How the Honduran Election Was Stolen [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

Dispatch from Tegucigalpa
How the Honduran Election Was Stolen
by EMILY ACHTENBERG
December 09, 2013

Driving into Tegucigalpa to observe Honduras’s November 24 presidential election, our 17-member National Lawyers Guild delegation searched in vain for billboards featuring Xiomara Castro, candidate of the LIBRE (Freedom and Refoundation) party and wife of former President Mel Zelaya, ousted in a 2009 coup. Instead, Juan Orlando Hernández, candidate of the well-heeled ruling National Party—with whom Castro ran neck-and-neck in the pre-election polls—greeted us from virtually every inch of costly advertising space. It was an early sign of the extreme disparities of wealth and power that cast a long shadow over the election, creating formidable—and likely insurmountable—obstacles for the fledgling anti-coup resistance party in its first venture into national politics.

According to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Hernández won the presidency with 37% of the vote, well ahead of Castro at 29% and the Liberal Party candidate at 20%. (Honduran election law does not provide for a runoff if no candidate wins a majority.) But LIBRE, together with the libertarian Anti-Corruption Party (PAC) which received 14% of the vote, has refused to recognize the official results, denouncing an “electoral fraud of incalculable proportions.” Following a massive protest march last Sunday, the TSE agreed to a partial public recount.

The official results dashed the hopes and expectations for change shared by a broad-based alliance of LIBRE supporters including campesinos, trade unionists, indigenous, LGBT, women’s, and student groups, and even some businessmen who have grown alarmed at the state of Honduras’s economy. Since the coup, poverty levels and the gap between rich and poor have increased dramatically, with Honduras now showing the greatest wealth disparities in Latin America. As industrialist and LIBRE supporter Adolfo Facussé has noted, “Poor people dying of hunger, that’s not good for business.”

As international observers, we were impressed by the high level of civic engagement exhibited by the Honduran people, and by the progress that has been achieved towards creating a more transparent and accountable electoral system in a society with fragile democratic institutions. But these advances were far outweighed—and indeed subverted—by the circumstances of concentrated power, militarization, and targeted repression in which the election occurred, creating opportunities for electoral abuse and compromising the integrity of the process long before voters arrived at the polls.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/09/how-the-honduran-election-was-stolen/