New Orleans Our regular, monthly check-in on the progress of ACORN Honduras is usually a straightforward report leaning more to “just the facts, ma’am.” Not this time, events in Honduras weren’t exactly front page news, but that didn’t mean they weren’t right up there for a change.
In case you wondered, the election results are still not complete after a week of counting since the voting. Trump and others have cast aspersions on the voting in a kneejerk way. The voting contractor seems to have had one problem after another with 10% of the vote still outstanding. There’s no question that the conservative party has built an insurmountable lead over the more progressive party from the totals thus far. The real division is between the two right-leaning parties, rather than there being a left-right split. The usual left voters were less motivated this election, because of disappointment with the existing government’s inability to enact promised programs in education, jobs, environment, and more. This dissatisfaction has been growing over the last several years.
Was the impact of Trump’s pardoning of the former president, Juan Orlando Hernández, from a 30-year term in US prisons a factor? According to Erlyn Perez, ACORN’s head organizer, based in Tegucigalpa, people weren’t happy, but that didn’t translate to votes for or against Trump’s insertion of support for his favorite conservative standard bearer. Many politicians from all parties on the political spectrum have been implicated in narco-trafficking, similar to the ex-president, but have not been prosecuted. On the national level, no candidate or party seems completely free of drug allegations.
Eryln shared the news with us that the Honduran Attorney General is interested in reviving the prosecution, giving us an early warning to the report of his seeking an Interpol arrest warrant. As the New York Times reported,
Attorney General Johel Antonio Zelaya Alvarez said he had instructed the government and Interpol to execute the warrant against Hernández, citing charges of money laundering and fraud connected to a case involving his first presidential campaign more than a decade ago. The charges that Hernández faces in Honduras stem from what is known as the Pandora Case. Prosecutors say that between 2010 and 2013, a corrupt network of lawmakers and others diverted public funds through private foundations, then funneled those funds into political campaigns — including Hernández’s 2013 campaign.
People who follow Latin America and care about Honduras will remember that a 2009 coup had unseated a progressive president and installed a business friendly beneficiary of the plot with US State Department support under Secretary Hillary Clinton for the 2010-2014 term. Hernandez followed in the wake of the coup and his party’s success for two terms, including some with questionable election results.
Cynicism about narco-trafficking, out migration, and more has left lower-income and working families in Honduras increasingly disillusioned. Erlyn was most worried about whether the national politics and the disputes among the rightwing parties would bleed into the municipal elections scheduled in the coming year. Everything is unsettled, Trump’s obliviousness to his lack of credibility on drugs is a factor. The administration is shooting boats out of the water, allegedly carrying drugs, even as Trump has pardoned more than 100 people already who had drug convictions, now including Hernandez. Any view that Trump has any real concern for Honduras and it people is also canceled by the uncertainty for many families and the country about the potential impact of his order ending temporary protected status for Hondurans who have been in the US for years following hurricane and other disasters.
All of this makes it hard to believe that either Trump or Secretary of State Rubio really are looking to exert a sphere of influence and power in Latin America, as some have reported, when they seem to have no clear policy at all, and their actions are so contradictory and incredible.