Honduran president makes contentious bid for second term

Allegations of election fraud, tyranny, drug trafficking and interference by communist provocateurs will cast a long shadow over Hondurans when they head to the polls on Sunday for a vote that threatens to plunge the volatile Central American country into fresh political turmoil.

Juan Orlando Hernández, the pro-business, pro-militarisation president representing the rightwing National party, is using a contentious 2016 court ruling to justify his bid for a second term in power, despite the constitution prohibiting re-election of sitting or former leaders.

Hernández backed the 2009 coup d’état against the Liberal party’s Manuel Zelaya, who was implementing modest reforms to benefit the country’s poor majority. The military-backed coup, which unleashed a violent crackdown against social and political activists still reverberating today, was justified by the elites on bogus claims that Zelaya was plotting to seek re-election.

“This is the first time since the transition from dictatorship to democracy in 1980 that a president is standing for re-election,” Eugenio Sosa, sociologist and professor at the National Autonomous University of Honduras, told the Guardian.

“His candidacy is totally unconstitutional and demonstrates the huge contradiction and cynicism of the coup. If not stopped now, any further consolidation of power will take us from authoritarian rule to dictatorship.”

Since 2009, the National party, increasingly centred on Hernández and his allies, has consolidated control of congress, the judiciary and armed forces, eroding the already fragile separation of powers. In 2012, Hernández fired the supreme court justices considered disloyal and replaced them with those aligned to the party in what critics described as a second coup.

Hernández has tightened his grip on power despite an array of scandals circling his ruling party. In 2013, the party’s campaign funds were boosted by ill-gotten funds from a massive fraud which wrecked the public health system.

In a New York court earlier this year, a leader of the Cachiros drug cartel named congressman Tony Hernández, the president’s brother, as among the group’s senior government allies.

“There is no evidence to support these lies,” a government spokesman said in a statement.

A regressive sales tax increase implemented by Hernández has funded food hand-outs to poor families – known as solidarity bags – decorated with the president’s name and party slogan, according to the thinktank Social Forum of External Debt and Social Development (Fosdeh).

Nevertheless, polls carried by the mainstream media – owned by powerful oligarchs and propped up by government advertising – put Hernández far ahead of the second place candidate, the anti-corruption crusader Salvador Nasralla, a former Pepsi executive and TV journalist. He is the unlikely conservative candidate for the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship, dominated by the leftwing Libre party, which emerged from the grassroots resistance to the coup.

Zelaya, who remains a polarising figure in Honduras, is the architect behind the alliance, which promises progressive reforms not dissimilar to those he oversaw before being ousted.

Honduras is the second poorest country in Latin America after Haiti, with two-thirds of people living in poverty, according to the national statistics institute. The National party has based its campaign on warnings that a change in power will generate insecurity and economic instability.

Homemade bomb-making manuals and Alliance campaign fliers were reportedly discovered recently when authorities raided a house used by alleged gang members.

The Venezuelan band Los Guaraguao, scheduled to close the Alliance’s campaign last weekend, were detained at the airport and deported amid unsubstantiated claims that anarchists were plotting to disrupt the election.

Then, visa restrictions for all Venezuelan were introduced in what analysts say is part of the government’s scaremongering drive to criminalise the opposition.

“It’s ludicrous to suggest that a change in government will cause disruption, unless the government is in bed with organised crime and control the levels of violence in society,” said Christine Wade, associate professor of political scientist and international studies at Washington College.

“The coup was never about Zelaya seeking re-election; that was just a convenient excuse. If you didn’t believe us then, perhaps you will now.”

A lot is at stake on Sunday as voters will also elect 128 members of congress, 20 Central American parliament representatives, and 298 mayors among other local politicians. Olivia Zuniga, the eldest daughter of slain indigenous leader Berta Caceres, is standing for Central American parliament for the Alliance.

According to official figures, 6.2 million people are eligible to vote – a number the opposition says is mathematically impossible in a country with 8.5 million habitants.

“The democratic conditions for free, fair and transparent elections do not exist,” an Alliance spokesman, Rodolfo Pastor, told the Guardian.

The main opposition parties have vowed to reject Sunday’s results if the electoral commission refuses to investigate fraud charges. Such rebellion could generate social and political conflict making the country ungovernable, according to professor Sosa.

The election will be the country’s most observed, so guaranteeing free and transparent elections, the government said.

Tit-for-tat accusations aside, things could turn ugly. The leader of congress recently warned that the military was ready to stamp out post-election protests.
Hernandez has overseen the creation of the military police, a huge force fiercely loyal to him.

Carlos Reyes, the leader of the influential drinks union (Stibys) whose 2009 presidential bid as an independent alongside Caceres collapsed with the coup, said: “The strengthened armed forces have been used to repress popular resistance, kill social leaders, protect international capital invested in our natural resources, and now will be used to defend and sustain the regime.”