Days before the Honduran elections of November 29, “international observers,” according to Honduran media and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, began arriving at the Tegucigalpa airport. But these were not the trained, professional people from the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the European Union, or the Carter Center, who usually observe Central American elections. Despite all of the international questioning of the elections’ legitimacy, these observers did not participate.
This was a serious problem for the de facto government, which urgently needed international recognition of the elections, without which Honduras could not count on loans from international financial institutions, particularly the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank, which suspended their loans over the June 28 military coup. Both banks have funds frozen for 45 projects in Honduras—about $684 million since July 1. Thus an international presence during the elections, even though it was only a facade, was a necessity for the golpistas.
So the de facto authorities decided to provide their own observers. They made a call of solidarity to right and ultra-right-wing organizations throughout the hemisphere. Anti-Castro forces from Miami and the anti-Chávez people from Venezuela made up the majority of the “observation” contingents. Wearing vests and name tags that said “International Observers,” they walked among the voting tables, writing in their notebooks. They frantically looked for microphones and recorders to repeat the same speech: “The population is happy to be voting in huge numbers.”
Yet in a school that had been transformed into a voting center, there was hardly a soul. “Traditionally there are long lines for any election in Central America,” said Jean-Michel Caroit, Le Monde’s Central America correspondent of more than 20 years. Another surprise: “We are part of the political foundation of the right, and we were invited by the Honduran government,” said one of two Swedish observers, in English, without a hint of doubt. Neither spoke Spanish and neither even had a notebook. In reality it is hard to say what exactly they were “observing,” but they defended their role and stuck to their script. “Our driver translates some things, although he doesn’t speak English very well,” they ended up admitting.
Another man, who speaks a lot with the media, although he didn’t have a vest or an “International Observer” name tag, ended up being a Honduran who said he represented an organization called Foro, a consortium of Honduran NGOs. “And what does this forum represent?” he was asked. “Civil society,” he answered, without going further into it, adding: “Many, I mean many organizations of all types: young people, women, businesspeople, etc.” He didn’t remember in that exact moment any of the names of those organizations, “but it doesn’t matter,” he concluded without blushing. When asked how the election was going, he replied, “Excellent! Twenty thousand times more transparent than the last presidential election.” Without adding anything else, he got into an impressive four-by-four armored vehicle and drove away. He is very far from what would be expected from an observer or representative of Honduran civil society.
“In reality, what we’ve been able to document is that about 40% of the 350 international observers were really nationals, that is to say, Honduran citizens, and they weren’t part of the 6,000 observers from inside the country that the Supreme Electoral Tribunal announced,” explained Andrés Pavón, director of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras.
César Cáceres, a member of the central committee of the National Party, which won the presidential election, was with an observers’ delegation from the Inter-American Bar Association, based in Washington. He couldn’t talk about the national observers (“They come from the Electoral Tribunal,” he said), but he vehemently defended his foreign guests. “The National Party arranged for the presence of more than 100 high-level international observers, because the issue is not to bring many people who perhaps have not participated in this sort of thing, which is why the level and especially the international significance of the observers is so important.”
Javier Zúñiga laughs when he hears these declarations. Zúñiga, who is the head of Amnesty International in Honduras and a former UN election observer, after recovering his composure, said, “Election observation involves a long and complex process that takes at least two months. Here we have a parody, a lie.”
To make the election sparkle, the authorities repeated, over and over again, that among their observers were “stand-out guests.” There was much comment made in the media about the presence of former Mexican president Vicente Fox, but he didn’t appear on election day, without explanation. But other “distinguished guests” did arrive. Jorge Quiroga Ramírez, former president of Bolivia (2001–02) and a leading figure in his country’s right-wing opposition, was there. He gave several interviews during his stay in Honduras, declaring on each occasion that these elections be recognized in Latin America.
There were also two ex–Salvadoran presidents: Alfredo Cristiani (1989–94) and Armando Calderón Sol, Cristiani’s successor, who was in power until 1999. Both are members of the right-wing ARENA party. Cristiani made few comments to the press, surely because of the fact that he now stands accused by Eloy Velasco, judge of the National Court of Spain, of having protected the intellectual authors of the Salvadoran military’s massacre of six Jesuit priests and their two assistants in 1989. Calderón, however, confessed to being a “great admirer of the Honduran democratic process.” “This country has written a page in history,” he said. “It has demonstrated that it has a huge democratic culture, and its people have responded in huge numbers to a well-organized election. Honduras is an example for all of Latin America.”
Yet Calderón, who so eloquently praised democracy, didn’t appear to be so open to dialogue or hearing differing opinions. On election night, he was one of a group of people that accosted political analyst Laura Carlsen, who had the courage to tell the truth about the elections in front of Al Jazeera’s cameras. Because she said she doubted that the elections would resolve the Honduran political crisis and that many people did not recognize the elections as legitimate, a mob of election observers gathered around her, with Calderón in the lead, yelling, “Get out of here, Chavista!” And thus was discovered the observers’ “great democratic spirit.”
Anne Vigna is a Mexico-based journalist. This is an edited, translated version of an article that appeared in January in the Mexican edition of Le Monde diplomatique. Reprinted with permission.
