Honduras general election - November 28, 2021 🇭🇳

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General - presidential, congressional and local - elections will be held in Honduras on November 28 but before that three parties are holding their presidential, congressional and local primaries on March 14.

The President serves a four-year term and since a 2015 Supreme Court decision there are no term limits. Prior to that, the constitution not only had a lifetime ban on re-election but also criminalized 'inciting, promoting, or abetting' presidential re-election. In 2015, the Supreme Court, ruling on a challenge from former president Rafael Callejas and 15 deputies (most from the ruling party), declared term limits to be unconstitutional, ostensibly for restricting fundamental rights. This decision was legally dubious because one of the five magistrates rescinded his own signature a day later, breaking unanimity, but this was conveniently ignored. It just so happens that this decision was rendered by magistrates who had been hand-picked by incumbent President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) back in 2012 when he was president of Congress (and presidential candidate), after he had illegally purged four of the five members of the constitutional chamber.

You may recall that Manuel Zelaya's alleged attempts to have the constitution amended to allow for presidential re-election led to the 2009 coup. He had merely attempted to hold a non-binding poll on holding a referendum to convene a constituent assembly, which may have considered re-election, but the constitutional term limits were used as post-hoc justification for the coup.

The Congress has 128 deputies elected in the 18 departments, by open-list proportional representation with panachage.

Honduras is one of the least democratic countries in the Americas (above only the dictatorships - Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba - and Haiti) and one of the most corrupt (again only above Venezuela, Nicaragua and Haiti). Corruption is a deeply entrenched part of politics and the economy -- corruption is the operating system.

Revelations of a massive embezzlement scandal at the social security institute (IHSS) in 2014-5, and JOH's own admission that part of the embezzled money made its way to his 2013 presidential campaign, led to major protests in 2015. The government was pressured into allowing for the creation of the 'support mission against corruption and impunity in Honduras' (MACCIH), supported by the OAS and modelled around Guatemala's famous CICIG (but less powerful). MACCIH worked with an elite anti-corruption prosecutorial unit in the Honduran attorney general's office to investigate and begin prosecutions of several cases of elite corruption which targeted hundreds of deputies, former president Pepe Lobo's wife and close allies of the president. MACCIH found its anti-corruption/anti-impunity efforts seriously hampered throughout its existence by powerful corrupt politicians and other elites. The Congress passed several laws weakening anti-corruption efforts, shielding officials from corruption investigations and recently adopted a new criminal code which reduced sentences for corruption-linked crimes. MACCIH's mandate expired in January 2020 and was not renewed in after negotiations with the government failed. Like in post-CICIG Guatemala, the absence of MACCIH - despite the group's weakness - will allow impunity and elite corruption to flourish. Courts have already thrown out or weakened corruption convictions which had been supported by MACCIH.

The 2017 election, which resulted in the re-election of incumbent conservative president Juan Orlando Hernández, was almost definitely rigged. Subsequent events - largely drug trials in the Southern District of New York, because the Honduran judiciary is a huge joke - have painted the image of Honduras as a narco-state with a kleptocratic, criminal ruling elite (JOH and the right-wing National Party) often with close and direct links to drug trafficking and organized crime. Notably, JOH's brother, Tony Hernández (a former National Party congressman) was convicted of drug trafficking in the US in October 2019, in a case in which JOH was listed as a 'co-conspirator'. There's growing evidence that US prosecutors are building a case against the president.

The main reason why JOH hasn't been Noriega'd is that he has been a loyal ally of the United States, particularly the Trump administration, in the 'fight against drug trafficking' (by allowing for the extradition of drug traffickers to the US, ironically something which has definitely backfired against him personally!) and against illegal immigration. JOH understood the transactional nature of relations with the Trump admin and played the game very well, and the fomer US administration stood by his side after the fraudulent 2017 election and in the face of mounting evidence (coming from the US judiciary) implicating JOH in drug trafficking.

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JOH is not seeking re-election and will leave office in 2022, and will try to avoid ending up like his brother.

The primaries on March 14 will determine who the ruling party and the main opposition movements will nominate. The National Party primaries oppose the mayor of Tegucigalpa (since 2014) Nasry Asfura 'papi a la orden' (the favourite) to the president of Congress Mauricio Oliva; both candidates are implicated in corruption scandals, and Oliva has been linked to the Cachiros drug cartel (and of course being complicit in Congress' pro-impunity reforms). Asfura is said to have the tacit backing of JOH and his closest allies.

The Liberal Party primaries feature the party's 2017 candidate Luis Zelaya, who favours a broad opposition coalition, and convicted drug money launderer Yani Rosenthal (who comes from one of the most powerful economic/political families in Honduras).

The Libre primaries will likely be won by Xiomara Castro (the wife of former deposed president Luis Zelaya), who was Libre's candidate (and runner-up) in 2013.

Salvador Nasralla, the deranged showman candidate of the opposition alliance (backed by Libre) narrowly 'defeated' by JOH in 2017, leads his own party which isn't holding primaries but seeks to form an opposition alliance with the Liberals and/or Libre.

I want to make more effortposts focused on the narco-state accusations implicating JOH and the other major corruption scandals of the past 3-4 years, although that will come after the primaries I guess.

In the meantime, I had a good post on my (unfortunately defunct) old blog about the 2017 elections which goes into detail: https://welections.wordpress.com/2017/12/22/honduras-2017/

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I'm not sure when the official results will be counted and announced, and there will not be a preliminary count tonight. As is to be expected, almost everyone has claimed victory. However, there are exit polls for the three parties:

National Party
Asfura 62.9%
Oliva 34.9%

As expected, Tito Asfura has likely won the Nationalist nomination, as was expected. Despite several corruption allegations, Asfura has been a popular mayor of Tegucigalpa, associated with major public works projects and an image as a politician who attends to problems and serves people. On the other hand, Oliva - also with his share of corruption problems as briefly noted - is seen as a more traditional politician associated with an unpopular institution (Congress).

Libre
Castro 70.1%
Nelson Ávila 13.7%
Carlos Eduardo Reina 10.3%
Wilfredo Méndez 4.6%

Unsurprisingly Xiomara Castro won the Libre primary in a landslide. A respectable distant second place finish, seemingly, for academic Nelson Ávila.

Liberal Party
Yani Rosenthal 45.5%
Luis Zelaya 39.6%
Darío Banegas 13.4%

This is where the race appears to be much closer, although that hasn't stopped Yani Rosenthal from proclaiming himself the winner on the basis of these exit poll figures. According to the exit polls, if they are accurate, Rosenthal is seemingly ahead of Zelaya by around 6%. If this turns out to be the case, it would be a quite extraordinary political comeback for somebody who is a convicted criminal (in the United States) and who only got out of jail last year. Although that has a lot to do with his family name. It would also be a major setback for Luis Zelaya, the party's candidate in the last election and leader of the party.

If Rosenthal is the Liberal candidate, there will probably be no coalition with Salvador Nasralla, who doesn't want to ally with him, and he would face a divided party as Luis Zelaya has said that he wouldn't support him either because of his criminal record. On the other hand, Rosenthal is said to be considering an alliance with Xiomara Castro - Yani was minister of the presidency under Mel Zelaya (2006-2007).

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Doesn’t Honduras lack a runoff system? Looks like the opposition is gonna let Asfura waltz into the presidency.

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Doesn’t Honduras lack a runoff system? Looks like the opposition is gonna let Asfura waltz into the presidency.

Yes, there is no runoff. JOH 'won' the last two elections with pluralities with the opposition vote split between two candidates. There's a very high possibility that the same thing will happen again this year, even if one of the three main opposition candidates drops out and allies with one of the others.

But there are still many unknowns: (1) whether or not there is an opposition alliance and who it includes, (2) whether the election will be marred by fraud, rigging and widespread vote buying, (3) the impact of JOH's unpopularity on the Nationalists.

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So after a delay of nearly 3 days, the National Electoral Council (CNE)* published the first preliminary, incomplete results on Wednesday night and gave a second bulletin of preliminary results last night. As things currently stand:



This is based on 31% reporting for the Nats, 24% reporting for the Liberals and 18.3% reporting for Libre.

