|
Honduras Two Traditionally Dominant Parties
Honduras essentially has had two dominant political
parties, the
PNH and the PLH, for most of this century, with the
military
allying itself with the PNH for an extended period
beginning in
1963. The PLH was established in 1891 under the leadership
of
Policarpo Bonilla Vásquez and had origins in the liberal
reform
efforts of the late nineteenth century. The PNH was formed
in 1902
by Manuel Bonilla as a splinter group of the PLH. Between
1902 and
1948, these two parties were the only officially
recognized
parties, a factor that laid the foundation for the
currently
entrenched PNH (red) and PLH (blue) two-party system. In
the early
1990s, the internal workings of the two traditional
political
parties appeared to be largely free of military influence.
Since
the country returned to civilian rule in 1982, the
military has not
disrupted the constitutional order by usurping power as it
did in
1956, 1963, and 1972, and it no longer appears to favor
one party
over the other as it did with the PNH for many years.
There appear to be few ideological differences between
the two
traditional parties. The PLH, or at least factions of the
PLH,
formerly espoused an antimilitarist stance, particularly
because of
the PNH's extended alliance with the military. The two PLH
presidencies of the 1980s, however, appeared to end the
PLH's
antipathy toward the military. According to political
scientists
Ronald H. McDonald and J. Mark Ruhl, both parties are
patron-client
networks more interested in amassing political patronage
than in
offering effective programs. As observed by political
scientist
Mark Rosenberg, Honduran politicians emphasize competition
and
power, not national problem-solving, and governing in
Honduras is
determined by personal authority and power instead of
institutions.
The objective of political competition between the two
parties has
not been a competition for policies or programs, but
rather a
competition for personal gain in which the public sector
is turned
into private benefit. Nepotism is widespread and is an
almost
institutionalized characteristic of the political system,
whereby
public jobs are considered rewards for party and personal
loyalty
rather than having anything to do with the public trust.
The
practice of using political power for personal gain also
helps
explain how corruption appears to have become a permanent
characteristic not only of the political system, but also
of
private enterprise.
Despite these characteristics, the two traditional
parties have
retained the support of the majority of the population.
Popular
support for the two traditional parties has been largely
based on
family identification, with, according to political
scientist
Donald Schulz, voting patterns passed on from generation
to
generation. According to McDonald and Ruhl, about 60
percent of
voters are identified with the traditional parties, with
the PLH
having a 5 percent advantage over the PNH.
Traditionally, the PNH has had a stronger constituency
in rural
areas and in the less developed and southern agricultural
departments, whereas the PLH has been traditionally
stronger in the
urban areas and in the more developed northern
departments,
although the party has had some rural strongholds. In a
study of
five Honduran elections from 1957 to 1981, James Morris
observes
that the PLH had a strong base of support in the five
departments
that made up the so-called central zone of the
country--Atlántida,
Cortés, Francisco Morazán, El Paraíso, and Yoro. The PNH
had strong
support in the more rural and isolated departments of
Copán,
Lempira, Intibucá, and Gracias a Dios, and the southern
agricultural departments of Valle and Choluteca.
Looking more closely at the four national elections
since 1980,
one notices two facts: the PLH dominated the elections of
1980,
1981 and 1985, at times capturing departments considered
PNH
bulwarks (Choluteca and Valle), whereas the PNH crushed
the PLH in
the 1989 elections, winning all but two departments, one
the
traditional PLH stronghold of El Paraíso. Honduran scholar
Julio
Navarro has examined electoral results since 1980 and
observes that
in the 1989 elections the PNH won significantly not only
at the
department level but also at the municipal level. Of the
289
municipalities in 1989, the PNH captured 217, or about 75
percent
of the country's municipalities.
