates in national elections have plummeted, to 46% of eligible voters registering a vote for congress, and 55% for president, in 2005. This is a drop from 81.4% in 1980, the first year when elections were rated as "partly free" during the development of the constitutional system of government that was uninterrupted until June 28 of this year, according to international sources.

A study by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, found voter turnout world-wide from 1945-1999 was lowest and tended to drop over time "partly free" countries, including Honduras, where basic civil liberties may not actually be protected. Both "free" and "not free" countries had higher turnout, presumably for different reasons.

Compulsory voting, the authors of this study note, has been debated as anti-democratic. Even when enforced, citizens have found creative ways to express their actual opinions when no choice they are presented is acceptable:

The leading argument against compulsory voting is that it is not consistent with the freedom associated with democracy. Voting is not an intrinsic obligation and the enforcement of the law would be an infringement of the citizens' freedom associated with democratic elections. It may discourage the political education of the electorate because people forced to participate will react against the perceived source of oppression. Is a government really more legitimate if the high voter turnout is against the will of the voters? Many countries with limited financial capacity may not be able to justify the expenditures of maintaining and enforcing compulsory voting laws. It has been proved that forcing the population to vote results in an increased number of invalid and blank votes compared to countries that have no compulsory voting laws.

Looking at countries where voting is obligatory, the study (after noting that enforcement varied widely) says that

A somewhat surprising result of this study is that the 24 nations which have some element of compulsion associated with voting have only a small lead in turnout over the 147 nations without any compulsory voting laws.

But most important for our purposes here, this study points out that simply having a constitutional claim that the vote is obligatory is symbolic, and that countries with such claims vary in whether they enforce them:

The simple presence or absence of mandatory voting laws in a constitution is far too simplistic. It is more constructive to analyze compulsory voting as a spectrum ranging from a symbolic, but basically impotent, law to a government which systematic follow-up of each non-voting citizen and implement sanctions against them… Not all laws are created to be enforced. Some laws are created to merely state the government's position regarding what the citizen's responsibility should be. Mandatory voting laws that do not include sanctions may fall into this category.

And this is the general point of this post: the coup government consistently cites the Constitution as the basis of its actions: but a Constitution is interpreted through the development of specific legislation.

Social science research shows that globally, such laws do not increase participation; but what does Honduran electoral law implementing the constitutional mandate actually say about not voting?

Simple answer: nothing. Honduras never has had sanctions for not exercising the "obligatory" right to vote.

(The IDEA study confirms this, but if you don't believe them or me, look it up yourself: read the Ley Electoral of 2004, Decreto 44-2004. Lots of sanctions for lots of things, but not one for not voting.)

So, what is a significant cause of higher voter turnout?

The only socio-economic factor which does seem to correlate with turnout rates is the United Nation's somewhat more sophisticated "Human Development Index" (HDI). Turnout tracks closely a nation's level of Human Development. If we split the HDI league table into five equal sections we find that the top fifth of countries have an average voter turnout of 72%, the next 69%, the third 66%, the fourth 60%, and the bottom fifth an average of 56%.

No mystery where Honduras falls in the HDI.

Now, here's the general point: the coup regime has a bad habit of wrapping itself in the raw words of the Constitution, neglecting the actual way the intentions embodied in that document are implemented in legislation, and undermining due process as established in law.

This is most egregious in the way that the coup and its supporting media have promoted the false claim that President Zelaya is guilty of treason, because a legal charge (which many believe was fabricated post-facto) was lodged with the Supreme Court. This claim violates the presumption of innocence implemented in legal revisions of the last decade. It ignores the fact that no hearing had even been held on the "evidence" cited in the legal filing.

arguments like this return Honduras to a state of legal indeterminacy, by encouraging the direct interpretation of constitutional provisions rather than the adherence to well defined legal codes. Thus the coup regime grasps at Article 239 and presents it as a post-facto basis to legalize its actions, when as an unending stream of legal scholars have noted, that Article does not mean what these politicians want it to mean. The Constitution becomes a weapon used against the rule of law. That erodes the legitimacy of what should be the nation's highest charter.

Just as the coup regime has eroded the legitimacy of congress, the supreme court, and the election tribunal.