Asfura has already won the Nationalist presidential nomination in a landslide and Mauricio Oliva, far behind with less than 30% of the vote at this point, conceded defeat. It's the first time a Tegucigalpa mayor defeats a president of Congress in a presidential primary.

Xiomara Castro has also won, but Nelson Ávila (who is far behind with 13.3%) has not yet conceded defeat and is demanding that ballots be opened with the presence of observers from his movement, and has denounced supposed irregularities in the vote count.

The real drama continues to be with the Liberals: so far, Yani Rosenthal's lead is much bigger than in the exit polls, with 54% against 29% for Luis Zelaya and 17.5% for Banegas. Zelaya has proclaimed himself the winner on the basis of his own results, and Banegas has 'congratulated' him on his results. Now, Zelaya is claiming that the CNE is manipulating results to impose Yani Rosenthal as the winner and he has met with Banegas to demand transparency in the vote counting process.

* The CNE is the new electoral management body which was created after the 2017 elections to partially replace (along with a new electoral court and a national voter registration body) the discredited and woefully incompetent old Supreme Electoral Tribunal. In its first test, the CNE has failed and they look just as incompetent and useless as the old TSE it replaced.

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The CNE has finally put up a results website but they're still far from done with the counting, a week later.

National (70.5% reporting): Asfura 72%, Oliva 28%
Liberal (63.3% reporting): Rosenthal 50.2%, Zelaya 33.5%, Banegas 16.4%
Libre (54.3% reporting): Xiomara Castro 81.5%, Ávila 9.8%, Reina 4.5%, Mendez 4.2%

Luis Zelaya has very likely lost, but at this point he'll never concede: he is claiming fraud and demanding a full recount/repeating the election. While the CNE's incompetence, slowness and lack of transparency really leads to suspicion and makes it really hard to trust them, Zelaya's evidence of fraud is pretty weak.

I guess the next question is whether or not parts of the opposition, at this point probably excluding Salvador Nasralla and Luis Zelaya, can unite when one of the opposition's three presidential candidates is a convicted drug money launderer. More likely at this point is that the braindead opposition will hand the presidency on a silver platter to the Nationalists yet again.

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The election is tomorrow. I've written a fair amount about the context (mostly about kleptocracy), so I'll post it here:

Entrenching the kleptocracy

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) was ‘re-elected’ in an election marred by fraud and deadly repression of subsequent protests in 2017. The main opposition candidate, Salvador Nasralla, had a 5% lead as the first results – covering nearing three-fifths of precincts – were belatedly announced by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). As more numbers were reported in fits and starts, Nasralla’s lead steadily eroded until JOH pulled ahead. At one point, there was a repeat of se cayó el sistema, with the TSE’s system mysteriously breaking down. In the final results, JOH won by 1.5%, or 50,446 votes. According to a statistical analysis done for the OAS, there was a sudden swing in the totals (in JOH’s favour) after 68% of votes were counted. The OAS election monitors documented widespread and numerous irregularities in the tabulation and reporting process and doubted the validity of the final results.

Nasralla did not accept the results and called on his supporters to take to the streets. The government imposed a curfew, and the military brutally repressed the protests. Over 35 people died in post-election protests in 2017 and 2018.

Hernández understood the transactional nature of the Trump administration and played the game well, becoming a loyal ally of the United States, in the “fight against drug trafficking” (by extraditing drug traffickers, something which has since really bit him in the ass) and on illegal immigration. The United States has provided millions in security assistance to the Honduran military and police. The United States (as well as Canada and Mexico) stood by his side after the 2017 election and in the face of mounting evidence implicating senior figures of his regime in drug trafficking. He must also have studied what happened to Manuel Noriega…

Secured in office despite the bloody protests, JOH and the National Party – which held a majority in Congress – set about to further entrench the kleptocratic state and emasculate the anti-corruption institutions which stood in the way of impunity, like the OAS-sponsored MACCIH, the anti-corruption support mission modelled on, but weaker than, Guatemala’s old CICIG.

In January 2018, the outgoing lame-duck Congress passed an ‘impunity pact’ as part of the annual budget which retroactively transferred the power to conduct audits and investigations related to public funds from the prosecutor’s office (assisted by MACCIH) to the Superior Court of Accounts (TSC), a politicized and ineffective body, and suspended civil and criminal proceedings for the duration of the TSC audit, for up to three years.

Shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court (a politicized enabler of impunity with magistrates of questionable probity) transferred a congressional bribery and embezzlement case (red de diputados) implicating over 60 deputies (including the president of Congress, Mauricio Oliva) to the TSC and released five deputies which were being held in custody. However, in January 2019, the Supreme Court did rule that the modifications to the budget law in 2018 were unconstitutional.

In March 2018, a complaint submitted to the Supreme Court arguing that MACCIH was unconstitutional as it violated Honduran sovereignty. The Congress filed a legal opinion in support of this opinion. While the Supreme Court rejected this argument, its ruling began to chip away at MACCIH by restricting the operation of the UFECIC, the special anti-corruption prosecution unit that MACCIH worked with on corruption probes.

In October 2019, Congress – with the support of the National and Liberal parties, as well as the minor parties – voted to readopt parliamentary immunity, shielding themselves from any civil, criminal or administrative liability for actions carried out as part of their legislative duties. Widely abused, parliamentary immunity had been abolished in 2004. At the same time, Congress also readopted the ‘impunity pact’ in a special law, retroactively blocking any civil, criminal or administrative proceedings against politicians, civil servants and NGOs who manage public funds for social programs and infrastructure projects for the duration of the TSC audit, for up to three years. Following the audit, anyone found to have misused public funds can escape any further civil, criminal or administrative liability by paying a small fine within four years.

Rotten to the core

The extent of corruption and criminality among the Honduran state and its elites was already becoming obvious in 2017. Drug traffickers extradited to the United States began testifying about the bribes they had paid to senior politicians, state officials, the police, and the military.

In 2017, former President Porfirio ‘Pepe’ Lobo (2010-2014)’s son Fabio was sentenced to 24 years in US prison for conspiring to import cocaine, helping the Cachiros drug trafficking network. Fabio Lobo acted as a middleman for Cachiros leader Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga (who surrendered to the Americans in 2015, and had collaborated with the DEA since 2013), introducing him to his father and senior police and military officials. Fabio later directly participated in drug trafficking, escorting at least two shipments.

Rivera Maradiaga gave $300,000 to Pepe Lobo’s 2009 campaign, and later another $200,000, in exchange for protection and public contracts. The president returned the favour in spades: a Cachiros-owned money laundering company, INRIMAR, received nearly two dozen contracts from the government in just five months in 2010 (the administration is alleged to have rigged the bids), nobody was extradited during his term and no assets were seized until the US imposed sanctions on the Cachiros in 2013.

In February 2018, Lobo’s wife, former first lady Rosa Elena Bonilla de Lobo, was arrested, accused of embezzling about $600,000 in public funds. As first lady, Bonilla de Lobo, along with other public officials, created a money laundering network which embezzled public funds intended for social programs through cheques that were later cashed. In August 2019, Bonilla was found guilty of fraud and embezzlement and sentenced to 58 years in prison. However, in March 2020, the Supreme Court threw out this historic conviction, dropping the charges and ordering a retrial. Bonilla was released in July 2020, and the new trial is dragging on.

Lobo, his brother and his inner circle also face several other investigations and accusations for corruption and ties to drug traffickers. Despite some rumours to the contrary, Pepe Lobo himself has not faced any legal charges in Honduras.

A police reform commission which dismissed about 5,700 officers from the notoriously corrupt and criminally infiltrated police was one of the main achievements of JOH’s first term. In January 2018, however, that came under closer scrutiny when the AP published accusations that the newly appointed police chief, General José David Aguilar Morán, had colluded with Wilter Blanco (convicted drug lord of the Atlantic Cartel) to impede the seizure of cocaine and allow for its passage through Honduras in exchange for bribes. Some months later, in October 2018, the police commissioner was arrested alongside 15 other police officials, accused of participating in a cattle smuggling network in Choluteca department.

