elections

Still no Peace Corps news, so I will entertain myself (and hopefully you) describing election season here. First of all, it´s important to remember that Honduras has had democracy for less than thirty years. So elections, while exciting, are a bit new and odd. There are two main parties, Liberal and National (tho apparently they´re really conservative and more-conservative -- sound familiar?). Liberal is red (their presidential candidate is Mel) and National is blue (their guy is Pepe), and there are other minor parties that are respectively yellow, purple and green. It´s clear that a lot of the ads are directed towards people who can´t read or don´t know how to use a ballot - lots of the bulletin boards show ballots with big X´s next to their candidates names. I find it interesting that all the bulletin boards - from candidates for president to city council - have the candidate´s picture. I can´t imagine that being a good strategy for, say, Bush, but here it makes sense b-c people relate on a personal level to people they know. And I´ve only seen two female candidates for local office... Campaigning here is getting out of control. Every car has either a blue or red sticker, there are flags everywhere and tons of bulletin boards. But the most annoying things are the PA-equipped cars. At any hour of the day or night, these cars will drive up the road blasting out campaign slogans and songs and other stuff I¨m glad I don´t understand. And it seems corruption is ubiquitous and will probably not end with the election. That seems to me to be the root of a lot of problems here - the accepted reality of government corruption and the apathy that that creates in a society. The apathy is strange, tho, b-c sometimes people do get really worked up about things, like this election. In fact, the election is the reason schools are closing a few weeks earlier than usual. I don´t really understand what one has to do with the other, but apparently teachers and administrators are usually big into the campaigning so would rather focus on that than school. Sounds fine to me, tho - I´m ready for the beach!!!