Honduras general election - November 28, 2021 🇭🇳

[Sir John Johns]

Xiomara Castro hasn’t even been inaugurated that the Libre parliamentary caucus is already imploding.

Yesterday, 20 Libre congressmen broke the agreement concluded between Castro and Salvador Nasralla to hand over the presidency of the new Congress to Nasralla’s party, instead nominating Jorge Cálix, a young (36) but very influential Libre deputy from Francisco Morazán department. Cálix used to be the leader of the PLH youth wing and organized street protests against the ousting of Mel Zelaya. He was apparently considered until few weeks ago as close to the former president and was seen as the most combative Libre deputy in the last Congress, describign himself as 'the loudest voice of the opposition'. He is very active on social network where is making extensive use of his own wife and young child for self-promotion purposes.

Cálix has been elected the provisional president of Congress (traditionally meaning he would became the titular holder of the post) receiving 85 votes from congressmen, much more than the 65 required votes.

Cálix was voted as president by 21 (out of 50) Libre congressmen, the all 44 PNH congressmen, 18 (out of 22) PLH congressmen and the lonely DC and PAC congressmen, defeating Luis Redondo, the candidate fielded by Nasralla’s PSH (10 congressmen) and supported by the majority of the Libre caucus.

The Congress session quickly turned into complete chaos with cries and brawls and seven Libre loyalist deputies physically attacking Cálix.

Castro has since pronounced the definitive expulsion from Libre of the 18 rogue deputies (two ‘rectified’ their votes in support of Cálix to vote instead for Redondo; another one apparently canceled her vote and decided to not decide between the two candidates). She has denounced a treason and a maneuver by the PNH and incumbent president Juan Orlando Hernández to retain control over Honduras.

[Sir John Johns]

Jorge Cálix has been confirmed as president of Congress, receiving 79 votes (19 Libre, 15 PLH, 44 PNH and 1 PAC; down from the 85 votes previously received), and immediately sworn in office. The offices of first vice president (there are nine vice presidents and four alternate vice presidents) and first secretary went to Libre dissidents like Cálix, Yahvé Sabillón and Beatriz Valle, who have been expelled from Xiomara Castro’s party (like Cálix). A physician by training, Sabillón has been a Libre deputy from Comayagua since 2014. Meanwhile Valle has been a Libre deputy from Francisco Morazán department between 2014 and 2018 after having served as an ambassador to Canada under Zelaya. She is a physician (an odontologist) who apparently also used to have a TV show where she constantly bashed the administration of Juan Orlando Hernández. She was also embroiled in 2016 in a controversy for having responded to a tweet from the US ambassador in Honduras celebrating the designation of a new Supreme Court as an act ‘strengthening democracy and the respect of the constitution’ in a tweet of her describing the statement of the ambassador as untrue, calling him to seriously contribute to the fight against corruption and impunity and stating that there was a dictatorship in Honduras. So, not newly elected deputies or people having joined recently Libre but veterans of the party, some of them having been harsh critics of Hernández.

But in the meantime, Luis Redondo (PSH), has also been elected president of Congress by congressmen loyal to Castro in a parallel session whose legality is more than dubious. Indeed, he received 96 votes thanks to substitute congressmen being promoted to full congressmen. Castro has already recognized Redondo as the legitimate president of the legislature who will be present at her inauguration ceremony on next 27 January.

The election of Cálix took place in the Bosques de Zambrano Social Club, outside of Tegucigalpa, a location apparently disclosed at the last minute. Meanwhile, Redondo was elected in the Congress building as supporters of Castro were surrounding the place. Cálix has declared he would work in favor of the implementation of the agenda of Castro, but this is hard to believe. Legally, the situation must be solved by, wait for it, the Supreme Court, which is at the hands of Hernández allies.

[Sir John Johns]

Honestly, I’m not very familiar with Honduran politics and I have no clue of what will happen and what are the plans of Xiomara Castro.

From what I have gathered, the name of the new Congress leadership (the president, the vice-presidents and the secretaries) should be published in the official journal to be validated. The problem is that both elections were plagued with irregularities (Redondo was elected with a quorum reached only with the alternate congressmen; there are also alleged problems with the election of Cálix from the legality of the location of the election to an error, you have to believe that, in the date of the motion presenting the candidacy of Cálix for president of the provisional junta directiva) opening the way for a cascade of legal recourse to be solved by a justice favorable to the PNH.

An additional problem I missed is that Castro should, according to the Constitution, been sworn in office by the president of the National Congress (you have to think that maybe this was the point of all this mess) and, in case of the absence of the president of the National Congress, the president of the Supreme Court. However, Castro has indicated she will not been sworn by ‘the traitors’ and, with the legality of Redondo uncertain and distrust toward the Supreme Court, she has decided she would be sworn by a justice of peace, something which may not be constitutional.


The rupture in Libre is reportedly due a consequence of the agreement between Castor and Nasralla, which helped the former to be elected president but displeased several ambitious Libre legislators. Jorge Cálix and Beatriz Valle (the former having been previously a substitute of the latter) were indeed arguing that the presidency of the Congress should not go to the PSH and its 10 congressmen as provided by the agreement but to the largest caucus in the legislature, Libre, and its 50 congressmen. Cálix argued that, as the most-voted congressman, he was the most legitimate to become the president of the Congress. The choice for Castro was between breaking the agreement with Nasralla or risking the implosion of her party, with in the end and in both cases no working majority in Congress. That’s from what is publicly known because there were rumors of vote-buying and allegations made by former president of the Supreme Electoral Court Enrique Ortez over a supposed pact between Juan Orlando Hernández and Yani Rosenthal to undermine the presidency of Castro by getting Cálix elected.