Pandora’s box of criminality

In June 2018, MACCIH presented the ‘Pandora case’, a network of corruption and embezzlement which implicated 38 politicians and officials, accused of misusing nearly $12 million in government funds. The accused stole public funds intended for agricultural development projects from the Secretariat of Agriculture and Livestock (SAG), funnelled them through two ghost NGOs before using the money for political purposes. Some of the money was used to finance JOH’s 2013 presidential campaign, while some was directly deposited in the Liberal Party’s bank account.

But what prosecutors revealed was only the tip of the iceberg, part of a much wider embezzlement scheme, one implicating JOH and his late sister, Hilda Hernández, who was minister of social development and inclusion under Pepe Lobo (2010-2012).

In 2006, Congress created a departmental development fund with an annual budget of $20 million available to deputies for infrastructure projects in their department – similar to pork barrel spending in the United States. However, one can easily imagine how pork barrel spending can turn into a terrible monster in a country with entrenched corruption and weak institutions like Honduras.

Shortly after civil society began poking around in 2010, Congress – controlled by JOH – modified the rules to give more discretion to members, and the money started going to small-scale local initiatives which leave fewer footprints and are more difficult to verify (compared to infrastructure projects).

As a result, small (ghost) NGOs and non-profits suddenly began to receive millions in government funds, sometimes for projects which had little to do with their stated missions (youth organizations got fumigation projects etc.). These NGOs/non-profits were set up by ‘collectors’ who organized large networks of them, in exchange for a cut of the money. One network revealed by Univision had 24 non-profits which received at least $23 million in public funds, linked to three collectors.

80-90% of the money was later withdrawn in cash or deposited in legislators’ bank accounts. Politicians and their parties used the money to finance electoral campaigns or for personal use, although the pork barrel fund was also used to buy votes and support in Congress, which became more important after the decline of the two-party system in 2013. In 2015, for the election of the magistrates of the Supreme Court, some deputies were offered up to $500,000 from the leadership of Congress

JOH’s sister Hilda Hernández, as minister of social development, was in charge of social programs at the time. According to InSight Crime’s investigation, Hilda oversaw the creation of around 279 NGOs and non-profits which may have received as much as $360 million in misappropriated public funds through the departmental development fund. Hilda served as co-chair of her brother’s 2013 presidential campaign, and allegedly gave instructions as to how to spend the money. Hilda Hernández died in a helicopter accident in 2017.

In 2013, when JOH ran for president, the expenditures of the departmental development fund reached their highest level. Over $2 million were sent to municipalities in JOH’s native department of Lempira which had Nationalist mayors. 8 of the top 10 recipients that year have been linked to suspected corruption networks. The remaining two organizations are linked to the National Party, including FUNDEIH, a ‘foundation’ incorporated in 2005 by JOH’s wife Ana García Carias. FUNDEIH insists that all the money it received were invested in social programs and have benefited hundreds of thousands of poor households.

Once he became president, JOH transferred control of the departmental development fund to the executive branch. Many of the non-profits found new sources of funding, including the government’s emblematic Vida Mejor social development project and a contingency fund known as the ‘449 program’. FUNDEIH’s funding skyrocketed after JOH became president in 2014: it received over $91 million in public funds from the Vida Mejor program.

The Hernández family was not initially connected to the Pandora case. It was only after the former legal representative of the two fake NGOs mentioned in the case turned himself that the family was connected.

In December 2018, MACCIH presented the Arca Abierta case (similar to the Pandora case) accusing 21 individuals – including five incumbent deputies (all Nationalists) and six former deputies – of embezzling 21.1 million lempiras ($879,000) in public funds through a fake NGO. The deputies accused by UFECIC/MACCIH included former security minister Óscar Álvarez and the incumbent vice president of Congress and senior Nationalist apparatchik Gladis Aurora López (deputy for La Paz department) as well as her husband (the owner of controversial hydroelectric dams) and daughter.

The ‘impunity pact’ readopted in October 2019 is known as the ‘departmental fund law’ because it aims to shield politicians and NGOs from any criminal proceedings for the misuse of funds for social programs and infrastructure projects.

In May 2020, Mauricio Oliva, the president of Congress since 2014, was linked to the Cachiros in a media investigation. In 2016 and 2018, Oliva and his family acquired three residential properties from Luis Alfonso Deras, a business partner at Inversiones Acrópolis, a company tied to the Cachiros’ network of straw men. The 2016 transaction was notarized by a former Cachiros lawyer and director of Inversiones Acrópolis, currently imprisoned on money laundering charges. In 2018, months after being named by MACCIH in the Pandora case, Oliva placed his property holdings in a trust, affording him anonymity. In September 2018, Oliva obtained an amparo from the Supreme Court which suspended all judicial investigations (by the UFECIC) against him as long as he was not informed of what he was under investigation for. In 2021, Oliva ran for the National Party’s presidential nomination, but lost the primary to Nasry Asfura.

Narco-state

Given the weakness of the Honduran judiciary, it is the US judiciary, namely the Southern District of New York, that has taken on a major role in going after criminal politicians.

In 2018, the US indicted two Honduran congressmen – Fredy Nájera and later Midence Oquelí Martínez Turcios (both Liberals) – on drug trafficking charges. Several local politicians in Honduras have participated in or supported drug trafficking activities, often by using their power to help ensure safe transport for drug shipments, received via air and maritime routes from South America, through the country to the Guatemalan border and eventually to the United States – in exchange for bribes. Fredy Nájera, for example, acted as a fixer and facilitator for several drug cartels in Honduras and their connection to the Sinaloa Cartel.

The US has also charged former National Party mayors like Alex Ardón of El Paraíso (Copán) and Arnaldo Urbina Soto of Yoro with crimes related to drug trafficking. Ardón, who was accused of dirty tricks in favour of JOH in the 2013 election, had his own mini-cartel and charged a per kilo tax on cocaine shipments by other traffickers. Ardón surrendered to US authorities in February 2019 and began talking…

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The brother and CC-4

In November 2018, Juan Orlando Hernández’s brother, former congressman Juan Antonio ‘Tony’ Hernández, was arrested in Miami on drug and weapons charges.

Less than a year before, Rivera Maradiaga testified that he’d paid a $50,000 bribe to Tony Hernández to ensure that the government paid money owed to Cachiros-owned INRIMAR for services rendered. In 2016, he had been questioned by US authorities as a ‘person of interest’ in a drug investigation, and a former police chief had said that Hernández was the National Party’s go-to man for drug money.

Tony Hernández did more than pocket bribes – he was a large-scale drug trafficker, with connections in Colombia and Mexico. Between 2004 and 2016, he was involved in every step of the cocaine trade, from processing to distributing, and even stamped his initials ‘TH’ on some of the shipments he handled. He also used his political connections and family’s power to provide protection and information about law enforcement activities to other traffickers and served as a conduit for large bribes paid by senior drug lords to high-ranking politicians.

The federal prosecutors’ summary of evidence, unsealed in August 2019, included jaw-dropping revelations implicating JOH – identified in the document only as co-conspirator 4 (CC-4) – and others in the ruling party in a drug trafficking conspiracy.

Tony Hernández had been an errand boy for more important drug traffickers, like the Valle Valle family, since 2004. In 2008, Tony suggested to Alex Ardón, the mayor of El Paraíso in western Honduras, that they give money to Lobo and JOH’s campaigns in 2009, believing that they could form a successful partnership with their political protection. In the 2009 campaign, Lobo asked Ardón for financial and logistical support, and Ardón promised to give $2 million and other support in exchange for protection and a political appointment for a relative. JOH, who at the time was seeking re-election to Congress representing Lempira department, was present at one meeting where Lobo confirmed the receipt of the first million and assured him that he would hold his part of the deal. Based on these assurances, Ardón, “in the presence of CC-4”, sent the other million in drug proceeds to Lobo.

Following the election, JOH allegedly met with Ardón again and asked him to help bribe other deputies so that he could be elected president of Congress, which Ardón did. Lobo also named Ardón’s brother Hugo as head of the Fondo Vial, the highway maintenance and regulatory authority, which began handing out contracts to Ardón and Cachiros-owned INRIMAR.

The National Party’s return to power in 2009 was a huge boon for Tony and Ardón’s new drug trafficking venture. Between 2010 and 2012, the two of them moved several shipments of cocaine through Honduras once or twice a month, some of which were marked with the initials TH. In 2013, Lobo deployed the military to the Guatemalan border to deter rival incursions against Ardón and Tony’s turf. Ardón’s power and fame grew, and he used his near-complete control of his town to host the likes of El Chapo. He also asked Tony to kill a nosy cop, who instead had him transferred.

