POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF MICHELLETI'S BID FOR THE

C O N F I D E N T I A L TEGUCIGALPA 000906 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/23/2017 TAGS: PREL PGOV HO SUBJECT: POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF MICHELLETI'S BID FOR THE HONDURAN PRESIDENCY REF: A. TEGUCIGALPA 469 ¶B. TEGUCIGALPA 904 Classified By: Acting Polcouns Frank Penirian. Reason: 1.4(b/d). ¶1. (C) SUMMARY: Post believes it is likely that Liberal Party member Roberto Michelleti Bain will succeed in his attempt to be allowed to run for President in the 2009 elections without resigning from his position as President of the National Congress. This means that a contest in the next elections between Michelleti and National Party President Pepe Lobo also becomes more likely. Honduran analysts believe that such an election would result in an even lower voter turnout than in 2005, potentially opening the door for a populist movement especially if other possible reforms to the Constitution such as reelection are approved. The old guard from both parties may be behind this move to recover control over the political system that it lost in the 2005 elections and may explain why Lobo did not confront Callejas at the National Convention earlier this year (Ref A). Faced with a President who either intentionally or not is ignoring the tough decisions facing the country, the establishment (media owners, political parties, Attorney General, and Supreme Court President) have united behind Michelleti as the one leader at this time who will force the right decisions to be made. It also means that Michelleti will have enormous control over the selection of magistrates for the Supreme Court of Justice in elections next year since they will be the ones deciding whether to overturn the reform to Article 240 of the Constitution that prohibits the President of Congress from running for President. In an unprecedented move, Michelleti already has begun to try to look Presidential by proposing an internal security plan for Honduras without consulting President Mel Zelaya, also of the Liberal Party (ref B). END SUMMARY. ¶2. (C) Roberto Michelleti Bain of the Liberal Party wants to be allowed to run for President in the 2009 elections without resigning from his position as President of the National Congress. This would mean overturning the reform of Article 240 of the Honduran Constitution, which states that the Presidents of Congress and the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ) cannot run for the Presidency of the Republic but must wait for the following electoral term. This reform was approved during the Carlos Flores Administration and ratified by Ricardo Maduro's Administration in order to prevent the Presidents of Congress and the SCJ from exploiting their powerful positions and using public funds to run their campaigns. Article 240 also indicates that other officials such as members of the Honduran military cannot run for the Presidency. On May 2, 2007, five members of the SCJ unanimously voted in favor of considering a legal measure requested by the attorney of Michelleti that the reform to Article 240 of the Honduran Constitution be declared unconstitutional. (NOTE: The five members are among the weakest of the 15 magistrates. Three of them are supported financially by former President Carlos Flores, one by businessman Jaime Rosenthal, and one by former Presidents Ricardo Maduro and, by proxy, Rafael Callejas. END NOTE.) ¶3. (C) As a Congressman in the previous administration, Michelleti actually voted to ratify the reform of Article ¶240. Pepe Lobo, the current President of the National Party, also approved the reform while presiding in Congress in the previous administration, but then refused to step down from his position when he ran for President in the 2005 elections. They now seem to recognize that Article 240 is one of the "untouchable" articles of the Constitution and never should have been reformed in the first place. Once the Attorney General's office rules on this issue, the measure will go back to the SCJ for a ruling by all fifteen justices. If the reform is overturned, it makes an election in 2009 between Michelleti and Lobo all the more likely. ¶4. (C) Chances are high that the SCJ will vote in Michelleti's favor. As President of the National Congress, Michelleti will be instrumental in choosing the magistrates in SCJ elections that will take place next year as well as the new Attorney General and President of the Supreme Court. Support from the Attorney General's Office also is likely because Leonidas Rosa Bautista, Attorney General at the Public Ministry, is a long-time personal lawyer of both Callejas and Flores, both of whom support the new measure. As the old guards of the National and Liberal parties, respectively, former Presidents Callejas (1990-1994) and Flores (1998-2002) believe that, by opening up the electoral process in 2005, they jeopardized their hold on the political system. If they do in fact have a plan to recover traditional influence in the parties, that may help explain why Lobo did not confront Callejas at this year's National Party Convention to modernize the party despite their differences (ref A). ¶5. (C) Michelleti's measure may be a smokescreen for what Carlos Flores really wanted all along: a return to the period in which the old guard controlled the political system as per paragraph 1. It is also no secret that he wants his daughter "Lizzy" (Mary Elizabeth Flores Lake),currently Vice President