ARI 13/2018 2 February 2018 The elections in Chile and Honduras and regional political trends in 2018 Carlos Malamud | Senior Analyst, Elcano Royal Institute | @CarlosMalamud Rogelio Núñez | Lecturer, IELAT, University of Alcalá de Henares Theme Chile and Honduras have kicked off an intense electoral period in Latin America that will last until 2019. These upcoming elections should confirm whether or not there is a new regional political trend (‘a turn to the centre-right’). Also present in the upcoming elections will be the trend towards re-election, the appearance of new forces and emerging leaders, along with violence and corruption as central campaign themes. Summary The election victories of Sebastián Piñera in Chile and Juan Orlando Hernández in Honduras marked the beginning of an intense electoral period in Latin America that will define the regional political map well into the next decade. The Honduran and Chilean elections have confirmed the new predominance of the political right and centre-right, while the return of Piñera to La Moneda and the forced continuity of Hernández in Honduras have reinforced the trend across the region towards presidential re-election. Chile and Honduras are also new examples of the ongoing erosion of traditional party systems, the appearance of new political forces and emerging leaders, and the corruption and violence that permeate, directly or indirectly, the electoral processes of the region. Whether or not a new political cycle can be confirmed to have begun, the region emerging from this process is much more diverse and plural than the Latin America of the past. The unanimity and hegemonies of Bolivarian ‘Chavismo’ have come to an end; the region’s actors will need to adapt to the new times, an imperative that some are still resisting. Analysis After the presidential election in Ecuador in April 2017, no further Presidents were elected in Latin America until the last two months of the year, with the elections in Chile (first round, 19 November; second round, 17 December) and Honduras (26 November). The Chilean election was marked by the fragmentation of the vote during the first round and a strong drop in support for the historic coalitions: Fuerza de Mayoría (‘Majority Force’) and Chile Vamos (‘Let’s Go Chile’) in its current version. Although in the first round of the 2013 elections these traditional coalitions gained 71% of the vote, in 2017 their support fell to 59%. The decline of such coalitions occurred as the extremes of the political spectrum attracted votes that historically had gone to centre-right and centre-left coalitions. Meanwhile, on the left there emerged the Frente Amplio (‘Broad Front’), which 1 The elections in Chile and Honduras and regional political trends in 2018 ARI 13/2018 - 2/2/2018 captured 20.2% of the vote, and on the right, the ‘independent’ José Antonio Kast appeared, taking 7.9%. In the voting Piñera (of the centre-right Chile Vamos) beat the official candidate, Alejandro Guillier (of the centre-left Fuerza de Mayoría) by far more than expected (more than nine percentage points). Guillier was penalised for his weak campaign and suffered only lukewarm support from the Frente Amplio, which remained reticent to back the old Concertacion formation. In Honduras, where elections have only one round, it took nearly a month for the official result of the presidential election of 26 November to be known. During those four weeks, the ballot counting brought back memories of other times: accusations of fraud, information blackouts, street disturbances (with 17 deaths), curfews and loss of institutional prestige. The Electoral Supreme Court (ESC) finally proclaimed Hernández –the incumbent President and the candidate of the Partido Nacional (National Party) for re-election– as the winner of the election by a narrow margin of only 1.5 percentage points (42.9% to 41.4%) over Salvador Nasralla, leader of the Alianza Opositora (‘Opposition Alliance’). The election revealed the poor functioning of Honduran judicial and electoral institutions, and their co-optation by private interests. The slowness of the vote count and the scant transparency of the ESC generated suspicions of fraud. Luis Almagro, Secretary General of the OAS pointed out that ‘it is not possible to be certain of the electoral result’, while the OAS delegation of electoral observers concluded that there were ‘irregularities before, during and after the elections’. Both electoral processes displayed characteristics linked to their country’s own internal dynamics but, at the same time, they foreshadowed certain traits that will be clearly and increasingly present during the 2018 and 2019 elections (in which 14 of the region’s 18 countries will vote). Consolidation of a new political juncture These two elections resulted in victories for the centre-right (Piñera) and the right (Hernández). The victories support the idea of a new regional political juncture. Some even speak of a ‘turn to the right’ (or to the centre-right), although this new trend can only be definitely confirmed by the results of the key elections of Mexico and Brazil. The change in trend began in 2015 with the victories of Mauricio Macri in Argentina, Jimmy Morales in Guatemala and Mesa de Unidad Democrática (MUD, ‘Table of Democratic Unity’) in the Venezuelan legislative elections. It was reinforced by the election of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in Peru in 2016, and continued to deepen in 2017 with the return of Piñera to La Moneda and the triumph of Hernández in Honduras. Nevertheless, the ‘turn to the centre-right’ needs to be nuanced. First, for the moment at least, it remains more a temporary change of juncture than a definitive change in the political cycle. Although the victories of Macri, Kuczynski and Piñera are significant, it is still too early to raise them to the category of a regional phenomenon. Bolivarian populism has lost only in Argentina (with the defeat of Kirchnerism in 2015) and the left 2 The elections in Chile and Honduras and regional political trends in 2018 ARI 13/2018 - 2/2/2018 in Chile (the heirs in 2017 of the Concertación). Aside from these two cases, national populism retains power in Venezuela, and has been ratified in Nicaragua (Daniel Ortega) and Ecuador (Lenín Moreno). In order to speak of a new political cycle, one must wait for the election results of 2018 and 2019. The centre-left and the left have real possibilities of winning, and in key countries like Mexico (Andrés Manuel López Obrador), Brazil (Lula da Silva) and Colombia (Sergio Fajardo) they are leading in the polls. However, if the right were to win in these countries, the result would consolidate the change in trend, giving way to a new political cycle at the regional level. Furthermore, this succession of centre-right victories has been heterogenous. Macri, Kuczynski and Piñera do not represent the same things as Hernández and Morales. The inclination towards republican form, content and style among the former group contrasts sharply with the Honduran’s lack of constitutional scruples. The reasons for the ‘turn to the right’ are rooted in three factors bound up with the new political juncture: (1) the end of the primary product super-cycle in 2013 and the subsequent economic slowdown) that affected each Latin American country in varying degrees, but especially those of South America; (2) the significant deterioration of the image of some governments in the realm of public opinion, common among leaders and parties in power for long periods of time; and (3) the demands of the new middle classes that weigh heavily on the different administrations and which are characterised by their inclusion of demands befitting their status, such as more political participation, access to education and other public services (ie, security, health and transport), heightened transparency and more efficiency in the fight against corruption and violence. The re-election ‘revival’ Chile and Honduras have shown two kinds of ‘re-electionism’ and two divergent ways of applying it: in the Chilean case, respect for the constitution and national institutions, while in Honduras the limits of both have been stretched. In Chile, continuous re-election is not allowed; however, a former President can aspire to be a candidate again, but only after a full presidential term has passed. This has been occurring for more than a decade. In 2017 Piñera’s victory created the unprecedented case of two different Presidents (each from different parties) holding power for 16 consecutive years, as each one succeeded the other every four years. Honduras has also just experienced a re-election, something without precedent during the democratic period, which goes back to 1982. The precedents for presidential continuity go back many years to Tiburcio Carías Andino, who was re-elected without interruption from 1933 to 1949. However, no Honduran leader has sought re-election since the return of democracy (with the exception of the unsuccessful constitutional reform of Manuel Zelaya in 2009, along with the strategy, also unsuccessful, of Roberto Suazo Córdova in 1985 to remain in power). During the democratic period, the Constitution of 1982 (article 239) expressly prohibited the re-election of anyone who had held presidential power. 3 The elections in Chile and Honduras and regional political trends in 2018 ARI 13/2018 - 2/2/2018 In 2015 the Partido Nacional of President Hernández successfully promoted the re- election project. At the beginning of 2016, the Supreme Court –controlled by members close to the government– declared that the articles of the Constitution that prohibited presidential re-election did not apply, opening up the possibility that the president might aspire to a consecutive re-election. This re-election trend –although very different in Chile than in Honduras, in both form and content– continues to be a regional fixture.