Meanwhile, in 2012, Tony began his campaign for a diputado suplente (alternate congressman) position in Lempira department, while supporting his brother’s presidential campaign. He still found the time to rent helicopters to Ardón to transport cocaine and drug proceeds, for about $20,000-$50,000 per use.

However, JOH became worried that Ardón was becoming a liability because of media reports of his criminal activities and asked him not to seek re-election. He warned him that he could not continue to protect Ardón if he remained in office, particularly in light of the authorization of extradition in 2012 (reversing a ban on extradition in place since 1982) and pressure from the US. Still, JOH also asked Ardón to support his presidential campaign by bribing local politicians. Ardón spent approximately $1.5 million in drug proceeds to support JOH’s presidential campaign, including by paying cash bribes to other officials and providing gifts and favors to local politicians. US prosecutors concluded that JOH, like Lobo before him, “was elected President based at least in part on the proceeds of drug trafficking.”

JOH was elected president in 2013, and Tony won his congressional campaign (he got the chance to sit in Congress once the seat holder was appointed defence minister in 2014). JOH won 89% in El Paraíso.

The US continued to apply pressure on the Honduran government, which proceeded to extradite the first three drug lords to the US in 2014, while others, like the Cachiros, turned themselves in to US authorities. In 2016, JOH had one of his ministers meet with Ardón to tell him that he was going to remove Hugo from his government job because of increasing scrutiny. Nevertheless, the minister also told Ardón that JOH wanted his support in the upcoming presidential election. In exchange for a promise that the president would continue to protect Ardón, he spent 1 million lempiras ($41,000) in drug proceeds to support JOH’s re-election in 2017.

According to the prosecutors’ evidence, Tony Hernández also orchestrated at least two drug-related murders. In 2011, he arranged to have a former associate of Ardón (who had blocked access to one of the routes to the border) murdered. In 2013, a former employee was arrested and later murdered, because Tony and Ardón felt that he knew too much.

Tony directed Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares “El Tigre”, who was regional police chief in Copán at the time, to carry out the 2011 murder. One year later, Bonilla Valadares was appointed national police chief by President Lobo, despite allegations that he was part of a death squad. He was charged with extrajudicial murder in 2002 and went on the run for a few months, before handing himself in and found innocent in 2004. Although the no-nonsense tough cop’s appointment was actually praised by many in 2012, he was removed from his position in December 2013.

The prosecutors’ conclusions targeted JOH, and other unnamed co-conspirators (including Pepe Lobo, CC-3): “The defendant and his co-conspirators engaged in this conduct in order to enrich themselves; to fund campaigns by candidates from the National Party including but not limited to presidential elections in 2009 and 2013; and to maintain and enhance their power and political positions in Honduras” and “the defendant and other Honduran officials, such as CC-3 and CC-4, relied on drug proceeds to fund National Party campaigns and other political operations”.

In September 2019, the US also announced drug charges against JOH’s cousin, former high-ranking police officer Mauricio Hernández Pineda, in the same case as Tony. Hernández Pineda is alleged to have provided armed security and sensitive law enforcement information to his co-conspirators to protect drug shipments, in exchange for bribes.

JOH has repeatedly denied all the accusations against him, repeating ad infinitum that the claims being made against him are false and made by drug traffickers looking for revenge on him for having authorized their extradition, while also pointing to his “close and productive relationship” with the US government, including the DEA, in the war on drugs. Indeed, it’s true that some of the government’s initial evidence against Tony came from extradited drug traffickers; however, most evidence came from former traffickers who had either turned themselves in or had been extradited from Guatemala. In 2014, JOH is said to have considered eliminating extradition because he was already concerned that the US would ask for his brother’s extradition.

The fall of the brother

The hits continued during Tony’s trial, which began in October 2019. The trial began with the AUSA claiming that El Chapo had hand-delivered $1 million to Tony Hernández that was meant for his brother. El Chapo had offered Tony the million (in exchange for ensuring the safety of his shipments), who told him he’d think about it. Tony told Ardón a day later that his brother had told him that they did, in fact, urgently need $1 million for the campaign, so Chapo handed him the $1 million in cash at their next meeting. The president vehemently denied the accusation, describing them as “absurd and ridiculous” and “less serious than Alice in Wonderland”.

On the second day, prosecutors connected Tony to a 350-page narco-ledger which detailed drug shipments allegedly received by Tony and distributed to his co-conspirators, perhaps up to February 2018, only months before Tony’s arrest. The ledger also lists $440,000 in payments to “JOH and his people”, on a page dated to May 2018.

In October 2019, Tony Hernández was convicted on all four counts (cocaine importation, weapons and making false statements). His sentencing was delayed several times until March 2021, when he was finally sentenced to life in prison and ordered to forfeit $138.5 million.

JOH reacted to his brother’s conviction on Twitter by saying that he felt a “great sadness” but again dismissed the case’s veracity by questioning a conviction “based on the testimonies of confessed murderers” and rejected any “false and irresponsible attempts to stain the name of Honduras”. His tweets were, tellingly, followed by footage of DEA and USSOUTHCOM officials publicly recognizing Honduras as an “effective and trustworthy partner” in the war on drugs.

The verdict was followed by some protests in Honduras, some of them organized by the three opposition leaders – Salvador Nasralla, former president Manuel Zelaya and 2017 Liberal candidate Luis Zelaya – who demanded JOH’s resignation. Protests in late October were violent repressed by the police.

The trial left a bloody trail in Honduran prisons. Just eight days after the verdict, Nery López Sanabria, the drug trafficker from whom the ledgers were seized, was murdered at a maximum-security prison in Honduras. López Sanabria’s lawyer told the media that he believed an extradition request for his client was imminent, and his extradition to the US could have allowed him to further elaborate on the ledger. In December, another of López Sanabria’s lawyers and the prison warden were also murdered. Just a day before López Sanabria’s murder, a man said to be Alex Ardón’s right-hand man was also murdered in jail. In December 2019, the government declared a state of emergency in all prisons, transferring control of the system to the army. Prison massacres and killings have continued, even increased, since the army took control.

His brother’s trial certainly destroyed what remained of JOH’s crime-fighting façade, which had allowed him to present himself as a poster child for US policy in Central America under both Obama and Trump. But Tony’s trial and JOH being named a co-conspirator in his brother’s criminal venture wasn’t enough to topple JOH’s regime and his close ties with the United States. Around the same time as Tony Hernández was found guilty on all counts, the Trump administration announced the resumption of foreign aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Less than 24 hours after the verdict was read, the US Chargé d’Affaires was seen accompanying the president at a military parade.

Shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos

Since his brother’s trial, US prosecutors have continued building a case against JOH.

Drug and weapons charges against Bonilla Valadares were announced in April 2020, and US Attorney Geoffrey Berman explicitly connected the president to the drug conspiracy. The former cop is accused of having overseen the safe passage of cocaine shipments across the country on Tony and his brother’s behalf, in exchange for bribes. Tony Hernández reportedly told a fellow trafficker that Bonilla Valadares was very violent and that he and his brother had entrusted him with special assignments, including murder.

In March 2020, Honduran drug trafficker Geovanny Fuentes was arrested in Miami. Fuentes was convicted in March 2021. The case included even more explosive evidence directly implicating JOH in his brother’s drug venture.

Fuentes began operating a cocaine laboratory in Omoa (Cortés department) in 2009, where 300-500 kg of cocaine were produced each month. Fuentes was also a drug trafficker, with ties to the Cachiros, who received large cocaine shipments by air and maritime routes.

In 2013, Fuentes paid at least $25,000 to JOH to secure protection for the lab and allowed JOH to access millions of dollars’ worth of cocaine from his lab. JOH instructed him to report directly to his brother Tony. At this meeting, JOH told Fuentes that he was interested in access to the lab because of its proximity to Puerto Cortés. At Fuentes’ trial, the AUSA said that Fuentes paid met with and paid bribes to JOH as recently as 2019, even travelling to the presidential palace following key filings in Tony’s case in New York. Testifying at the trial, Rivera Maradiaga also said that the Cachiros had paid $250,000 to Hilda Hernández in 2012 and a $500,000 bribe to then-presidential candidate Ricardo Álvarez, who is currently first vice president.

