A colorful cast of characters is on Sunday’s ballot for the next president of Honduras. The front-runner, one of the country’s former first ladies, is being portrayed as a radical leftist bent on sending the small Central American nation into the arms of Venezuelan and Cuban communists. The ruling party’s candidate is a long-time loyalist who claims he is “different,” although he’s been investigated for embezzling from public coffers. And the man trailing far behind in third place got out of a U.S. prison in time to register to run. He served three years on a money laundering conviction.
By NPR – Carrie Kahn
Nov 27, 2021
“There are no good options,” says Dilisia Carranza, 48, who sells electronics from a small storefront in the industrial city of San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras. She says she’s still deciding, but one thing is for sure. She’ll cast a voto de castigo – or protest vote – against the ruling National Party.
A lot of voters say they’re doing the same. They want to punish the current National Party, which has been in government since a coup in 2009. Their ire is especially directed at the president of the past eight years, Juan Orlando Hernández.
Hondurans have suffered 8 years of economic ruin and corruption
Hernández was first elected in 2013 and then again in 2017 after maneuvering a change to the Honduran constitution to allow for his reelection. The country has been on a downward spiral ever since, according to Gustavo Irias, who heads the Center for Democracy Studies in Honduras.
“These elections can turn a page from this backward slide in everything from human rights, the rule of law and our democracy,” he says.
Corruption has skyrocketed in the country. U.S. prosecutors in a case in New York federal court implicated Hernández in illicit operations tied to drug trafficking. The allegations, which he denies, came out in the prosecution of Hernandez’s brother, who was recently convicted and sentenced to life in a U.S. prison.
An anti-corruption group in Honduras says 70% of legislators also on Sunday’s ballot have faced allegations of corruption.
Apart from graft, Honduras’s economy has plummeted, hit hard by the pandemic and back-to-back hurricanes. Unemployment and the economy are top on the minds of voters.
Araceli Mejia Alvarado is a single mom. She says she lost her housecleaning job at the beginning of the pandemic and hasn’t been able to find steady work where she lives in northern Honduras. She says times just keep getting tougher.
“You feel it, there is so much more instability, poverty, and crime,” she says. She says she won’t vote for the ruling National Party either, adding that she doesn’t have faith in democracy anymore, just God.
Hondurans have the lowest support for democracy in Latin America today, recent polls have found.
A former first lady leads the polls
Xiomara Castro, 62, is currently leading polls, especially after uniting the opposition under her candidacy. She is married to Mel Zelaya, the former president removed from office by the military in 2009. Castro hasn’t been seen in public with her husband as she had been in previous runs for office.
The opposition depicts her, and Zelaya, as communists who will ally the country with Venezuela and Cuba. And they charge that Zelaya was accused of taking bribes back when he was in power.
At a recent rally in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, Castro told supporters she will “end the pain and suffering endured by the Honduran people.”
She’s pledged to alleviate poverty and plans to reestablish an internationally backed anti-corruption commission. She also has mentioned limited decriminalization of abortion and embarking on diplomatic ties to China.
…
Read More: NPR – Honduran voters want to protest the president. Their options are a cast of characters
…