UPDATE ON HONDURAN PRIMARY ELECTION RESULTS

C O N F I D E N T I A L TEGUCIGALPA 001079


E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/02/2018
TAGS: KDEM PGOV SOCI EFIN EAID HO
SUBJECT: UPDATE ON HONDURAN PRIMARY ELECTION RESULTS

REF: A. TEGUCIGALPA 01073

B. TEGUCIGALPA 1072

Classified By: Ambassador Hugo Llorens, Reasons 1.4 (b & d)


1. (C) Summary. Preliminary results confirm that Porfirio
"Pepe" Lobo won in a landslide in the National Party primary
election and Vice President Elvin Santos' stand-in Mauricio
Villeda won a decisive victory over President of the Congress
Roberto Micheletti in the Liberal Party primary election, as
reported reftel A. The preliminary count has concluded and
efforts have now switched to the official count, which will
take some days to conclude. Reports continue to indicate
that these were the cleanest elections in Honduran history.
Santos now has to deal with his court case challenging his
right to win. The fact that the Nationalist Party garnered
more total votes than the Liberal Party for the fist time
ever indicates dissatisfaction with the latter, an advantage
for Lobo as he enters the campaign for the general election,
to be held in November 2009. End summary.


2. (U) Honduras' Rapid Transmission of Election Results
(TREP),which involves "real time" cell phone calls from the
individual elections tables to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal
(TSE) with the results for the presidential races, closed
Monday morning with almost 70 percent of voting centers
reporting, enough to show clear winners in both parties from
the November 30 primaries. The TSE has now turned to the
official count, which also includes the Congressional and
municipal elections. Results are not expected until the end
of the week.


3. (U) OAS and local observers continue to report that these
primary elections went extremely well on a technical level.
As reported reftel A, they appear to have been the most
transparent elections in Honduran history. The Embassy was
thoroughly involved in supporting the democratic process
through technical support throughout the year to the National
Register of Persons (which issues the voter credentials) and
the TSE. The rules established by the TSE in conjunction with
the parties made for a transparent process and included the
first-time use of transparent ballot boxes, the TREP quick
transmission mechanism, voting at the tables that was open to
the public, and election registration lists at the tables
that had the photograph of the individual voters to match
with their national ID cards. Credit is also due to the
Honduran military, which plays a key role in this process,
guarding election material, delivering it to the polling
centers, providing security at the polls, and then returning
official results and all ballots to the TSE. Over 13,000
police and 14,000 soldiers provided security for the
elections. This is not to say that there were not any
problems; OAS observers, including Embassy representatives,
indicated that there were some logistical issues at the 5,306
voting centers. Nevertheless, public statements by the OAS
observer mission and domestic observer groups, as well as by
the winners and losers in the presidential races, are clear
in validating the results.


4. (U) As of the Monday, approximately 1.15 million Honduran
votes had been tallied in the TREP. In total, approximately
1.5 million Hondurans (35 percent of those eligible) are
expected to have voted in the primary elections, slightly
less than the last primary in 2005. For the first time in
recent history the National Party is expected to outpoll the
Liberal party (by at least 100,000 votes). Despite Lobo,s
competitors never mounting much of a battle, the TREP showed
him receiving 399,788 votes (76 percent),which was more than
those of the top two Liberal Party candidates combined.
Lobo,s closest competition came from Mario Canahuati who
received 102,191 votes (20 percent). For the Liberal Party,
the Santos/Villeda ticket won convincingly with 227,723 votes
(52 percent) versus the Micheletti ticket who received 22,746
(28 percent) of the Liberal votes cast.


5. (U) Questions remain regarding what will transpire within
the Liberal Party. Santos indicated that, in due time, he
will continue to pursue his Supreme Court case and eventually
the Presidential candidacy instead of Villeda. Santos also
stated, &I will fight for my registration (with the TSE),
(and) we will fix the unity of the Liberal Party.8 While
late Sunday evening Micheletti conceded defeat surrounded by
his principal supporters in a press conference, no one
expects him or President Manuel &Mel8 Zelaya to jump to
support Santos, given the history of antagonism between the
three. When conceding defeat, Micheletti stated, &We accept
the people,s decision and will support and accompany the
electoral process in the coming year,s general elections."
When questioned by the press if he was impressed by the unity
showed by the Elvin Santos movement, Micheletti tersely
replied, &The name of the candidate of the Liberal Party is
Mauricio Villeda Bermudez.8


6. (C) The Ambassador called all of the presidential
candidates to congratulate them either for their victory or
for their magnamity in defeat. Santos and Lobo were clearly
basking in their victory with the former already working
party elders to seek support for appealing to the Supreme
Court to overturn his election ban. Micheletti, who has
avoided the public eye since the election, told the
Ambassador that he would support Villeda, not Santos, as the
party's choice, but hinted that could change if Santos
successfully unified the party behind him.


7. (C) Comment: The elections were a clear success and an
important step to moving beyond the Zelaya administration.
The next step is straightening out Santos' constitutional
issues. Santos was forbidden to run by the TSE based on
their constitutional interpretation that vice-presidents
cannot run for president and therefore had Villeda step in
for him. Santos' next move is to appeal to the Supreme Court;
he has some good constitutional arguments on his side. Should
the court rule in his favor, Villeda would then step aside
for Santos. The court decision, however, will be influenced
by political factors. It will now be more difficult for the
court to ignore the popular will, but Santos will need to
acquire the support of Liberal Party leaders to pressure the
court to support him. He seems to have taken the right steps
to do so, with even President Zelaya and Liberal Party
President Patricia suggesting that they might support him.
Micheletti is still holding out, but his influence is
weakened following his overwhelming defeat. Santos will have
to demonstrate the political acumen to bring him around.
Despite pre-election accusations that he would cheat to win,
Micheletti clearly did not and acted honorably in quickly
admitting defeat.


8. (C) Honduras now has an entire year until the general
election. The resolution, one way or the other, of the
constitutional issues involving Santos will further clarify
the political picture. We are confident that U.S. interests
and equities can be preserved with Pepe Lobo, Elvin Santos or
Mauricio Villeda. At this early point, Lobo is clearly the
favorite. Santos/Villeda will be hurt by popular
disenchantment with President Zelaya and the Liberal Party.
Zelaya has high negatives for a number of reasons, chiefly
his governance style of jumping from crisis to crisis, his
joining of ALBA, and the deteriorating security situation.
While Santos has not been close to Zelaya, he is his
Vice-President and much of what Zelaya had done has tarred
the Liberals. A sign of this was the turnout. While lower
than the last primaries, it was the first primary in which
more voters turned out for the Nationalists than the
Liberals. In fact, all of the decrease in turnout appears to
have come from the Liberal side. End Comment.


LLORENS