cries@mtxinu.COM (09/28/89)
/* Written 4:47 pm Sep 27, 1989 by cries in ni:cries.regionews */
/* ---------- "Hond: People Will Lose Elections" ---------- */
HONDURAS: THE PEOPLE WILL LOSE
(cries.regionews from Managua September 27, 1989
Four are in the fight, but the contest is really between the
two traditional parties. Although their candidates'
electoral programs are more progressive, the Unity and
Innovation Party (PINU) and the Christian Democratic Party
(PDC) are new and have little influence. National Party (PN)
candidate, Rafael Leonardo Callejas, leads Liberal Party
(PL) candidate Carlos Flores Facusse in the polls. He will
probably be the next president of Honduras.
This will be the third consecutive election after a long
period of military rule. In the two previous elections,
popular participation was incredibly high - more than 80%.
Newspapers and radio and television broadcasts are saturated
with political propaganda. The ads occur with flashy
frequency, alternating between sales-pitches for food,
services, appliances, cars, cigarettes, and rum. The pop
song "Maria Cristina" is heard in the background of Carlos
Flores's TV spots. Callejas uses several catchy tunes too,
including "La Bamba."
But not everyone is dancing to the music. 3.2 million
Hondurans are poor, and 1 million of these are considered
destitute, or well below the poverty level according to UN
statistics. Stores and supermarkets are full of products,
almost all imported, but there are not many shoppers. The
threat of recession is seen in the lowering of the
circulation of goods, and the start of an inflationary
spiral is feared.
At the same time, however, dozens of buildings are being
built in the capital, along with many houses in its suburbs,
creating the image of a bonanza and prosperity. Between 19
and 50 people in Honduras hoard between 5 and 25 million
lempiras each year, "and these are precisely the owners of
the two traditional parties," according to the social
democratic PINU vice-president Jorge Illescas Bolivar.
The Owners
One of the leaders of the National Party is Ricardo Maduro,
a businessman with an annual personal income of some 7
million lempiras. One Liberal Party representative, Jaime
Rosenthal Oliva, receives annual dividends of 15 million.
"They vote for them [the National and Liberal parties]
because they're alienated," said Illescas, to whom the two
traditional parties "are bourgeois parties that form a
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in which both take turns."
These millionaires are found at the tip of a pyramid that
has at its base 300,000 campesinos that receive an average
of 25 lempiras a month. Another 2 million try to make it
through the month with 50 lempiras.
But this does not interest those Honduran people who rally
behind the candidates from the two hegemonic parties in
great numbers. "These cannot be truly free elections because
we are a people without a political culture," said Illescas.
Because of this, when asked who will win the elections, he
answered: "The only thing I can say for sure is that the
people are going to lose."
He also criticized the propaganda. "The television and radio
spots don't deal with the fundamental problems. They're
loaded with music and pretty women in bikinis singing and
dancing, just like any other commercial, selling the
candidate as handsome and good looking and not because he
represents an alternative solution to the crisis.
Electoral Fraud
PINU is also worried about irregularities in the National
Registration of Persons (RNP) and the electoral census.
Illescas claims that 700,000 people hold Honduran identity
cards obtained with replaced birth certificates and not with
the original documents. It is legal to replace lost birth
certificates, but when the number of replacements reaches
such a level, the chances are high that the process is being
use illegally.
All births and deaths are registered in the RNP. At 18 years
of age, citizens receive identity cards and their names are
automatically transferred to the electoral registry, a
catalogue listing those eligible to vote.
PINU claims that more than 100,000 foreigners obtained
identity cards using the birth certificate replacement
processes and that 170,000 identity cards were issued
without the support of the required documents.
In addition, it is claimed that 250,000 identity cards do
not have the required finger prints, and in the electoral
census, tens of thousands of deceased people are registered
as legally able to vote. Illescas said that his party also
detected 22,000 cases of double identity cards in which the
name of one person appears in two different parts of the
country.
The replacement of a birth certificate is done in front of a
lawyer or notary and two witnesses. Illescas claims that
often when the witnesses must attest to knowing the
solicitor, they are much younger and obviously cannot
certify that the person was born in Honduras.
