Abigail and Adam review news from the week: Costa Rica's elections, the Colombian defense minister's visit, re-election in Colombia, and the UNASUR summit in Quito.

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In our inaugural February 5 post, Adam Isacson of CIP talks about the debate in Colombia over President Álvaro Uribe's apparent desire to run for a third term in office, which just suffered a setback in the justice system.

Download or listen to the 12-and-a-half-minute .mp3 file here or at our podcast page.

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Results (66.31% of urns counted):

1. Porfirio Lobo (National Party) 937,006 (55.9% of valid ballots)
2. Elvin Santos (Liberal Party) 639,481 (38.2%)
3. Bernardo Martínez (National Innovation Party) 37,029 (2.2%)
4. Felícito Ávila (Christian Democracy Social Party) 32,113 (1.9%)
5. César Ham (Democratic Unification) 30,334 (1.8%)

Western Hemisphere countries recognizing the election result:

• United States
• Colombia
• Costa Rica
• Panama
• Peru

The turnout:

In the 2005 presidential elections, 46 percent of eligible Hondurans turned out to vote. Honduras' Supreme Elections Tribunal (TSE) has projected that more than 60 percent voted this time. The Honduras Coup 2009 blog reports that the pollster the TSE hired to make statistical projections and perform exit polling estimates a turnout of 47.6 percent. The pro-Zelaya "Resistance Front" is estimating turnout of 35-40 percent. Meanwhile, of ballots that were cast, 6 percent were blank or invalid.

Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela:

Having said that, let me stress the most important point, and that is that, while the election is a significant step in Honduras' return to a democratic and constitutional order after the 28th June coup, it's just that. It's only a step, and it's not the last step....

A government of national unity needs to be formed. The congress has to take a vote on the return of President Zelaya to office.

And another element of the San Jose Accord that I think would be very, very important as Honduras moves forward to try to reestablish the democratic and constitutional order is the formation and the structuring of a truth commission, which was also contemplated in the original Tegucigalpa framework and San Jose Accord.

And the truth commission would be a body that would look into the incidents and the situation that led to the coup, but at the same time, as the accord says, ... it also will provide the elementos, as it says in the accord, the elements to help the Hondurans make the necessary reforms to their constitutional process and to bring about a fuller reconciliation of the Honduran people. ...

The issue is not who is going to be the next president. The Honduran people decided that. The issue is whether the legitimate president of Honduras, who was overthrown in a coup d’état, will be returned to office by the congress on December 2^nd, as per the San Jose-Tegucigalpa Accord.

De facto president Roberto Micheletti:

On the way, many things have changed. Today, we are a nation whose sovereignty has been proved, with no fear of defending its sovereignty against even the largest [powers], and with the faith that if we act according to the law, we can achieve everything. Beyond paper and speeches, today our Honduras has gone out to confirm to the world that it is a dignified, free country, with no impositions and very proud of itself.

Resistance leader and independent pro-Zelaya presidential candidate Carlos Reyes:

We will keep rejecting any dialogue with the coup leaders. ... We've had it up to here with dialogues. Why should we go on with so much dialogue if, with these dialogues, we have lost five months and we haven't resolved absolutely anything.

The Honduran Congress is to vote Wednesday on whether to reinstate ousted President Manuel Zelaya to head a "national unity government" until January 27, when Porfirio Lobo, the winner of yesterday's vote, would take office.

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and the acting president who deposed him in a June coup, Roberto Micheletti, arrived at an agreement last night to restore Zelaya to the presidency. Zelaya would complete his term under a power-sharing agreement, the product of a U.S. and OAS diplomatic offensive. The agreement still needs to be approved by the Honduran Congress, most of whose members supported the coup in the first place.

• Acting President Micheletti announces the accord and lays out its main points (text / video).
• U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton applauds the "breakthrough." (text)
• OAS Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza lauds the accord as "a moment of great satisfaction." (text)
• UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon is "encouraged." (text)

In a private ceremony this morning, U.S. Ambassador to Colombia William Brownfield and Colombian Foreign Minister Jaime Bermúdez signed the “Complementary agreement for cooperation and technical assistance in defense and security,” which formalizes a U.S. presence at seven Colombian military bases for ten years. We still do not know what else is in this agreement, which was negotiated in secret and will not require the approval of either country’s Congress, though in the United States it will be shared with both houses’ foreign relations committees before it goes into effect. (We will add a link to the agreement once we obtain a copy.)

• Declaration from the Colombian Presidency (text - English and Spanish)
• The U.S. embassy in Bogotá says "this Agreement is a natural part of our relationship." (text)
• The U.S. embassy has produced a new "fact sheet" about the agreement, but it is only just over a page long. (PDF)
• Here is a video of officials signing the accord:

(This post was researched and written by CIP Intern Hannah Brodlie.)

Over the next twelve months presidential elections will take place in Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Honduras, Costa Rica and Brazil.