In any case, the PNH didn’t missed the opportunity to exploit divisions inside Libre by indicating it would voted in favor of a Libre congressman as it is the largest caucus in the Assembly. Of course, the PLH, minus the Luis Zelaya faction, then followed suit. The election of Cálix ensued.

All of this is explained in this article of El Heraldo.



Oh, and Beatriz Valle, after several days of silence, came back on social networks to warn about an imminent dissolution of the state institutions, to claim that Zelaya and Castro are trying to convene a Constituent National Assembly (ANC) – a proposal Valle says she actually supports but in the future, not at this moment – and to preach ‘unity and reconciliation’.

https://twitter.com/BeatrizValleM/status/1485362804622307336

Before adding, she would consider Zelaya as responsible in case something happens to her and her relatives (citing countless death threats she has received) with accusations the former president is trying to stage a coup to reverse the 2009 coup. Totally insane.

https://twitter.com/BeatrizValleM/status/1485365695269457924

[Sir John Johns]

Xiomara Castro has officially became the first woman to head Honduras. She has been sworn in office today by Karla Lizeth Romero Dávila, the justice of the peace she had previously designated, with Luis Redondo appearing next to Romero Dávila. Also attending the public ceremony were Kamala Harris, King Felipe VI, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Gabriel Boric and the vice president of Taiwan (Honduras is recognizing Taipei over Beijing but Castro has previously mentioned she could switch diplomatic recognition, a move already made by Nicaragua the last month).

The dispute over Congress leadership isn’t resolved as two parallel inaugural sessions took place while it has been the Redondo’s Congress leadership composition that has been published in the official gazette. Negotiations have started to resolve the political crisis with proposed solutions currently including the Yani Rosenthal-led faction of the PLH dropping Cálix to vote in favor of Redondo, the holding of a new election to designate a compromise president (the name of Hugo Noé Pinto, member of the Libre faction loyal to Castro, has been suggested but he appears to have declined) or the appointment of Cálix to a government job to vacate the presidency of the Congress (Xiomara officially offered him the post of coordinator of the government, a move possibly designed to force him revealing his true intentions as he has repeatedly said he will work to implement Castro’s agenda).

The new government is including the young (33) José Manuel Zelaya Rosales (the son of Carlos Zelaya and nephew of Mel Zelaya) as defense secretary, Héctor Zelaya Castro (Xiomara’s own son) as private secretary to the president, Rixi Moncada (who is resigning from the presidency of the National Electoral Council after having been a labor secretary and the manager of the state-owned electricity company in Mel Zelaya administration) as finance secretary and Rebeca Santos (finance minister under Zelaya) as president of the Central Bank. Out of 34 members of the new administration, 7 have previously been part of the Zelaya administration and only 10 are women. The PSH has obtained two portfolios: Economic Development and Health. Meanwhile, the security secretariat has been given to Ramón Sabillón, who just came back from exile in the United States. A former director of the National Police (2013-14), Sabillón managed during his eleven-month-long tenure to capture eight important drug kingpins including the Valle Valle brothers and Héctor Emilio Fernández Rosa aka ‘Don H’. For such achievements, he was fired by Juan Orlando Hernández and had to flee the country in 2016 for having denounced the ties of the Hernández administration with drug traffickers and the penetration of Honduran politics by organized crime.

US representative for California Norma Torres has just asked the US Justice Department to immediately indict and request the extradition of Hernández. This one is however trying to use his future political job as a member of the Central American Parliament to evade judicial problems. Three retiring congressmen, including nationalist politician Óscar Nájera who is currently sanctioned by the US State Department, have been named a week ago ‘life members of Congress’ (being able to participate in sessions but not to vote) by the previous, National Party-controlled, legislature officially in recognition of their services but actually to extend their parliamentary immunity.

[Sir John Johns]

The United States, particularly under Trump, have continued playing an incoherent game in Honduras. Clearly, the incumbent president being named a co-conspirator in a drug trafficking conspiracy hasn’t been enough for the US to reassess its policy towards Honduras. The Biden administration has preferred an awkward strategy of working around JOH while still working with his administration, although not too closely – perhaps counting down the days until he leaves office, as if that will suddenly fix every other problem.

The US State Department has released three lists of corrupt officials in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, requested by Congress. All three lists have omitted to mention Juan Orlando Hérnandez or his relatives. A list released in May 2021 only listed the five incumbent deputies accused in the Arca Abierta scandal, as well as Nationalist deputy Óscar Nájera, who was sanctioned by the State Department under s. 7031(c) in 2019 for suspected ties to the Cachiros. In July and September 2021, the State Department released the so-called ‘Engel list’ of corrupt and undemocratic actors, which included 21 Honduran politicians – 13 of them incumbent members of Congress who were implicated in various corruption scandals (Pandora, Arca Abierta etc.). The list includes Pepe Lobo and his wife, but again JOH his conspicuous by his absence – something which Lobo himself has played upon to dismiss the list as a joke.

And it has been disclosed that JOH's name has been secretly included on the 'Engel list' as early as 1 July 2021. The US State Department has announced yesterday it has revoked his visa.

https://twitter.com/SecBlinken/status/1490795809692135438

A formal indictment and a request for extradition of the former president should be rapidly follow.