in Congress, to one day become President. Congressman Edmundo Orellana Mercado, former Attorney General, went so far as to say that he would call for a Constituent Assembly should the full body of the SCJ declare that the reform of Article 240 is unconstitutional, in which case other "untouchables" such as reelection and term limits could be considered. Orellana is presumed to be acting on behalf of Mel Zelaya's interest in reelection for a second term. Another scenario is the use of a referendum and the plebiscite, legislation proposed by National Congressman Juan Orlando Hernandez last session that never reached the floor, to allow the population to vote on such proposals. Callejas, whose U.S. visa was revoked by the Embassy in September 2006, may view the possibility of his own reelection as a chance to vindicate himself with the Honduran people, like other leaders in the region who have been reelected, and the international community. ¶6. (C) Flores may have begun working behind the scenes in an attempt to reform the Constitution when his staunch supporter, Angel Valentin Aguilar, who is the President of the College of Lawyers bar, took up the question as part of the celebrations organized by the bar in honor of the members of the 1982 Constituent Assembly during the 25th anniversary of the Constitution earlier this year. Flores may have chosen this venue as an "academic exercise" because any questioning or tampering of the "permanent" articles, according to Article 4 of the Constitution, constitutes treason and is punishable by law. On March 12, 2007, the College of Lawyers held the Tenth National Judicial Congress in Tegucigalpa during which well-known international jurists and constitutionalists analyzed possible reforms to the Constitution. After they concluded that a Constituent Assembly should not be called to accommodate the interests of one person, Michelleti's bid to overturn the reform to Article 240, which could lead to possible other electoral changes intended to consolidate power, began in earnest. Michelleti would have much preferred not to have to take this case to the Court but he was unable to convince the old guard to have Congress or a Constitutional Convention be the vehicle. ¶7. (C) COMMENT: Whatever the ultimate motive, it appears that Michelleti is serious about running for President of Honduras in 2009 while staying in his position as President of the National Congress, but there undoubtedly will be a number of legal challenges to his claim that Article 240 should be overturned. For example, a prominent Honduran attorney, Mauricio Velasco, told Poloff that the SCJ does not have jurisdiction to decide on the constitutionality of Congressional reforms to the Constitution, only normal legislation passed by Congress, and that it would require another reform process in Congress to change the reform to Article 240. In a May 22 article in the local press, he was quoted as saying that the SCJ also cannot rule on the matter because no one's rights have been violated, including Michelleti's, since he is not yet a candidate but only expects to be one. He also mentioned to Poloff that overturning the reform would mean that members of the military also could run for the Presidency, which he thought would not be a good development. It also appears that the two traditional parties made an agreement to support Michelleti's measure. In a recent newspaper editorial, Enrique Flores Lanza, the President's Legal Advisor, claimed that all five parties agreed to a pact in which they would not hold each other accountable on matters such as corruption, no matter who wins the next elections. Indeed, for the past 25 years of democracy in Honduras, a culture of "pacts" has predominated. Both parties believe they lost control of the voters in the 2005 elections by allowing the direct vote. An agreement between them could include reversing electoral reforms, originally designed to open up the political system, to consolidate power, such as changing the political makeup of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) and returning to party lists in the 2009 elections. ¶8. (C) COMMENT (CONTINUED): For his part, Michelleti recently introduced a new internal security plan without consulting the Zelaya Administration, an unprecedented move intended to show that he is Presidential material (Ref B). If he succeeds in overturning the reform to Article 240, a Michelleti-Lobo election in 2009 becomes more likely, which, in the view of political analysts, could result in an even lower voter turnout than in 2005. (NOTE: Voter turnout in the 2005 general elections consisted of about 50 percent of eligible voters. END NOTE.) A recent opinion poll commissioned by USAID and conducted by Vanderbilt University indicates that Hondurans rank political parties at the very bottom of their institutions in terms of public trust. A Michelleti-Lobo election would signal to voters that the two main political parties had not modernized in the interim between elections by not submitting younger, more dynamic and reform-minded candidates. This could open the door for a populist movement either from inside or outside the political system. If reelection is allowed, conceivably a populist government could emerge, from the right led by a Callejas type or from the left like radio personality and rabble-rouser, Eduardo Maldonado, who is supported by Liberal Party heavyweight Jaime Rosenthal, a businessman of questionable ethics, or the current President, Mel Zelaya, himself. END COMMENT. FORD