According to political analysts, two significant
factors helped
bring about the success of the PNH in the 1989 elections:
the
cohesiveness and unity of the PNH and the disorder and
internal
factionalism of the PLH. The PLH has had a tradition of
factionalism and internal party disputes. In the early
1980s, there
were two formal factions: the conservative Rodista Liberal
Movement
(Movimiento Liberal Rodista--MLR), named for deceased
party leader
Modesto Rodas Alvarado and controlled by Roberto Suazo
Córdova; and
the center-left Popular Liberal Alliance (Alianza Liberal
del
Pueblo--Alipo), founded by brothers Carlos Roberto Reina
and Jorge
Arturo Reina. By 1985, however, there were five different
factions
of the PLH. Alipo had split with the Reina brothers to
form the
Revolutionary Liberal Democratic Movement (Movimiento
Liberal
Democrático Revolucionario--M-Lider), which represented a
more
strongly antimilitary platform, and another faction led by
newspaper publisher Jaime Rosenthal retained the Alipo
banner. The
MLR split into three factions: one led by President Suazo
Córdova,
which supported Oscar Mejía Arellano as a 1985
presidential
candidate; a second faction headed by Efraín Bu Girón, who
also
became a presidential candidate; and a third faction led
by José
Azcona Hoyo, who ultimately was elected president with the
support
of Alipo, which did not run a candidate. Only the
complicated
electoral process utilized in the 1985 elections, which
combined
party primaries and the general election, allowed the PLH
to
maintain control of the government
(see The Struggle of Electoral Democracy: The Elections of 1985
, ch. 1).
Three PNH factions also vied for the presidency in the
1985
elections, but the National Movement of Rafael Callejas
(Movimiento
Nacionalista Rafael Callejas--Monarca) easily triumphed
over
factions led by Juan Pablo Urrutia and Fernando
Lardizabel, with
Callejas winning 45 percent of the total national vote and
almost
94 percent of the PNH vote. PNH unity around the
leadership of
Callejas endured through the 1989 elections. Callejas was
responsible for modernizing the organization of the PNH
and
incorporating diverse social and economic sectors into the
party.
As a result, in the 1989 elections he was able to break
the myth of
PLH inviolability that had been established in the three
previous
elections of the 1980s. In the 1989 contest, the PNH broke
PLH
strongholds throughout the country.
The PLH was not as successful as the PNH in achieving
party
unity for the 1989 elections. The PLH candidate, Carlos
Flores
Facusse, had survived a bruising four-candidate party
primary in
December 1988 in which he received 35.5 percent of the
total vote.
As noted by Julio Navarro, Flores was an extremely
vulnerable
candidate because in the primary he did not win major
urban areas
or departments considered PLH strongholds.
The electoral campaign for the November 1993 national
elections
was well underway by mid-1993. The PLH nominated Carlos
Roberto
Reina Idiáquez, a founder of M-Lider and former president
of the
Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), the leftist
PLH
faction. The PNH nominated conservative and controversial
Osvaldo
Ramos Soto, former Supreme Court president and former
rector of the
UNAH in the 1980s. As of mid-1993, public opinion polls
showed the
two candidates about even.
Reina won his party's nomination in elections on
December 6,
1992, by capturing 47.5 percent of the vote in a
six-candidate
primary; second place was taken by newspaper publisher
Rosenthal,
who received 26.1 percent of the vote. Unlike the PLH
primary of
December 1988, the 1992 PLH nomination process
demonstrated the
party's strong support for Reina, who won in fourteen out
of
eighteen departments. Reina, who represented Honduras
before the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the border
conflict with El
Salvador, advocated a "moral revolution" in the country
and vowed
to punish those who enriched themselves through
corruption.
The nomination process for the PNH was not an open
process like
that of the PLH, and a vote scheduled for November 29,
1993, served
only to legalize the candidacy of Ramos Soto. The actual
process of
choosing the PNH candidate had occurred several months
earlier, in
July 1992, when the Monarca faction and the Ramos Soto
faction
struck a deal in which Ramos Soto was to be the candidate.
The
Monarca's presidential precandidate, Nora Gunera de Melgar
(the
widow of General Juan Alberto Melgar Castro, former head
of state),
was eliminated from consideration despite her objections.
Other
minor factions were not allowed to present their
candidates.
In his campaign, Ramos Soto described himself as a
"successful
peasant" ("campesino superado"), alluding to his
humble
origins in order to gain popular support. Despite
capturing the
nomination, Ramos Soto encountered some resistance to his
PNH
candidacy, with some party members believing that his
election
would be a setback for the modernization program begun by
President
Callejas. Other Honduran sectors remembered Ramos Soto's
reign as
UNAH rector when he led a campaign to oust leftist student
groups.
Some human rights activists even claimed that Ramos Soto
had
collaborated with the military to assassinate leftists at
the
university.
Data as of December 1993
|