Fuentes’ lab was allegedly protected by the Honduran armed forces, and Fuentes received weapons and uniforms from someone identified by Univision as General René Orlando Ponce Fonseca, commander of the 105th military brigade, who was later appointed chair of the joint chiefs by JOH in 2017.

According to the summary of evidence, released in January 2021, at the 2013 meeting JOH told Fuentes said that he wanted the DEA to think that Honduras was fighting drug trafficking, but that instead he was going to eliminate extradition and “shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.”

At a separate meeting in 2013 with a businessowner who laundered money for Fuentes, JOH boasted that he and the National Party were embezzling aid money from the US through fraudulent NGOs and stealing money from the social security system. Nearly $300 million were stolen from the Honduran Social Security Institute (IHSS), and JOH was forced to publicly admit in 2015 that some of that money found its way to his presidential campaign in 2013. According to Univision, at this meeting JOH prided himself that they were “stealing better than in the days of Callejas”, referring to arch-corrupt former president Rafael Callejas.

A February 2021 court filing confirmed that JOH was the target of an investigation along with other senior officials. The filing accused the incumbent president of using the police and military to protect drug traffickers as part of a plan “to use drug trafficking to help assert power and control in Honduras.” The prosecutors also complained that the Honduran government has “hardly been forthcoming” throughout the course of the investigation, refusing to honour extradition requests and providing only limited records.

Tony Hernández’s sentencing submission in March 2021, seeking a life sentence, referred to JOH by name (58 times) and didn’t mince their words about the president’s alleged role in the conspiracy. The prosecutors argued that Tony and his brother “played a leadership role in a violent, state sponsored drug trafficking conspiracy.” In 2013, Tony Hernández “helped the Sinaloa Cartel operate, in essence, as a covert criminal PAC in support of Juan Orlando Hernández’s first presidential campaign.” The document referred to the “National Party-Sinaloa Cartel alliance” formed during secret meetings with Tony, to which El Chapo was able to travel safely despite being one of the most wanted men.

In summary, Tony “operated in the shadows as a key conduit to the National Party’s constituency of traffickers” while JOH and other politicians “purported to take a pro-law enforcement stance.”

[beesley]

Thanks for the information - I only read about this election today on the BBC so I appreciate the context.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Thank you for the info! I’d completely forgotten about this one - although one update of note for this particular election is that Nasralla has fallen in line behind Castro. Whether that will end up meaning anything remains to be seen.

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Corruption wins

MACCIH’s mandate was set to expire in January 2020. Although MACCIH lacked the powers of its Guatemalan big brother and was beset by problems from the beginning, it did grow into a body which, at the very least, was able to bring major investigations into political corruption to the forefront – which had rarely happened in the past – although its track record in scoring convictions was unimpressive. The private sector, civil society, the OAS and the US asked for its mandate to be renewed.

Congress, led by Mauricio Oliva, didn’t care. In December 2019, they voted to recommend that the president not renew its mandate, citing alleged violation of rights and constitutional principles. In January 2020, the Honduran government announced that it would not renew MACCIH’s mandate after negotiations with the OAS failed to reach an agreement on renewing its mandate. The OAS said that the government was unwilling to allow MACCIH’s continued collaboration with the UFECIC. Despite being supposedly in favour of MACCIH staying, the US didn’t complain too much when JOH kicked it out. The UFECIC was renamed UFERCO, but without MACCIH’s support and operating on a limited budget, it is weak and has allegedly been abandoned by the attorney general.

In January 2018, the Congress adopted a new penal code, which was due to enter into force in November 2019. In the face of widespread opposition from civil society groups and MACCIH, Congress twice extended the vacatio legis, but the new penal code ultimately came into force in June 2020. While the new penal code has noteworthy positive aspect and creates several new offences, it is seen by critics as a way to help corrupt politicians and their allies get reduced sentences or avoid jail time, part of a broader conspiracy to entrench the kleptocracy and impunity. The penal code ostensibly establishes more proportional sanctions and alternatives to jail, which is a good thing in a country with oversaturated prisons rife with violence and killings.

The new penal code reduces sentences for corruption-related crimes (embezzlement, fraud, money laundering, illicit enrichment, influence peddling, abuse of power – which no longer carries a jail sentence, administrative malfeasance etc.). These reduced sentences also have the knock-on effect of reducing the prescriptive period (statute of limitations) and allowing incarcerated individuals to seek early release on the basis of the legal principle of the milder law (lex mitior). Its legal definitions also give greater room for impunity – money laundering first requires proving a crime rather than a general activity, certain forms of embezzlement require proving damage/loss of public assets and fraud is limited only to public procurement. Among egregious examples of the new penal code’s incoherence is that unauthorized lotteries and raffles carry a jail sentence, while abuse of power doesn’t.

In terms of drug trafficking, the new penal code adopts a broad, blanket definition and metes out (reduced) punishments based only on the drugs being trafficked, not considering specific roles played by criminal actors. Sentences are also reduced compared to the superseded narcotics law. It also reduced sentences for rape, statutory rape, kidnapping, terrorism (defined very vaguely), environmental crimes, tax evasion (with an unlimited amnesty). On the other hand, sections about illegal protests and demonstrations are worded in such a way that it further arbitrarily criminalizes protests. Press freedom organizations also denounced that the penal code still criminalizes insults and slanders, punishable by fines or jail time.

In October 2021, Congress controversially adopted a series of amendments to the penal code, the criminal procedure code and the money laundering law. These amendments were adopted by the National Party and its allies during a virtual session during a public holiday and right before a World Cup qualification match. Changes to the money laundering law limit prosecutors’ access to information by imposing banking secrecy requirements on corruption crimes (it may only be lifted for money laundering and terrorism crimes), while at the same time including civil society groups in the definition of politically exposed person. An amendment to an article of the penal code now requires prosecutors to prove that the assets being laundered are expressly connected to particular crimes – even if the person under investigation is unable to prove the legal origin of these assets. Legislators also approved a decree temporarily exonerating over 400 candidates and parties who hadn’t yet presented their financial report for the 2021 primary elections (and reducing the fines for candidates who don’t do so).

All while further entrenching impunity, amendments to the penal code criminalized public protests by broadening the definition of usurpation to include public spaces, facilitating evictions and increasing the sentence from 4 to 6 years imprisonment. All of these amendments were widely criticized by the UFERCO, civil society and the UN OHCHR’s office in Honduras.

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.

On the other hand, seven Democratic senators in February 2021 introduced a bill, the Honduras Human Rights and Anti-Corruption Act of 2021, which seeks to impose sanctions on President Hernández, ban commercial export of weapons and munitions to the Honduran police and military and suspend security assistance unless certain conditions are met. The bill includes a litany of serious accusations against the Honduran government for systemic corruption, contempt for the rule of law, impunity, human rights abuses, ‘vilification and criminalization’ of civil society and human rights activists and suspensions of constitutional guarantees during COVID-19 restrictions (over 34,000 citizens have been detained for violating curfews and lockdowns). It argues that there is “substantial evidence that President of Honduras (…) has engaged in a pattern of criminal activity and use of the state apparatus to protect and facilitate drug trafficking.” An identical bill was introduced in the House and has 33 Democratic co-sponsors.

MACCIH’s dying legacy

The corruption cases presented by UFECIC/MACCIH have languished and gradually dismantled – most notably the Pandora case.

In July 2018, at the first hearing, the judge rejected the money laundering and criminal conspiracy charges against most of the accused and instead charged them with cover-up and ordered the release 24 of the accused. In August 2020, the appeals court of the Supreme Court dismissed all charges against 22 of the 26 accused, burying the case against the politicians. The last four still standing trial – the perfunctory scapegoats for the others? – include former agriculture minister Jacobo Regalado (who was released from preventive detention in September 2020) and others who are essentially accused of withdrawing/transferring the money, while the politicians who embezzled it and used it for political/personal purposes are free (on the flimsy argument that they didn’t know of the illicit origin of the money).

