Honduran Voters’ Enthusiasm Wanes as Impatience Grows

Democracy is wearing a little thin in Honduras.

After 16 years of civilian rule, the mere fact that they are able to vote for their president Sunday is no longer enough for the citizens of this Central American nation. They want real change and are becoming impatient with their political system’s inability to provide it quickly enough.

“Without resolving the needs of the poorest, the nation is heading toward ungovernability and confrontation,” the Roman Catholic Church’s weekly newspaper Fides warned. “Hondurans must demand specific and viable programs to ensure that our democracy extends beyond the electoral to the political and then stretches to the economic and social.”

Wedged between three nations that waged U.S.-backed civil wars in the 1980s, Honduras became a staging ground for revolutions but never had a significant rebellion of its own. Without a major upheaval and a formal peace agreement, Honduras has lacked a catalyst for change, analysts say.

As a result, the return to civilian rule simply meant a return to the traditional parties that had governed before the 19-year military dictatorship in the 1960s and ‘70s. Further, the military has clung to power here: It was only October when the armed forces agreed to give up control of the police, probably next year. Soldiers will collect the ballot boxes and announce official results on Sunday.

“At first, people felt really enthusiastic about elections,” said Raquel Martinez, who at 40 remembers the return to civilian rule. “Now you vote mainly out of a sense of obligation. [But] as for thinking that they will solve your problems. . . .” She shook her head.

With her earnings from a small stall in Tegucigalpa’s main market, Martinez supports her elderly parents, a 16-year-old son and an infant grandson abandoned by her 18-year-old daughter. People like her have seen their incomes shrink as the economy has suffered under an international debt bigger than Honduras’ gross domestic product. Service on the debt has gobbled up more than a third of the federal budget.

She is exactly the kind of voter that Nationalist Party candidate Nora Gunera de Melgar--the first woman to run for president in Honduras--had hoped to attract with publicity that focused on the difficulties faced by single mothers, who are raising one-third of Honduras’ children.

“We have not come through with the democracy that we wanted when the military governments left and the civilian governments took over,” Melgar said in an interview at her hillside home outside this capital. “See how many people do not vote. People are disenchanted. We have terrible social problems.”

According to her party’s think tank, income has stagnated over the past 16 years, and the number of Hondurans living in poverty has risen from 60% to 80% of the population.

Yet critics contend that Melgar, the 56-year-old widow of a military dictator, and her main opponent, Liberal Party businessman Carlos Flores, 47, the son of an exiled newspaper publisher, have done little to raise those issues in the electoral debate. Flores, who declined interview requests, has a substantial lead, according to most polls.

Both candidates have run U.S.-style campaigns of catchy songs and empty slogans, some observers say.

“Unfortunately, that is what attracts most voters,” said Leticia Salomon, an analyst at the National Autonomous University of Honduras.

Candidates have avoided concrete promises because of the example of current President Carlos Roberto Reina, she said.

Reina made a campaign pledge to end the draft. Two months after he took office, civic organizations began pressuring him to honor the vow and did not stop until he introduced legislation, straining his relations with the military, Salomon said.

She sees hope in the imminent creation of a civilian police force as a sign of the erosion of military might. Democracy continues to develop with ballots that allow votes for individual candidates instead of for party tickets, she said.