These are difficult times that Honduras is going through, a country plunged into uncertainty, because 16 days after the presidential election, the winner has not yet been defined. President Xiomara Castro warned on Tuesday that a coup d’état is being prepared against her government and called for a massive mobilization in Tegucigalpa, in addition to demanding that the army and police “stop all disproportionate force” against hundreds of demonstrators of the ruling party, the Free Left, who have been demonstrating since Monday in the facilities where the National Electoral Council (CNE) must begin the special count of thousands of minutes with inconsistencies that will define the winner. elections. “I urgently request the conscious and peaceful support of the Honduran people,” requested the president.
Castro made his appeal early Tuesday morning in a message via social media. He said, citing “verified intelligence information,” that “an aggression aimed at breaking the constitutional and democratic order through a coup against my government is underway,” without giving further details. The president, who must hand over command to a future right-wing government, called for mobilization: “To the people, social movements, groups, grassroots organizations, activists and citizens, to urgently and peacefully gather in Tegucigalpa, to defend the popular mandate, reject any coup attempt and show the world that a new coup is being prepared here. »
The head of government also indicated in her message that former President Juan Orlando Hernández intended to return to Honduras “to proclaim the winner of the elections”. Hernández was pardoned by US President Donald Trump after serving nearly four years of a 45-year prison sentence for his ties to drug trafficking. The right-wing politician, also accused of corruption in Honduras, denied Castro’s reports. “There are no plans to enter the country or attempt to disrupt the constitutional order. This narrative only seeks to sow panic, divert attention and generate chaos, a practice known to free leaders,” he wrote on the social network X.
The Central American country’s attorney general, Johel Zelaya, ordered the “immediate capture” of the former president. “I have been clear in my public statements, I do not intend to return to Honduras at the moment, precisely because this government has shown that it does not respect guarantees and rights, and because my security and that of my family would be seriously threatened due to the obvious persecution and the instrumentalization of justice against me,” explained Hernández.
The one echoing Castro’s complaints is her husband, former President Manuel Zelaya, who was overthrown in a military coup in 2009. Zelaya fueled the theory of electoral fraud and said an “electoral coup” was brewing in the country. International election observers, whether missions from the Organization of American States (OAS) or the European Union, have not documented fraud in the process, although they have criticized the clumsiness in counting votes and the delay in presenting final results.
“The President requested the strong support of the Honduran people and the Free Party in the face of intelligence reports of real threats of a possible coup d’état aimed at destabilizing the constitutional order. This Thursday, December 18, President Xiomara Castro will peacefully transfer command to the new Chief of Joint Staff of the Armed Forces, an institutional act that ratifies the civil, democratic and constitutional direction of power and dismantles the putschist maneuvers that bet on chaos and breakup,” Zelaya said. wrote in
Amid the political chaos is a population navigating uncertainty due to the lack of definition in an election with a very close outcome. The latest preliminary results published by the CNE, between interruptions and “technical problems”, show a technical link between Salvador Nasralla, candidate of the Liberal Party, and Nasry Asfura, of the conservative National Party and supported by Trump. Asfura obtained more than 1.298 million votes, or 40.5% of the result, compared to more than 1.256 million for Nasralla, who represents 39.4% of the votes. In third position is the official candidate, Rixi Moncada, who only obtained 19% of the votes. Political tension prevented the start of the manual recount of around 15% of the minutes, or 2,700 ballots, which have “inconsistencies” and which will define the outcome of the election.
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