The judiciary has also worked to ensure impunity in several other corruption scandals. In February 2019, at the initial hearing in the Arca Abierta case, no one was remanded to pre-trial detention and only 11 of the 21 accused will stand trial. Since then, over 2 years later, the UFERCO is still waiting for a court to rule on its appeals. In November 2020, a court acquitted the nine defendants in the Patuca III hydroelectric dam scandal. That same month, the accusations against 14 former managers of the IHSS implicated in a pension fraud case were softened. A month later, the Supreme Court allowed the main defendant in the ‘Narco-política’ case (rigged public works contracts awarded to INRIMAR, the Cachiros’ money laundering front), former public works and transportation minister Miguel Pastor, to await his trial out of jail.

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Open for business

Since 2010, the National Party administrations have promoted a ‘pro-business’ policy to attract foreign investment.

A public-private partnerships law was adopted in 2010, allowing private corporations to undertake public contracts and obtain concessions. Among notable public-private partnerships and concessions is the new Palmerola International Airport in Comayagua, inaugurated in October 2021. Coalianza, the government commission created to promote PPPs, was abolished in 2019 and replaced by a new agency after audits revealed irregularities and waste in its expenditures. The Economist Intelligence Unit criticized it for poorly structured projects and a lack of transparency in the awarding and regulation of contracts.

Honduras has followed an extractivist economic model which has ignored environmental concerns and dispossessed vulnerable and excluded groups (indigenous peoples, Afro-Hondurans and the peasantry). A new mining law in 2013 ended a moratorium on new mining concessions in place since 2005, and since then 217 mining concessions have been granted by the state (around 131,500 ha.), with another 481 concessions under exploration or requested. Legal incentives have worked to attract companies, but mining has been of little benefit to local economies (accounting for just 0.2% of GDP).

Since the liberalization of the electricity market in the 1990s, the mismanaged and indebted state-owned electricity company (ENEE) has given sweetheart contracts to private sector electricity generators and distributors. Since 2007, Honduras has transitioned to renewable energy sources (mostly hydroelectricity but also solar), at any cost – even at the cost of protected areas and indigenous rights. Hydroelectricity projects have often generated major local conflicts, and governments have responded by identifying them as projects of national interests, facilitating forced expropriation. Here too the government has given ridiculously favourable deals to private interests, forcing ENEE to pay very high prices to buy electricity and giving broad tax exemptions to all renewable energy projects.

The Patuca III dam is one of Honduras’ main hydroelectricity projects, on the Patuca River, one of the last wild rivers in Central America. Patuca III was built by Sinohydro and financed by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. The government has pushed forward with the project, riding roughshod over local opposition and in spite an IDB environmental and social impact assessment which was very critical of the weak environmental assessment and lack of proper consultation with local communities. The dam will damage local ecosystems, biodiversity and affect livelihoods of communities downstream.

Most concessions and projects are shrouded in secrecy and there is usually little to no consultation with local and indigenous communities, which have led to several local social conflicts over mining and energy projects. Honduras is the deadliest country for environmental defenders per capita, with 17 murders in 2020 and 14 in 2019.

Berta Cáceres, a Lenca community leader and environmental defender, was murdered at her home in March 2016 for her staunch opposition to the Agua Zarca dam (on the Gualcarque River in Intibucá department). Agua Zarca was a small dam built by DESA, a Honduran company, which was strongly opposed by the local Lenca indigenous community. Local consultations were superficial at best and largely ignored residents’ opposition. There was massive resistance to the project from 2013, and during a protest in July 2013, the military – which was protecting the site – opened fire on unarmed protesters, killing one indigenous leader and wounding several others.

Cáceres’ murder drew international attention and condemnation and forced the three international backers of the dam to withdraw their funding. Justice for her murder has been slow and incomplete. In November 2018, a court convicted seven of the eight men accused material authors – including a DESA engineer, DESA’s former head of security and several retired Honduran soldiers. In July 2021, Roberto David Castillo Mejía, a former DESA director and US-trained ex-army intelligence officer was convicted, the first intellectual author of the crime to be found guilty. Justice, although imperfect, is still historic and a positive step given that most murders of environmental defenders in Honduras (and Latin America) go unpunished.

But more people are responsible for her murder. In December 2019, private messages and texts published revealed that the hit squad communicated through a chain that went right to the very top – one group chat included Castillo Mejía as well as DESA’s CFO and two board members, José Eduardo Atala Zablah and Pedro Atala Zablah, brothers from the powerful Atala business family (owners of the Motagua football club, and the financial group FICOHSA). The chats also showed how DESA’s executives leaned on their political allies after Cáceres’ murder, like security minister Julián Pacheco.

In March 2019, MACCIH presented the ‘fraud on the Gualcarque’ case which revealed irregularities, corruption and collusion in the tendering and licensing process to favour DESA. Notably, Castillo Mejía, DESA’s de facto representative as early as 2009, also worked full time for ENEE in the division which deals with the authorization and approval of renewable energy contracts – a blatant conflict of interest. DESA obtained the contract despite not being listed on the list of state contractors and suppliers, and lacking the capabilities, experience and capital to develop the project. There were a series of irregular administrative procedures: the feasibility study was improperly done but nevertheless approved by the natural resources ministry despite the red flags, the ministry granted a miscategorized environmental license which favoured DESA’s interests and contravening several legal requirements and DESA later received approval to increase the power plant’s capacity to three turbines generating 21.5 megawatts (even if the river doesn’t have enough water for three turbines) – increasing DESA’s investment and therefore increasing ENEE’s purchase price for the electricity.

However, like other corruption scandals, it seems likely that the end result of this case will be impunity. In December 2020, the Supreme Court dismissed the charges against 10 of the 16 people accused by MACCIH/UFECIC.

Palm oil plantations are infamously bad for the environment, a major driver of deforestation and destruction of natural habitats. Honduras is a major producer of palm oil – 650,000 tonnes in 2018, on 190,000 hectares of land, mostly in the Bajo Aguán valley. Since the 1990s there have been violent land conflicts between peasants/cooperatives and Miguel Facussé’s Dinant Corporation. Dinant has been accused of forced eviction of farmers and the use of violence against peasants on and around their plantations, including over 100 assassinations.

From April 2019, there was major protests in Honduras against healthcare and education reform decrees. The decrees, which created special commissions for the transformation of the healthcare and education systems, authorized the reallocation and modification of budgets as required by the IMF. They were opposed by the teachers’ unions and the college of physicians, who argued that the wording of the decrees allowed for the possibility of mass layoffs and the privatization of healthcare and education. They have reason to be worried: since 2010, the National Party has tried to restructure education, expressing great interest in charter schools in the US and generally trying to cut budgets, decentralize healthcare and education to municipalities, suspend long-term contracts and limit labour activism/unionization.

The movement continued for months and evolved into nationwide protests against JOH, corruption, impunity and neoliberal economic policies. A national strike which paralyzed the country, closing schools and limiting care in public hospitals, went ahead in early June. The government deployed the military and military police (PMOP) to crack down on road blockades and repress the protests, using tear gas and live ammunition against protesters (killing several people). However, the government did adopt a decree which guaranteed that there would no mass layoffs or privatizations, and ultimately repealed both decrees as protesters had initially demanded.

ZEDE: Investment magnets or 21st century banana enclaves?

Perhaps the most controversial of the Nationalists’ “open for business” economic policies have been the creation of the Employment and Economic Development Zones (ZEDE), semi-autonomous free trade zones or model cities inspired by Hong Kong and Singapore. The ZEDE were created through a constitutional reform, followed by an organic law, in 2013 – after the original model cities law was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2012 (a court which was, a few months later, illegally purged by JOH).

ZEDE are part of Honduras and subject to the state for “sovereignty, enforcement of justice, territory, national defence, foreign relations, elections and issuance of identity documents and passports” – but only 6 of the constitution’s 370+ articles fully apply in the ZEDE. The ZEDE have substantial autonomy with their own administrative, economic, fiscal, legal and common law courts systems (and mandatory arbitration). They may also create their own education, healthcare and social security systems. ZEDE are required to have their own law enforcement bodies (police, criminal investigation, prosecution, prisons) with exclusive competence.

