Podcast: Six Threats to the Election in Honduras

The following is a transcript of episode 43 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.

RODRÍGUEZ: Beloved brethren, do not be afraid. Fear runs contrary to faith. We must not be afraid in Honduras, even when there are those who threaten us.

GRESSIER, HOST: In a national broadcast in early August, weeks before the presidential, congressional, and municipal elections, Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez denounced intimidation from “colectivos” —or purported popular collectives convened by the ruling party Libre— even at the steps of the iconic Basilica of Suyapa in Tegucigalpa.

On November 30, the next president of Honduras will be chosen by simple majority from a field of five candidates. Those who yesterday resisted coups, police repression, and stolen elections, dating back to 2009, today hold power. And with the official campaign season underway this week, all-too-familiar alarms are sounding in Honduras.

This is a special September episode of Central America in Minutes from Tegucigalpa. Today, we zoom in on six already visible threats to the electoral process: Can Honduras stay on the rails?

Part one: Who’s in control?

The presidential race has three leading contenders: Libre candidate and former defense and finance minister Rixi Moncada; sports broadcaster turned vice president turned opposition leader Salvador Nasralla, newly enrolled with the Liberal Party; and old-school National Party mayor Tito Asfura.

But the first threat has less to do with the candidates and more with the institutions: It’s lawfare, or foul play using the legal system as a weapon. This goes hand in hand with the second threat: institutional capture by partisan interests.

On April 2, almost one month after the primary elections, Honduran prosecutors raided the National Electoral Council, or CNE. The Public Prosecutor’s Office had announced weeks earlier, on voting day, that it would investigate the delayed delivery of election materials, some of which had been flagrantly left unattended in buses contracted by the CNE.

The Army, too, felt its feet against the fire: The Armed Forces are constitutionally tasked with securing the electoral process, including the chain of custody of the materials on those buses.

As we covered in episode 21, these overlapping functions put the CNE on a collision course with the Army in a highly politicized national mud-slinging competition that has yet to let up.

The minister of defense at the time of the primaries was the Libre candidate Moncada, in a conflict of interest. She has since resigned to avoid a constitutional rupture, but President Xiomara Castro has not named a replacement, instead delegating the interim cabinet job to herself.

And as El Faro English underscored back in July 2022, the power broker and shadow president of the administration is Castro’s husband-slash-advisor Manuel Zelaya, who was deposed in a 2009 military coup. In the last two decades, the Army, constitutional guarantor of the elections, has hardly stayed apolitical.

The CNE, on the other hand, is by design partisan rather than technical: It has a three-seat council — one for each party, with a rotating presidency currently held by Cossette López, from the opposition National Party. On September 11, the baton is scheduled to pass to Ana Paola Hall, of the Liberal Party, also from the opposition. The council may only make decisions on a three-zero vote.

Ana María Méndez, from the Washington Office on Latin America, writes that, after the 2017 electoral crisis, the country’s three main parties agreed to divvy up control of the CNE. “While this structure reflects the main political forces in the country,” she argues, “it undermines the CNE’s independence and hinders its technical functioning.”

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Next is no more independent than the last: Attorney General Johel Zelaya was imposed by Libre in 2023 despite a ban on partisan affiliation. On the issue of the bus contracts from the primaries, he continues to investigate the CNE councilors —two out of three from the opposition— for crimes including treason.

Honduras has accredited four international observers: the Organization of American States, the European Union, the Inter-American Union of Electoral Organisms, and the Carter Center. Like in Guatemala in 2023, the OAS is already blowing the whistle on “excessive judicial intervention.”

Part two: Who’s keeping tabs?

Here’s the bigger snag: There’s no public indication of a similar criminal probe of the Army’s handling of the primaries. The CNE yes, the Army no.

In early July, high-profile prosecutor Luis Javier Santos, the head of the Special Prosecutors’ Unit against Corruption Networks, or UFERCO, stated publicly, “I don’t clearly see where the fight against corruption is going.”

Meanwhile, complaints have also piled up on the desk of the Electoral Justice Tribunal: According to an observation report by the Honduran civil society-based Network for the Defense of Democracy, or RDD, by August 20 the Tribunal, the top authority on electoral matters, had ruled on only four out of 41 cases filed this electoral cycle.

This brings us to our third threat: manufactured opacity. The RDD denounced the use of government media channels and increased state spending on ads to favor the ruling party, violating the principle of fair competition.

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Perhaps the most frontal blow to transparency is that Congress has left the Unit for Clean Politics —a wing of the CNE that monitors campaign ledgers for corruption— without a budget.

That’s all the more pungent on the heels of the drug trafficking trial in New York of Juan Orlando Hernández. “Witnesses not only stated that the former president received millions in bribes from drug traffickers,” wrote Jeff Ernst in El Faro English last year, “but also that politicians from every major political party had received bribes, too.”

