Eight years ago, the elected president of Honduras was marched at gunpoint out of the presidential palace in his pajamas, placed on an airplane, flown to a joint US-Honduran base, and then dispatched to Costa Rica. This precipitated a crisis in the Organization of American States, with almost all of the nations in this hemisphere refusing to recognize the coup government of Honduras. Our own ambassador called it a military coup in his dispatches to Washington, yet the US government quietly (and in contravention of law) pumped enough money into the country to keep it out of bankruptcy until a sham election could be held. That election installed an authoritarian government of oligarchs and unleashed narcotraffickers that had, until then, been under pressure from joint US-Honduran operations. I described these events in a series of diaries [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11].
And now, the tragedy appears to be in its next act, as suddenly the vote totals which had been heavily in favor of the progressives are swinging toward the right-wing National Party candidate and against the progressive Libre-PINU [Alianza] candidate amid unexplained computer failures and votes being held “for monitoring” in what appear to be Libre-PINU [Alianza] strongholds. Naturally, this is bringing the country to the brink of chaos.
From Nina Lakhani of The Guardian:
Honduras is teetering on the brink of its worst political crisis since the 2009 military coup after the beleaguered electoral commission failed for the fourth day to declare a winner in the presidential race amid mounting irregularities and allegations of vote rigging.
…
For the first time since 1980, when Honduras transitioned from dictatorship to democracy, the TSE [Electoral Court overseeing the election] failed on Sunday to issue early results and the projected winner – saying nothing until nine hours after voting closed.
The first results on Monday gave [Alianza candidate] Nasralla a seemingly insurmountable five-point lead with more than half the vote counted.
…
The TSE then echoed the National party’s claims about the delayed rural vote and Nasaralla’s lead started dwindling. But no technical reason could explain the delay as tallies from all 18,000 polling stations were transmitted electronically as soon as voting closed.
As David Ahgren of National Catholic Reporter notes,
[Right-wing authoritarian president Juan Orlando] Hernandez… controversially changed the constitution to allow re-election. Many commentators could not avoid mentioning the irony of Hernandez — accused of authoritarianism — winning a second term after President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in 2009 for supposedly wanting to pursue a second term.
And there is also singular hypocrisy in having accused Zelaya of corruption and then installed Hernandez. Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, NYT:
...Mr. Hernández’s government has been tightening its already firm grip on society. International observers and human rights defenders have been threatened and kicked out of the country. Student demonstrations have been violently broken up by the police. The government has passed laws that could restrict the right to protest.
...
The Honduran government under Mr. Hernández is not new to the business of silencing dissenters. In October, the International Advisory Group of Experts, or Gaipe for its initials in Spanish, published a detailed report on the death of a friend of mine from Honduras, Berta Cáceres. She was murdered because of her efforts as an environmental and indigenous-rights activist. The Gaipe report outlines how the government has been deliberately slow to bring the masterminds behind her killing to justice. They are powerful, well-connected men and women who live above the law under the Hernández government. Ms. Cáceres’s case is emblematic of the impunity and repression that exist in Honduras today, but it is just one of many.
Journalists and human rights advocates have been slaughtered with impunity, even as the country continues to be looted.
Detailed context for all of this is provided by a pair of country experts who post as RNS and RAJ at Honduras Culture and Politics. The latest is this:
We decided to review the vote tallies that are being held for greater scrutiny-- or monitoreo-- ourselves, to see if the suspicion many have, that this includes a preponderance of pro-Alianza voting, was upheld.
It may take us a few hours. ...
...
So far, though, it is clear that this vote pool reserved from counting would contribute to shifting the margin back in the other direction [toward Alianza].
Our State Department of course has nothing to say about this, possibly because they have no clue as to what’s going on. Kate Linthicum and Patrick J. McDonnell, LAT:
President Trump has not named a U.S. envoy to Honduras since Ambassador James D. Nealon left his post in July to join the Department of Homeland Security.
There is something grimly ironic about this. As we are dealing with the effects of a foreign power meddling in our elections to install an authoritarian, so is Honduras. Maybe in future we could remember what it feels like and not do unto others as we would wish others not do unto us.
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See also:
Sonali Kohatkar, Truthdig
[minor edit to remove reference to Deutsche Welle 11:42 AM Eastern Time, 12/1/17]