Their stated goal is to attract domestic and foreign investment to create jobs, spur economic growth and integrate Honduras in the competitive global economy. The law is intentionally vague to allow ZEDE to encompass a broad range of things – as big or small as their promoters want them to be, with broad powers to create low-tax (max. 12% income tax and 16% corporate tax rates, max. 5% VAT), free trade autonomous zones. Only 12% of tax revenues collected by ZEDE must be transferred to the Honduran government.

The creation of a ZEDE is approved by Congress, with no framework for prior consultation with communities, municipal authorities or other bodies. Only ZEDE located in high density areas required popular consent through a plebiscite, while ZEDE in low density areas only require confirmation from the statistical institute. The government is authorized to expropriate property (with compensation) considered necessary for the development and expansion of ZEDE.

The ZEDE are overseen by a committee for the adoption of best practice (CAMP), which has 21 members appointed by the President and confirmed by Congress, including both Hondurans and foreigners. The CAMP has the power to set general guidelines, approve internal rules of each ZEDE, appoint the technical secretaries of each ZEDE and propose names for the ZEDE’s judiciaries (to be appointed by the Honduran judicial system).

The CAMP is a club of Honduran and foreign conservatives/libertarians and venture capitalists, and includes: former Nationalist President Ricardo Maduro (2002-2006), the secretary of the presidency and JOH loyalist Ebal Díaz, Mark Klugmann (a former GOP operative turned American advisor to Central American right-wingers, most recently Lobo and JOH), Grover Norquist, Michael Reagan, Mark Skousen, RNC member Morton Blackwell, Federal Claims judge Loren Smith, Danish banker Lars Seier Christensen, vice president of the Austrian central bank Barbara Kolm and Gabriela van Habsburg among others. These members were appointed in 2014, and some have since died or resigned, and it is unclear what the current membership is and how often they meet (or do anything).

The government and ZEDE supporters have sold them as business-friendly, low-tax, duty-free, free trade semi-autonomous zones which will attract foreign investment, create higher-paying jobs for locals and offer investors legal certainty. JOH ambitiously presented the ZEDE as a means to make Honduras a “logistical centre for the Americas” and an alternative to the Panama Canal.

Opponents say that ZEDE undermine Honduran sovereignty and will be 21st century banana enclaves, parts of the national territory sold off to the highest (foreign) bidders and private interests, bringing little to no benefit to Hondurans, worsening the current extractivist and exclusionary economic model. Some believe that ZEDE can serve as a refuge for corrupt and narco-politicians (like JOH) or a haven for money laundering. They are also skeptical that ZEDE will be successful given the country’s political instability, entrenched corruption and insecurity.

The Honduran private sector (COHEP) is also unenthusiastic about ZEDE – they questioned the way in which the constitution was modified, but they seem to have changed their tune since the (post-purge) Supreme Court in 2014 ruled that ZEDE were constitutional. Paul Romer, the economist behind the idea of ‘charter cities’ who initially collaborated with the Nationalist government on model cities, dissociated himself from the idea in 2012. In October 2020, the national lawyers’ association adopted an official position that ZEDE are unconstitutional and should be repealed. Even the Catholic Church and evangelical groups, which don’t often go against the government, have criticized ZEDE.

Indeed, ZEDE have been slow to get off the ground despite the government and foreign promoters’ best efforts. A first attempt to create a ZEDE in Amapala and other municipalities on the Gulf of Fonseca (Honduras’ Pacific coastline, shared with El Salvador and Nicaragua) failed to get off the ground despite the support of the South Korean government.

Today, there are three ZEDE projects: Próspera on the famous resort island of Roatán, Ciudad Morazán in Choloma (Cortés) and ZEDE Orquídea in Choluteca.

Próspera (LLC incorporated in Delaware, with investment from NeWay Capital), in the works since 2017 and announced in May 2020, is the most famous and controversial of the three, sparking local protests in March 2021 in Crawfish Rock, a Garifuna community. The first phase includes a 58-acre village, but Próspera has ambitious plans to expand beyond that, including on the mainland in northern Honduras (La Ceiba).

Local residents feel duped as nobody initially informed them that they were planning a ZEDE, and now fear that they could be expropriated. In October 2020, the mayors of the four municipalities of the Bay Islands department as well as the local chamber of commerce and tourism association, released a statement against ZEDE and demanded the organization of a referendum in accordance with Convention 169 of the ILO. In Choloma (Cortés), the mayor has also declared his municipality ‘free of ZEDE’ following protests.

In March 2021, TUM International GmbH, a subsidiary of the Technical University of Munich, withdrew because of indications of human rights abuses.

According to an analysis in NACLA, Próspera’s charter would create a highly corporatized form of government with little in the way of representative democracy or popular participation. The provision of services like electricity, education and healthcare would likely be outsourced to a private service provider which could collect fees in exchange. Residency is likely to be restricted and exclusionary, even for Honduran citizens, subject to approval by the service provider on vague criteria (including ‘reputation and social harmony’) and the ability to pay taxes and fees. Residents will also have to sign an agreement of coexistence in which they agree to delegate popular sovereignty to “sustain the power and authority held in trust by Próspera ZEDE” and commit to self-responsibility. New residents would face a probationary period of one year during which they could be terminated and expelled without cause.

In face of growing opposition, the government has tried to rekindle the ZEDE. In May 2021, Congress adopted a law which exempts ZEDE from all taxes, tariffs and duties on the purchase of goods and services as well as their imports and exports. It also stipulates that any disputes between ZEDE and national and municipal authorities will be resolved through arbitration, a process which favours foreign investors.

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Nasry Asfura (National Party): Nasry ‘Tito’ Asfura, the National Party’s candidate, is the mayor of the Distrito Central (Tegucigalpa and Comayagüela) since 2014. Before being elected mayor, he served one term in Congress (2010-2014) and minister responsible for the social investment fund.

Asfura comes from a different elite background than Pepe Lobo (cattle rancher from Olancho department) and Juan Orlando Hernández (coffee-growing family from Lempira department) and instead is from the urban business Levantine elite – he is of Palestinian descent and a successful businessman who owns a construction company, specialized in heavy machinery.

Politically, he developed close ties with National Party mayors in the capital in the 1990s, serving as local prosecutor and assistant to Nora Gúnera de Melgar (1990-1994) and manager of public services (1994-1998). He sought the National Party’s mayoral nomination in 2005 but lost and served as alderman (regidor) under Ricardo Álvarez (2006-2010). He was elected mayor in 2013.

Asfura’s self-coined nickname is papi a la orden – ‘daddy at your service’. He has a friendly, outgoing personality with an ability to memorize names and phone numbers. He projects a modest, humble and hard-working image, usually wearing rolled-up sleeve shirts and blue jeans. He says that he is “addicted to work” and spends little time at the office, preferring to work in the field. Until his presidential campaign, he had relatively very little presence on television and on social media, and even rarely appeared in advertisements or at public events.

His obsession as mayor has been big infrastructure – streets, roads, overpasses, tunnels and bridges. His critics contend that his infrastructure lacks in functionality and came at the cost of felling thousands of trees. He also faced criticisms for the never-ending Trans-450 BRT fiasco, inherited from Ricardo Álvarez – the system was inaugurated in early January 2014 when it was still unfinished, and was later redesigned by Asfura’s administration but never finished and with its bus stations and reserved lanes abandoned. Asfura has also shown little interest (like most Nationalists) in doing anything about poverty.

His style and focus on big infrastructure projects made him a very popular mayor. In 2017, he was re-elected with over 77% of the vote. Given his popularity in the capital, he was the National Party’s obvious presidential candidate this year, and he easily trounced the far less popular president of Congress Mauricio Oliva in the primaries in March 2021. Asfura won 70% of the vote.

Like many Honduran politicians, he continued his business career alongside his political career, conflicts of interest be damned.

In 2001, the Sulambiente consortium was controversially awarded the trash collection concession in San Pedro Sula. In 2001, the consortium was formed by Italian and Honduran companies, but the shares of the Italian company Agac were acquired by Agac de Centroamérica S.A., a company recently formed by Honduran shareholders. Nasry Asfura’s company Decoesa was one of two partners in the new Agac in 2005.