One looming conflict is national observation. On election day, accredited and trained Honduran monitors are expected to fan out across polling stations more easily than international groups with more limited on-the-ground staff. But accreditation could be a tooth-and-nail fight: this week, the CNE barred the National Anti-Corruption Council, a Honduran non-profit founded in 2005 by recommendation from the U.N., from participating.

Like most of its Central American neighbors, the Honduran government has sought to equate civil society organizations criticizing them as part and parcel of the political opposition.

Enrique Reina, vice presidential candidate for Libre and former foreign minister, insinuated that the National Anti-Corruption Council had been engaged in interventionism through USAID funding, referencing “civil society” in scare quotes. Director Gabriela Castellanos responded, “They reject the CNA because they fear transparency.”

Also of chief concern for civil society is the ongoing state of exception that was in force during the primaries, in dozens of communities in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, the country’s two main population centers.

That’s the fourth threat: the state of exception. In an open letter in July, over 60 organizations called on Castro to revoke it, citing the possibility of military and police intimidation. They argued that monitors’ access to certain polling stations, transparency, and turnout could also take a hit.

Part three: Who’ll fan the flames?

The fifth threat is a spike in political violence, which has a deep recent history. The 2017 elections were marred by unconstitutional reelection, evidence of ballot fraud, and police who shot to kill, leaving dozens of protestors dead.

From last September through this year's primaries, the National Autonomous University of Honduras registered over 300 cases of political conflict, as well as 79 instances of political violence. They counted nine homicides.

As a frame of reference, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights reported high levels of violence in 2021, with as many as 32 homicides. This time, at least four mayoral candidates have already been killed, according to WOLA.

Fast forward to two months ago. The CNE seemed to be on the brink of implosion. On July 7, the Council was set to meet to discuss contractors for the Preliminary Results Transmission System, or TREP, first implemented in 2021. Contracorriente reported how colectivos blocked the entryway — and described the ensuing days of chaos.

On July 7, the Council president, Cossette López of the National Party, called on the head of the Joint General Staff to deploy troops to defend the facilities, but he refused, responding that she must send her letter directly to President Castro, out of respect for the “chain of command.”

It begged a few open questions: Was the CNE president calling for help, baiting the Army, or both? And does the Army respond for the electoral process, or to the orders of the Presidency?

The next day, activists from the three parties swapped insults as colectivos from Libre broke into the legislative floor to boycott the acquisition of TREP, which will show preliminary results to be corroborated by the acts from voting tables.

In the ensuing days, each CNE councilor reported receiving death threats. President López decried “terrorism” against the Council while Marlon Ochoa, of Libre, boycotted sessions. Hall, of the Liberal Party, tried to resign, but Congress refused to allow her.

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After weeks of gridlock, the three councilors shifted tack, ambiguously announcing on August 5 that they had reached an agreement to end a “complex stage.” State media reported that presidential advisor Mel Zelaya was content with the agreement.

Mel has been ever-present, even posturing in July that he had as many as 30,000 colectivos at his disposal to defend against an alleged fraud conspiracy at the CNE. Candidate Rixi Moncada had echoed these claims of fraud, as had councilor Marlon Ochoa.

That’s the sixth and final threat: criss-crossing accusations of fraud. The Liberal Party and Libre primaries were both marked by thus far undemonstrated claims of foul play.

It’s on the heels of this crisis that, on August 16, the politically conservative Catholic and Evangelical churches convened tens of thousands in a national march for unity and democracy — the first time the churches marched together in decades, journalist Thelma Mejía told El Faro English.

It was a march with opposition overtones. The National and Liberal Parties joined, while President Castro retorted that “faith is not shown by yelling in the streets.” Rixi Moncada claimed that the demonstration was in retaliation for her refusal to “kneel before” economic and political elites.

It’s no small bone to pick. 2024 polling from Latinobarómetro shows that churches are by far the most trusted institution in the country, with the support of seven out of ten Hondurans.

Two weeks later, two days before the official start of campaign season, the ruling party convened its own show of strength in San Pedro Sula, lining streets with bright red.

The election is already simmering. While the Castro-Zelaya family derides the Liberal and National Parties as coup-mongers, the opposition has equated Libre to an aspiring dictatorship like Nicaragua or Venezuela. On a polar track, Christian Democrat presidential candidate Chano Rivera even proposed annexation to the United States.

Constitutional lawyer Joaquín Mejía argues that the intense polarization in Honduras has been compounded by impunity for crimes stemming from the 2009 coup and the Juan Orlando Hernández era. He told the wire service EFE, “What we’re hearing are disqualification and insults, threatening the possibility of a conscious vote in an already questioned process.”

The real test will come on election night itself, as votes are tallied. Will all of the candidates be willing to kneel before the election results?

This September episode of Central America in Minutes was written by Roman Gressier with sound design by Omnionn. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, and iHeart podcast platforms.