• In Uruguay the first round of legislative and presidential elections were held last Sunday. While the governing center-left Frente Amplio’s candidate, Jose Mujica, a former Tupamaro guerrilla, received a majority 47 percent of the vote, it was not the outright majority necessary to avoid a runnoff against former president Luis Lacalle, who received 28.5 percent. Pedro Bordaberry of the Colorado Party got just 17 percent, and immediately endorsed Lacalle, in an effort to avoid a Mujica victory at the runnoff, which will be held on November 29. The winner will take office on March 1, 2010.

• Chile is facing a three-way race between opposition conservative Sebastian Pinera, Eduardo Frei, the governing center-left Concertación candidate, and Marco Enriquez-Ominami, a 36 year old congressman and film producer. Enriquez-Ominami split from the governing Concertación coalition to run as an independent and is gaining in the polls. There are a total of four candidates on the ballot; the top two will end a run-off election if none wins an outright majority. The first round of voting is December 13. A poll by the Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Contemporanea (CERC) shows Enriquez-Ominami with 20 percent of the vote, and Pinera leading with 41 percent. The results confirm the likelihood of a tie between Frei and Enriquez-Ominami in the first round of voting. Reuters offers descriptions of each candidate’s positions.

• In Brazil, the presidential race remains steady, according to a September Sensus poll, with Jose Serra, Sao Paulo state governor and senior member of the opposition PSDB, at 40%, Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s chief of staff and chosen successor, at 19%, and everyone else under 10%, in a runoff scenario. In the hypothetical runoff, Bloggings by Boz notes, Serra would beat Rousseff 50% to 25%, with a quarter remaining undecided or not voting.
  Some analysts have suggested that the Dilma’s fall in popularity is due to recent scandals surrounding the Lula administrations. Lula has dropped a few points in the polls, but he still enjoys a high approval rating of 76.8 percent (down from 81.5 percent). In addition, Dilma underwent chemotherapy for lymphoma earlier this year, however her doctor announced in September that she has beaten the cancer and is in excellent health.

• In Bolivia, president Evo Morales will likely be re-elected on December 6, according to a recent poll by Equipos MORI. 46 percent of respondents said they would vote for Morales, 16 percent for former Cochabamba mayor Manfred Reyes Villa of the New Republican Force (NRF), and 8 percent for Samuel Doria Medina of the National Unity Front (FUN). A quarter of respondents were undecided. Bolivia’s first indigenous President and former coca-grower, Morales was elected in December 2005 as the candidate for Movement to Socialism (MAS).

• President of Colombia Alvaro Uribe, popular for his hardline security policies, has still yet to announce formally whether he intends to run for a third term next year. Colombia's Constitutional Court approved a referendum on whether to amend the constitution to allow Uribe to run again. However, they will not likely rule on the legality of the bid, clearing him to run, until early next year. Electoral authorities say they need at least two months to organize the re-election referendum, which means that the referendum could take place concurrently with March 2010 legislative voting, only two months before the presidential poll. The president's approval rating is 78 percent, and an Ipsos poll suggests that he would win if the election were held today. In a referendum vote, 65% say they would turn out and of those, 88% say they would vote in favor of allowing reelection.
           
  The Colombian newsmagazine Semana recently published a poll of candidate preferences, both with and without Uribe in the running. According the poll, in an election without Uribe, the top three candidates are (in order of popularity) Juan Manuel Santos, Andres Felipe Arias and Gustavo Petro. The first two have served in Uribe's cabinet; the third is the nominee of the country's main leftist opposition party. In a scenario in which Uribe does run - in which case Santos and Arias would not - the current president wins by a landslide; the distant runners-up are Gustavo Petro, Liberal Party nominee Rafael Pardo and Conservative Party politician Noemí Sanin.

• In Venezuela, legislative elections are scheduled for December 2010. The opposition has tried to present a united front, the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática, and decided not to boycott this year’s elections as they did in 2005, resulting in a legislature almost totally controlled by President Chávez's supporters since then. They believe that due to Chavez’s recent decrease in popularity, documented by a number of polls, they can win a majority. Both the opposition and Chávez have mentioned the posssibility of moving up the election date to earlier in the year. 

• Elections in Honduras remain uncertain. The Micheletti regime, which took power in a June 28 coup, insists it will hold presidential and legislative elections on November 29, as planned. However, the international community will not recognize the results of the elections unless deposed president Manuel Zelaya is reinstated. However, according to a CID-Gallup poll, if elections were held today, Porfirio Lobo Sosa of the National Party would be elected president with 59 percent of the vote. Lobo is 16 points ahead of his competition, Elvin Santos of the Liberal Party, and Zelaya’s former vice president. While both Zelaya and Santos are from the same party, Santos has distanced himself from the deposed president since the coup.