"The final solution": The National Congress, elections, threats and illegitimacy

Considering that on the 29th of November of the present year, the Honduran people, attending to the call of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, will come together massively to the electoral polls to express, by means of the universal, egalitarian, obligatory, direct, free, and secret vote, their desires and the firm hope of continued guarantee of the State of Law to assure the people the enjoyment of justice, liberty, culture, and economic and social welfare, as is ordered in effect by the maximum legal order of the country, which is the Constitution of the Republic.

This is the first stated assumption in a congressional resolution passed August 18. The ironies should be obvious, given the absolute lack of a guarantee of liberty, freedom, and the State of Law under the de facto regime.

Our question is, why did the congress pass any such resolution, and why now?

An article about this resolution in yesterday's La Tribuna supports the inference that the possibility of electoral activism, whether boycotts or other actions, is disturbing to the de facto regime.

The National Congress statement uses language from the codes of law and Constitution concerning the implementation of elections.

Hence the clause quoted above cites the constitutionally obligatory nature of the vote, which as we have previously noted, is honored more in theory than in practice.

The reporter for La Tribuna boils down the issues considered by the National Congress to four simple paragraphs, stripping away the overlay of lofty sentiments in the resolution. The article notes that it

condemns any action or denunciation, come what may, that would obstruct, disavow, impede, or tarnish the general election process that will be carried out in Honduras.

The first three words here come directly out of law; so the interesting interpolation here is "tarnish" (empañe). This is a choice by the writers for the pro-coup newspaper, revealing more than perhaps the congressional faction it supports would have desired.

Here, yet again, we have the de facto regime and its supporters ignoring the fundamental constitutional guarantees of freedom of opinion, in an attempt to shore up their support in the face of massive erosion of public trust, not just in their regime, but in the entire system of government. Some (unnamed) people are threatening to "tarnish" the electoral process. In fact, of course, the people who have tarnished the elections are the coup proponents and their supporters.

This is what the reform campaign is at base about. The disillusion on the part of the citizenry with the legitimacy and effectiveness of Honduran government was not created by the coup, or by President Zelaya. But he and his government were motivated to try to directly address it by enlisting citizens in governance. And that is what the coup regime cannot tolerate.

The other points made in the resolution that El Heraldo felt were newsworthy are equally revealing.

The congress felt it necessary to reiterate that the elections will be held, as scheduled, in November. Why is this even in question? Perhaps because the coup has shown that guarantees of constitutional processes are not to be trusted? perhaps because the national congress has considered seriously laws that would do such unthinkable things as reverse the hard-won freedom from universal military conscription, or would require news media to allow any politician who felt reporting was unfair to him or her to use the media to rebut the (not so free) press? Or, are we seeing a sign that people expect the regime to use continued unrest to suspend the elections, as has been the precedent in Honduran history?

The national congress explicitly expressed its total support for the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. Why? who is questioning it? could it be that people do not trust it as an independent guarantor of the outcome of scheduled elections? (It is worth noting that the 2005 Presidential election was marked by a major episode of premature announcement of electoral "results" by the TSE which undermined any idea of the apolitical posture it might take...)

Now, there are other aspects to the National Congress statement that did not make it into the commentary by La Tribuna. While numbered points 1 and 2 in the resolution simply restate that the election will happen as scheduled, and that the TSE is the entity charged to

supervise the transparency, legitimacy, and credibility of the electoral process.

But item 3 should give us pause; it reaffirms support for the Armed Forces

as guarantor institution of the rule of the Constitution, the principles of free suffrage, and the alternation in the exercise of the office of Presidency of the Republic.

What is this actually trying to say? The Armed Forces have clearly experienced an erosion in public confidence due to their unwarranted actions in kidnapping the constitutionally elected President and expatriating him, actions absolutely contrary to the Constitution and without any authorization, even in the fatally flawed order dated June 26 signed by one justice of the Supreme Court. Throughout the days following, and increasingly since the coup leadership ordered that protesters be dislodged, the military has participated in violent repression leading to deaths and injuries, further eroding any image they had built up of kindly institution obedient to and serving the people.

The Armed Forces do have a constitutionally mandated role in elections: to guard the polling places to ensure no one interferes in access to them, and to ensure that polling results are not tampered with on their way to the TSE. But think about what the recent history of violent repression of the citizenry implies about this supposedly benevolent role. What participant in the resistance would find a polling place guarded by the Armed Forces welcoming?

More than that, though, part of this passage echoes a perversion by the de facto regime of the Constitutional role of the Armed Forces that is such a serious wound to the social contract that it has led to calls for Honduras to join Costa Rica in abolishing the Armed Forces entirely. This is the claim that the Armed Forces are "the guarantor institution" for constitution succession in the Presidency, and more generally, of the rule of the Constitution.