Borderline Vote
National Party deputy and former Labor Minister, Nicolas
Cruz Torres, claimed, "In 1985, a heap of Nicaraguans voted
for the liberals, and now they'll come back and vote for
them again." These Nicaraguans allegedly received Honduran
identity cards using the process of birth certificate
replacement.
For seven years, the RNP was controlled by liberal Hugo
Flores, the only person to input data into the computers.
For several months now, Flores has been criticized for
leaving the office "in complete disorder," but the Liberal
Party deflects the charges towards the National Party.
Everyone attacks each other.
Illescas estimates that the vote would be close between the
candidates from the two traditional parties, and because of
this, the elections will be decided by the foreign vote.
Visibly angry, Illescas called it "outrageous" that citizens
of another country are not only going to participate in the
vote, but will virtually give the balance to one party or
the other.
More Foreign Aid
The president of the National Electoral Tribunal (TNE),
Tomas Lozano, recognizes that the irregularities denounced
by the opposition parties exist within the RNP. The TNE
claims that, of the 460,000 identity cards it has detected
as being obtained through replacement birth certificate
processes, between 80,000 and 100,000 were given to
foreigners, and the majority of these are Nicaraguans,
principally contras and their families.
The US Agency for International Development (AID)
contributed some $10 million to carry out the entire
electoral process, with $4 million earmarked for voter
registration and the electoral census. According to
Illescas, millions have already been spent for nothing.
Also bothersome to PINU's vice-president is the fact that a
foreign institution such as AID has in its hands essential
data on all Hondurans: "We put the birth certificates, the
backgrounds and records of the people in their hands. This
is a question of national security."
Vote From Beyond
Nicolas Cruz Torres shares the criticism that the electoral
census must be purified "because there are too many
replacement birth certificates and because a lot of minors
have identity cards."
"Here," said Lozano, "all the political parties even use
names of the dead to register people in the electoral
census. All the parties - mine included - are involved, so
nobody can throw the first stone." Lozano claims that 30,000
deceased Hondurans were struck from the voting lists.
Illescas believes that there are many more: "How many dead
are going to vote?"
On And On
In the midst of these problems, the electoral campaign
continues, and the two front runners, Callejas and Flores,
refuse to even bring up the nation's fundamental problems
related to national sovereignty, such as the presence of the
contra forces and US troops.
Behind the candidates, both parties blame the other for the
contra and gringo invasions. The National Party claims that
the National Security Council, the body that decided to
welcome the contras into Honduran territory in 1981-82, was
formed by General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, then-president
Roberto Suazo Cordoba, and Carlos Flores Facusse, today's
Liberal candidate.
In return, the Liberals claim that back then, current
National Party candidate Callejas was an intimate friend of
Alvarez Martinez and as such was a member of an ultra-right
organization closely tied to affairs of national security
and in which many high military officials participated.
Neither Callejas nor Flores even mention the contra affair
in their respective electoral campaigns.
For many, there is no difference between the two candidates
who only represent the wealthy. Both are graduates of US
universities. Both can count on the support of the US
embassy. (Flores, however, has more ties there: John Dimitri
Negroponte, a good friend of newly designated US ambassador
to Honduras, Crescencio Arcos, is Godfather to Flores's two
children.)
For the moment, polls point to Callejas as the likely winner
of the contest. It does not seem to matter that the
candidates refuse to discuss the real problems or how to
solve them. Apparently, those who worry about the lack of
serious content in the campaign are only a small elite group
made up of professional politicians, intellectuals, and a
few business leaders.
Recently named as president of the Honduran Council of
Private Enterprise (COHEP), Richard Zablah criticized the
candidates: "Instead of happy little songs, we would like
the candidates for President of the Republic to announce
their economic policies..."
After two consecutive Liberal governments, it appears that
some people want to change to the other traditional party,
although everything will actually remain the same.
Based on a report in Barricada, September 17, 1989
By Guillermo Cortes Dominguez
(We encourage feedback. Send comments, suggestions, etc. to
us via e-mail. Address cdp!ni!cries)
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