The delay in determining the winner of the close presidential election Honduras has seen some minor incidents on the streets two weeks after elections as the Central American country awaits a special vote to finally determine the winner.
National Electoral Council (CNE) presidential adviser Ana Paola Hall on Tuesday called on the main political parties – the Liberal, the National and the Free – to join the special committees to start a lengthy special count that would be decisive. This is a process that includes 2,792 minutes of the presidential debatethat allegedly have inconsistencies and errors that need to be corrected.
With 99.80% of the vote so far, the conservative Nasry Asfura from the National Party is slightly ahead with 40.54% of votes versus 39.19% from Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party, who is also conservative. Coming in a distant third place is the ruling party’s candidate, Rixi Moncada, from the left-wing Libertad y Refundación (Libre), who received 19.29% of the vote. Moncada does not recognize the results.
Cossette López, another adviser to the CNE, explained that it is the duty of party representatives “to behave and do their work in accordance with the law and not with the party’s guidelines. Instead of joining the committees and pushing for control, they bring slogans and violence into the institution.”
Amid tensions due to the long wait for final results, outgoing President Xiomara Castro On Tuesday he called on people to protest on the streetsby ensuring that, according to intelligence reports, former ruler Juan Orlando Hernández, recently pardoned by United States President Donald Trump, has been released from a prison in that country where he was serving a 45-year sentence for drug trafficking, planned to return to the country to participate and support the process to his party’s candidate, Asfura.
Trump also sent his endorsement to Asfura days before the vote.
“I call on the people, social movements, groups, grassroots organizations, militancy and citizens to urgently and peacefully gather in Tegucigalpa. to defend the popular mandate“Reject any coup attempt and make it clear to the world that a new coup is brewing here,” said the ruler, who endorsed Moncada’s candidacy.
Castro, the wife of ousted President Manuel Zelaya, said Trump supported Asfura and his questioning of Moncada that it was unacceptable “interference” and that an “ongoing electoral coup” was underway.
Former President Hernández soon after denied Castro on social networks, asserting that he had no intention of returning to Honduras and that the government was preparing a self-coup.
Meanwhile, small groups of the ruling party, encouraged by their leaders, have been calling for the trial to be annulled Protests on the streets with burned tires, in which some people were injured.
However, the protests were minimal compared to the violent street demonstrations that took place after the 2017 election to denounce alleged irregularities in the election of Hernández over Nasralla.
Josué Murillo, director of the Pan American Development Foundation for Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, told The Associated Press that political parties from the beginning of the electoral process They acted far from ethics and democratic norms.
“This has led to a political electoral crisis,” he noted. In his opinion, this “unethical” behavior is the reason why the representatives did not want to take part in the special audit process. “Many (political leaders) have called for violent demonstrations that create fear and further weaken democracy and institutions in the country,” he said.
For its part, the Episcopal Conference of Honduras through a statement on social networks He called for respecting the will of the people expressed in the elections. “We reiterate what we have already expressed in our previous messages and call for peace, dialogue and respect for institutions and their laws within the framework of our Constitution.”
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