This is not the Constitutional role of the Armed Forces. The Armed Forces is explicitly defined as apolotical and non-deliberative. To assert such an active role for them is to establish a fourth branch of government, one that has authority through might, not right.

The Armed Forces, in this formulation, would usurp the roles of the actual established branches of government. To the repeated claim that this was not a coup, or the uncertainty the US State Department inanely claims exists about whether this was a military coup, the de facto regime's response has been: but the military has not taken over any of the three branches of government. What this statement exposes is that in reality, this coup has increased the power of the military, and has permanently upset the balance of power. What is to stop future Armed Forces leadership from deciding that a President is leaning too far toward an ideology of which they do not approve, and acting independently on the theory that they are the guarantor institution?

Nothing.

The fourth item in the Congressional resolution affirms support for

the participation of the political parties and independent candidates, in fortifying participatory democracy.

Notice the silences here. Electoral politics is understood to be an activity, not of the people, but of the parties. The parties are given primacy as the means of "participatory democracy", making a mockery of the idea.

But this item is critical for its acknowledgment, however muted, of one of the larger issues: the need to shift from an emphasis on purely representative democracy to greater participation by citizens. The very phrase "participatory democracy" owes its power, most certainly, owes its presence here, to the administration of President Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales.

And why is this resolution being passed now? Item 5 gives both the rationalization and the threat: the election, the Congress asserts, is the "final solution" of the crisis, and to ensure that solution, they are prepared to make more threats and bring more charges against citizens who attempt to exercise their civil rights even to speak out against the illegitimacy of an election held under the current regime, in light of the current lack of civil rights.

The final solution.

[Resolved] to condemn from now any intent to try to disavow, discredit, or block the electoral process, no matter where such threats come from, warning that it will not hesitate, if that were the case, to carry out the actions and legal complaints that correspond to these actions, since the successful culmination of this process constitutes for the Honduran people the final and definitive solution of the present political crisis that crosses our country.

Is this the coalition that the elites were afraid to see emerge?

An article in tomorrow's El Heraldo, one of the pro-coup Honduran newspapers, describes a "strategic-political alliance" emerging with Carlos H. Reyes, running as an independent candidate for president, aided by Manuel Zelaya, the UD party, members of the Liberal party loyal to Zelaya, and "popular and progressive sectors of the PINU", to be announced in the next few days.

Legally, the story notes, no formal alliance can be established because May 28 was the last day to register such an entity with the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

The story continues:

But it could be done from the strategic or political point of view, and would consist of a call that the leaders of those parties, movements, or organized sectors that would make up an electorate to vote for a specific presidential candidate and for the Liberal congress members allied with Zelaya, for those of the UD, and of the progressive sectors of the PINU (Innovation and Unity Party).

The story says the announcement comes from UD party deputy Marvin Ponce, who

did not rule out a resignation by Cesar Ham as presidential candidate of the UD to leave open an expedited route for the popular leader Carlos H. Reyes, who is signed on with the Electoral Tribunal as an independent presidential candidate.

Ham, the story notes, is still a candidate, despite supposedly having confessed to an administrative infraction.

Ponce is quoted during an interview on Radio Cadena as saying

We agree with him [Reyes?]. He is a great leader, a great fighter; we are in distinct trenches, but we are making an effort to seek unity, including with the sectors of the Liberal party that are opposed to the coup, progressive sectors of the Pinu, of social movements, with Manuel Zelaya Rosales.

We are going to have a great political alliance in the next days that is going to resound to fight power, now not only hoping to obtain a few deputies, but to fight the power in the country. It will be a great surprise. we are talking about a political alliance to confront the oligarchy in this country

Ponce added that others who would enter into the alliance would include

progressive sectors of civil society, campesino organizations, unions, teachers, indigenous people and peoples who have historically been relegated.

The report ends with statements from members of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, refusing to be drawn into ruling on whether such an alliance would be legal, ending with a quote from one of these officials that "this could be another type of alliance, that will only be known to the people who will make this type of efforts".

If that is, as it seems to be, a promise not to act against such an alliance on the technical grounds of all formal alliances needing to be registered by May 28, this may be the beginning of precisely the kind of new political movement that Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle predicted would be one of the products of the coup and its exposure of the rigid conservatism of the Liberal party.