• Elections will be held in Costa Rica in February. Laura Chinchilla, former vice president and candidate for the governing Partido Liberacion Nacional (PLN), is indisputably in the lead with 43 percent of voter support, according to a poll published by La República in August. Otton Solis, founder of the Partido de Accion Ciudadana and known for his opposition to the free-trade agreement with the U.S. that current president Oscar Arias helped push through, is at 26 percent. According to the same La República poll, 72 percent of voters support the idea of a female president, a slight increase from April.

Yesterday, Mauricio Funes was sworn in as President of El Salvador - marking the historic end of the conservative ARENA party's two-decade rule and the historic beginning of the leftist Farabundo Marti Liberation Front's (FMLN) first attempt at the presidency.

After fighting U.S.-backed troops for over 12 years, the FMLN converted itself from a Marxist guerrilla-based group to a political party in 1992, after the signing of the peace accords. Yet, despite its multiple candidates for president throughout the years, it had never been able to pull ahead of ARENA's candidate until this year. Many attribute this in part to the United States' previous strong stance against the prospects of a government run by the FMLN in El Salvador, since in the 1980s, the United States poured $6 billion into El Salvador to fight the rebel group.

However, the Obama administration has changed the way the United States views El Salvador and the FMLN. And to show its support for the new, democratically elected government, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attended the inauguration of Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes wearing a bright red suit - the color of the FMLN - and called Funes' election a testament to democracy, according to Reuters. A Washington Post article reports that "After meeting with Funes on Monday evening, Clinton told him: 'The United States stands ready to assist you and your new government. This is a commitment President Obama and I share.'"

A common fear appearing both in the news and on Capitol Hill after Funes' victory (see our previous blog post) was that President Funes would follow in the path of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. However, Funes has sought to distance himself from the far left and instead align himself with moderates like Brazilian President Lula da Silva and President Obama.

The only revolution Funes spoke of during his inaugural address was a "peaceful and democratic revolution" that erases "inequalities, improves the population's quality of life, and regains the efficiency of public management." And, according to the Los Angeles Times, Funes' "Cabinet has more economic pragmatists than ex-guerrillas, and he promised economic austerity along with a fight against corruption, drug trafficking and organized crime."

During his speech, Funes praised both Obama and Lula, stating that "When my adversaries, distorting facts and staining the honor of people, tried to falsely discredit us, me and my beloved party, the FMLN, turned to the strong examples of Obama and Lula, as proof that progressive leaders, instead of being a threat, can be a new, safe path for their people. . . . Obama, I said, proved that it is possible to reinvent hope. And Lula, I said, showed that one can make a government popular, democratic, with a strong economy and fair distribution of wealth."

The FMLN's and Funes' victory in El Salvador is not only a historic event for the country, it is an important marker for the passing of Cold War sentiments and the beginning of a new era of foreign relations. To mark this event, 15 heads of state attended yesterday's inauguration, in addition to Secretary of State Clinton and Spanish Prince Felipe de Asturias and many other delegations from all over the world. While, according to El Nuevo Herald, 17 heads of state were to attend the events, a last minute change led to "no-shows" for Hugo Chávez and Daniel Ortega (the Wall Street Journal also reports that Bolivian President Evo Morales missed the ceremony). President Ortega did show up for the evening festivities, however the Venezuelan government cited "possible assassination attempts" as President Chávez's excuse for his decision not to attend. Yet, it is coincidental that the two heads of state from whom Funes tried to distance himself during his campaign were the day's "no-shows".

It is still too early to know which way President Funes will go - whether he will ally himself with the politics and style of President Chávez, or whether he will stick with Presidents Obama and Lula. After day one, Funes seems to be leaning toward Lula and Obama, yet only time will truly tell.

Below, thanks to CIP Intern Stacy Ulmer, are remarks of government officials around the region regarding the results of Sunday’s elections in El Salvador:

“We applaud the democratic process in El Salvador, and we give our most enthusiastic best wishes to El Salvador for their democratic examples” -Álvaro Uribe Vélez, President of Colombia

“Well, first and foremost, I want to congratulate the people of El Salvador for, you know, a very free, fair, and democratic election. I want to specifically congratulate Mauricio Funes as the winner of the presidential election, and also his opponent, Rodrigo Avila, for participating in the election and for respecting the election results. So we look forward to working with the new government of El Salvador, you know, on our bilateral agenda. And you know, and that’s what I have.” - Robert Wood, Acting Department Spokesman for the U.S. State Department

“The sons of Simón Bolívar give our supportive hand to President Mauricio Funes” -Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela

…with the FMLN at the head of El Salvador, the leftist governments extend throughout the region and that, in his opinion, are “a clear demonstration that the political neoliberals promoted by the United States, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have been an entire failure and that the people are looking for new horizons” -Iván Canelasagregó, Spokesman for the Bolivian Government

The President of Mexico, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, congratulated the winning candidate of the El Salvador elections, Mauricio Funes, by telephone this afternoon; and through their own channels he asked the Salvadoran citizens to do the same, which yesterday became a model for elections, that displayed their vibrant democracy that lives in this Central American country.