A sticker on a wall in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, invites people to vote in Sunday’s presidential election. Hondurans will elect a successor to President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was first elected in 2013.
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SOPA Image / SOPA Image / LightRocket via Gett
A sticker on a wall in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, invites people to vote in Sunday’s presidential election. Hondurans will elect a successor to President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was first elected in 2013.
SOPA Image / SOPA Image / LightRocket via Gett
A colorful cast of characters are taking part in Sunday’s vote for Honduras’ next president.
The forerunner, one of the country’s former first ladies, is being portrayed as a radical leftist who wants to push the small Central American country into the arms of Venezuelan and Cuban communists. The ruling party’s candidate is a longtime loyalist who claims to be “different”, although he has been investigated for embezzlement of public coffers. And the man who is far behind in third place got out of a US prison in time to register to run. He served a three-year sentence for money laundering.
“There are no good options,” said Dilisia Carranza, 48, who sells electronics from a small shop in the industrial city of San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras. She says she’s still deciding, but one thing is for sure. She will choose one vote de castigo – or vote against – against the ruling National Party.
A lot of voters say they are doing so. They want to punish the current National Party, which has been in power since a coup in 2009. Their anger is particularly directed at the president of the past eight years, Juan Orlando Hernandez.
Hondurans experienced 8 years of economic devastation and corruption
Hernandez was first elected in 2013 and then again in 2017 after making a change to the Honduras constitution to allow him to be re-elected. According to Gustavo Irias, head of the Center for Democratic Studies in Honduras, the country has gone into a downward spiral since then.
“These elections can turn a page from the slide on everything from human rights, to the rule of law and our democracy,” he said.
Corruption has skyrocketed in the country. US prosecutors in a case in New York federal court have implicated Hernandez in illegal activities related to the drug trade. The charges, which he denies, come in the prosecution of Hernandez’s brother, who recently convicted and sentenced to life in prison in the United States.
An anti-corruption group in Honduras says 70% of legislators also on Sunday’s ballot has faced corruption charges.
In addition to the compounding factor, Honduras’ economy has shrunk dramatically, hit hard by the pandemic and severe hurricanes. Unemployment and the economy are at the forefront of voters’ minds.
Araceli Mejia Alvarado is a single mother. She said she lost her job cleaning houses at the beginning of the pandemic and was unable to find steady work where she lives in northern Honduras. She said that times just kept getting harder.
“You feel it, there’s a lot of instability, poverty and crime,” she said. She said she would also not vote for the ruling National Party, adding that she no longer believes in democracy, only God.
Hondurans have the lowest pro-democracy ratings in Latin America today, Recent polls have found.
A former first lady leads the polls
Xiomara Castro, 62, is currently leading the polls, especially after uniting the opposition under her candidacy. She is married to Mel Zelaya, a former president who was removed from office by the military in 2009. Castro has not been seen in public with her husband as she has in previous campaigns.
The opposition portrayed her and Zelaya as communists who would ally the country with Venezuela and Cuba. And they charged that Zelaya had been accused of taking bribes while in power.
A supporter of the leading presidential candidate, Xiomara Castro, hung up campaign posters on Saturday in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
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A supporter of the leading presidential candidate, Xiomara Castro, hung up campaign posters on Saturday in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Inti Ocon / Getty Images
At a recent rally in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, Castro told supporters she would “put an end to the pain and suffering that the Honduran people have to endure.”
She is committed to poverty alleviation and plans to re-establish an internationally-backed anti-corruption commission. She also mentioned restricting abortion and embarking on diplomatic relations with China.
But the power of the ruling party is hard to beat
Although the ruling National Party is trailing behind in the polls, support for the current government remains substantial, especially since it is so good at distributing state funds efficiently.
That’s how the National Party maintains power, by creating fear, maintaining unity and using its own resources, said Eric Olson, a Central America expert at the Seattle International Foundation. government.
Critics say the giant came in the form of refrigerators, TVs and cash just before the election. In Rivera Hernandez’s poor San Pedro Sula community, National Party supporters set up a voter information tent in front of a polling station. Wendy Mejilla, a 29-year-old mother of two, says nothing has happened recently bono, or government payments, she won’t be able to raise her children.
“No other party has ever given me anything, just the green party,” she said, referring to the National Party.
Its candidate, currently second in the polls, is the two-term mayor of the capital Tegucigalpa, 63-year-old Nasfry Asfura. Although interested in the National Party’s campaign, he often distanced himself from President Hernandez. At his campaign rally, as always, he told the crowd, “Soy is different“-“I am different”and if given the opportunity will work hard and create jobs.
Asfura has also faced corruption charges. He was accused of siphoning more than a million dollars in city funds into personal bank accounts. He denies any wrongdoing.
Mayor Tegucigalpa and ruling National Party presidential candidate Nasry Asfura gesture while participating in a television program Friday.
Orlando Sierra / AFP via Getty Images
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Orlando Sierra / AFP via Getty Images
Mayor Tegucigalpa and ruling National Party presidential candidate Nasry Asfura gesture while participating in a television program Friday.
Orlando Sierra / AFP via Getty Images
In third place is Yani Rosenthal, who returns to Honduras in 2020 after serving time in prison in the US. the equivalent of $60 a day.
People worry about a repeat of election fraud and violence
Meanwhile, Hondurans worry about violence if a clear winner is not announced in Sunday’s vote. After the 2017 election, ravaged by allegations of fraud, state security forces violently shut down protests and more than 20 people died.
Tiziano Breda of the International Crisis Group said the new high-tech device is expected to improve votes this year. But he said that preliminary testing did not give the best results. And he added that electoral reforms, to provide accountability and transparency, have yet to be fully implemented.
“We are concerned that this election presents the key elements to redoing 2017 and exacerbating the country’s political turmoil and instability,” he said. According to him, that could lead to many emigrated out of the country.
Hondurans have left their country in droves. Recent figures show a Mark the number of increases on the number of Hondurans arrested at the southern US border in the past year.
Rafael Melgar, a 51-year-old unemployed construction worker, said he will wait for Sunday’s election but then plans to move back to Los Angeles, where he has worked for 14 years as a is a security guard on a Hollywood set.
“It’s scary to live in this country,” he said as he sat outside his small two-room home in a dangerous neighborhood in San Pedro Sula, notorious for gang activity. His elderly neighbors had just been robbed, he said, and he couldn’t find work. He and his family just moved home after they lost everything in two storms last year. But without a job, and all the corruption in the country he says, he’s going to try his luck up north, in America.
