Honduran election could oust long-ruling National party
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Hondurans voted Sunday for a successor to deeply unpopular President Juan Orlando Hernández in elections that could oust his National Party after 12 years in power.
The candidate most likely to do this is Xiomara Castro of the leftist Liberty and Re-foundation party. The former first lady is making her third bid for the presidency and is the only one of 13 opposition candidates with a chance to beat Hernández’s handpicked successor, Nasry Asfura, a folksy Tegucigalpa mayor.
Such is the level of mistrust among Hondurans in the electoral process that many fear there could be disturbances in the streets no matter who wins.
Julio Cesar Nieto, a 62-year-old retiree from the judicial system, said he hoped the political parties would act responsibly and recognize a winner to avoid the violence that occurred following elections four years ago.
“Everyone is looking for a change,” Nieto said after casting his ballot at an elementary school in the capital’s El Bosque neighborhood. The polling site opened to voters more than hour after it was scheduled to.
Despite the late start, voting appeared orderly. Poll workers checked IDs, scanned fingerprints and took photos of voters. Ballots were marked, deposited in clear plastic boxes — for president, for members of congress, for local races — and voters’ pinkies were stained with ink.
The National Electoral Council confirmed in a statement Sunday afternoon that the webpage allowing voters to see where they were supposed to vote had been down and an initial investigation suggested an attack on their servers. Complaints about the site crashing had started Saturday.
The council also called on political parties to refrain from declaring their candidates victorious or providing partial vote totals while voting was ongoing. It ordered poll workers to keep voting locations open until all of those waiting in line were able to vote.
Electoral authorities had promised to start releasing preliminary results three hours after all voting sites closed.
Luis Guillermo Solis, Costa Rica’s former president and leader of the observation mission of the Organization of American States, said late Sunday morning, “We have been in various (voting) centers already and we are seeing more or less the same, long lines of people exercising their civic right.”
Sandra Castillo, who works in administration in the judicial system, voted at the National Pedagogic University in a middle-class Tegucigalpa neighborhood. She said she voted for change, not necessarily of party, but of people in power, so “they don’t keep governing the same way.”
Asfura voted at the same location later in the morning. He called for peace and respect for the voting process.
Asked about his opponents, Asfura demurred. “I don’t say opposition, they are my friends,” said the longtime Tegucigalpa mayor. “Today all of us politicians must demonstrate a civic act for Honduras.”
Castro voted earlier in the day near Catacamas, in east-central Honduras. She too called on her supporters to not be provoked into calling the elections invalid.
“Honduras can’t endure four more years,” Castro said. “We have to stop these caravans of Honduran men and women who are leaving our country en masse because of the insecurity, the lack of opportunities, the lack of work, the lack of health, the lack of education.”
After a protracted contest filled with irregularities in 2017, protesters filled the streets and the government imposed a curfew.
Three weeks later Hernández was declared the winner despite the Organization of American States observation mission calling for an election re-do. At least 23 people were killed.
This time businesses along major thoroughfares in the capital are taking no chances. Workers mounted sheets of plywood over their many of their windows on Saturday.
More than 5.1 million Hondurans are registered to vote at nearly 6,000 polling sites across the country. In addition to a new president, they will choose a new congress, new representatives to the Central American Parliament and a bevy of local races.
In a world hammered by the COVID-19 pandemic, Honduras can count that as just one of the crises that have ravaged it in recent years. Last year, the country also suffered the devastating effects of two major hurricanes.
Unemployment was 10.9 percent last year as the economy shrank 9 percent. Powerful street gangs continue to terrorize Hondurans, driving, along with economic factors, tens of thousands of Hondurans to emigrate.
Corruption is carried out with such impunity that Hondurans have turned their hopes to U.S. federal prosecutors in New York. They won a life sentence for Hernández’s brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, for drug trafficking, and have accused the president of fueling his political rise with drug proceeds, though they have not charged him. Juan Orlando Hernández has denied any wrongdoing.
So the ground would appear favorable for Castro, but there are doubts about how much real change she would bring. Her husband, Jose Manuel Zelaya, was ousted by the military in a coup in 2009. U.S. prosecutors have tied him too to bribes from drug traffickers, which he also denies.
In the mountainside El Bosque neighborhood, people began lining up 30 minutes before the polls were scheduled to open at an elementary school.