A Discussion on the Honduran Elections

By Daphne Morrison
December 9, 2009

Listen to an audio recording of the event.

On November 29, the long-awaited general elections in Honduras saw the victory President-elect Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo and effectively put an end to the immediate crisis which was ignited five months earlier when President Manuel Zelaya was forcibly removed from power on June 28.

Still, the 6-month debacle—whose unusual collection of events unfold like a suspense novel, complete with a de facto coup, the former president’s surreptitious return, and his subsequent (and continued) refuge at the Brazilian Embassy—is not likely to pass quietly from public consciousness.

Kevin Casas-Zamora, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, lamented that the crisis has “not changed the wretched status quo in the case of Honduras,” adding that the root causes of the political breakdown are unchanged. The opportunity to revise the constitution, he continued, was not seized—which does not bode well for the future of this country and its ability to weather another political storm. “It’s very likely that future Zelayas will come around.”

Sarah Stephens, executive director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, pointed out conditions before the November elections, including the imposition of a brief constitutional decree by de facto president Roberto Micheletti—which effectively suspended a host of civil liberties—and an increase in media oppression and violence, especially against women. Turning to the outcome of the elections, she added that “results don’t prove free and fair elections.”

But much of the panel discussion, which convened on December 9 at the Inter-American Dialogue, centered on how Washington handled the crisis.

Casas-Zamora described the contradictory stages of U.S. diplomacy as “disturbing,” adding that Washington went from “inconsistency to indignation to indifference to confusion and finally, acquiescence.”

Michael Shifter, the Dialogue’s vice president for policy, stated that the U.S. made two strategic blunders in its handling of the crisis. First, the government was too hard-lined in its initial response to the coup, and its punitive stance—including the imposition of tough sanctions and its support for the suspension of Honduras from the Organization of American States—proved to be less a form of leverage than a liability. Second, and later on in the crisis, the U.S. moved too quickly, often without consulting other countries in the region—and especially regarding the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord, which sought to reinstate Zelaya. “The process and the consultation are almost as important as the solution,” Shifter said.

For Stephens, the crisis will not be fully resolved until an independent truth commission is established, and some implementation of the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord is decided on. She added that the lifting of U.S. sanctions should be contingent on President-elect Lobo’s ability to deliver on these two recommendations, and suggested that the legitimacy and sustainability of his government may even be contingent on his ability to do so.