The mayor illegally cancelled the contract in 2003; Sulambiente then sued the city for damages and won in 2005, with the court ordering the city to pay $8.1 million in damages and trial costs. In 2011, after attempts at conciliation failed, Sulambiente seized $8.1 million from the city – despite never having actually provided the service – causing serious economic damage to the city, which was unable to pay its employees for 7 months and paralyzed infrastructure projects. In 2014, under current National Party mayor Armando Calidonio, a new contract with Sulambiente was signed, which expires in 2028.

Asfura has tried to hide his involvement with Sulambiente. In August 2011, two months before prosecutors investigated corruption allegations against the company, Decoesa’s shares in Agac were transferred to Alvehsa (a company owned by Johnny Roberto Kafati Segebre, former housing minister under Ricardo Maduro). In September 2011, Asfura publicly denied any corporate ties with Sulambiente. However, media investigations have revealed that in September 2016, Alvehsa transferred 44% of its shares to Codena, a company also owned by Asfura. That same year, Sulambiente sold 50% of its shares to Interaseo, a Colombian company, leaving Agac de Centroamérica S.A. (in which Asfura is a shareholder) with half of the shares in Sulambiente.

Interaseo is owned by Colombian magnate William Vélez Sierra, the ‘garbage czar’ who controls most trash collection concessions in Colombia and also owns half of Empresa Energía Honduras (EEH), the private electricity commercialization and distribution company. He is also a board member of one of the largest civil engineering firms in Colombia and has made a fortune in his native country as well as in Mexico, Panama, Ecuador, Chile, Guatemala and Honduras. He is a close friend and supporter of Álvaro Uribe and had alleged ties Colombian paramilitaries, according to documents from 2005.

Moreover, Nasry Asfura is also connected with the two companies in charge of trash collection in the very city he has governed since 2010, Cosemsa and Amahsa. Cosemsa obtained the contract in 1998, while Asfura was manager of public services in Tegucigalpa, and Amahsa was awarded its contract in 2004. His ties to these companies are through his old business partner Kafati Segebre, who is president of both Cosemsa and Amasha. Amahsa was formed in 2004 by four companies including two in which Asfura was a shareholder or partner along with Kafati Segebre, Agac de Centroamérica and Credinjasa. In 2005, Asfura’s two companies owned 48% of shares. In 2017, Asfura’s Agac de Centroamérica and Credinjasa transferred all their shares to Alvehsa, which is owned by Kafati Segebre. An audit by the TSC indicated that there were irregularities in the provision of services by these companies, which cost the city millions of dollars.

In October 2020, the UFERCO filed a request for an antejuicio (pre-trial procedure for certain public officials) against Asfura and a regidora, accusing them of embezzling 29 million lempiras (over $1 million) in public funds from the municipality in 2017-2018. Over 20 cheques payable to Asfura and others were issued from a bank trust in which the municipality deposited revenues from taxes, fees, fines, donations, loans and transfers.

Notably, 23 checks, for a value of 17.4 million lempiras, made out to Asfura were deposited in three private bank accounts named “political campaign contributions”, “political contributions from own assets” and “savings for personal expenses/accrued salary”. The money was later moved to personal and corporate accounts and used for personal purposes – travel expenses, credit card payments, transfers or payments to other individuals. However, to cover their tracks, some of the cheques were made out to employees of companies connected to Asfura, like Cosemsa.

In November 2020, a special corruption appeals court preliminarily admitted the antejuicio request, and in February 2021 it gave it the go-ahead. However, Asfura’s lawyers filed an appeal to stop the antejuicio and in June 2021, the criminal chamber of the Supreme Court ruled in his favour, declaring the antejuicio request inadmissible and stating that there must first be an audit and special investigation by the TSC – an obvious result of the ‘impunity pact’ of 2019.

In October 2021, Nasry Asfura was among the Honduran politicians named in the Pandora Papers (along with Ricardo Álvarez and Pepe Lobo). In 2007, all but one of the shares in Karlane Overseas SA, an offshore Panamanian company, were transferred to Asfura. Asfura denied owning an offshore company or having offshore investments.

Nasry Asfura’s slogan is Papi es diferente – ‘Papi’ is different – and promises a different government, an effort to distance himself from JOH’s toxic and unpopular legacy, although in reality he is understood as being Hernández’s choice (maybe his only way to stay out jail). The National Party’s candidates for deputies and mayors includes many of the same old arch-corrupt politicians. Not that Honduran politicians have a good track record in keeping them, but Asfura promises “massive jobs” and of course investments in infrastructure (his gimmick). He says that he wants to be “administrator, manager, facilitator and executor” of the country. In short, Asfura’s victory would essentially mean the status quo in Honduras.

The Nationalists are also campaigning on their usual hardline social conservatism, for “family and life”, staunchly opposed to abortion (which has been illegal under all circumstances since 1997) and same-sex marriage. In January 2021, Congress adopted a “shield against abortion” which adds the abortion ban to the constitution and requires a three-quarters majority to modify it. The constitution already bans same-sex marriage, but the amendments adopted in January also made changing that even more difficult, again by requiring a three-quarters majority.

While Asfura gives vague speeches with nonsensical promises, most of the negative campaigning (against communism etc.) has been entrusted to Asfura’s ally David Chávez Madison, the president of the National Party’s central executive committee and mayoral candidate in Tegucigalpa. Chávez, who is 39, wears a hat backwards and is active on TikTok – he’s basically a lame rip-off of Nayib Bukele, ranting about the dangers of communism and defining the election as a fight between communism and progress. Of course, David Chávez (an outgoing deputy) is also accused of corruption and defrauding the state. His mother was involved in FUNDEIMH, a ‘foundation’ controlled by JOH’s wife Ana García, which got lucrative contracts with the state. David Chávez’s brother Pedro Antonio Chávez (Ana García’s brother-in-law) was the party’s most popular candidate for deputy in the department in the primaries.

Xiomara Castro (Libre): The strongest opposition candidate is Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, the candidate of the left-wing Libertad y Refundación (Libre) party. Castro is the wife of former President Manuel ‘Mel’ Zelaya (2006-2009), the president who was deposed in the 2009 coup. She finished second in the 2013 election, with 28.8%. In 2017, Libre supported the candidacy of Salvador Nasralla, who officially won 41.4%. This year, Nasralla withdrew from the race in October to ally with Castro, becoming her first vice-presidential candidate (as she had been for him in 2017).

Manuel Zelaya is a son of the elite who went rogue once in power. He comes from a family of wealthy cattle ranchers in Olancho department, and his father was convicted for his involvement in the 1975 Horcones massacre on their ranch (14 religious leaders, students and peasants were murdered by the military), although he served only two years of a 20 years sentence thanks to an amnesty in 1980. Mel Zelaya worked in the timber/logging business for several years and was president of the national association of loggers and part of the COHEP (the private sector trade organization). Zelaya was a fairly typical Liberal apparatchik, aligned with the more left-wing faction led by President Carlos Roberto Reina (1994-1998).

Zelaya was elected president in 2005, but within a year or two, he kind of went rogue and shifted to the left. He relationship with the United States worsened and he adopted more populist policies, expanded social programs, increased social spending and started aligning with Venezuela and ALBA. But he also used his stint in office to enrich himself, his family and his cronies. His brother, Carlos Zelaya (incumbent Libre deputy for Olancho), has alleged (though unsubstantiated) ties to drug trafficking, and Rivera Maradiaga testified that he bribed Zelaya $500,000 in 2006 to appoint his cousin as security minister, which never materialized (Zelaya denied the accusation). According to a 2008 diplomatic cable, the US Ambassador said that he was unable to brief Zelaya on sensitive law enforcement information due to his concern that this would put the lives of US officials at risk. Zelaya also associated with seedy figures like his nephew Marcelo Chimirri, who was general manager of the state-owned telecom company Hondutel.

In that same cable, the ambassador described Zelaya as a “rebellious teenager, anxious to show his lack of respect for authority figures” whose “principal goal in office is to enrich himself and his family while leaving a public legacy as a martyr who tried to do good but was thwarted at every turn by powerful, unnamed interests.” With his chaotic, erratic and irreverent personality, he picked fights with the powerful elite families and the media (controlled by these families) and managed to alienate basically every other Liberal faction and every major institution in the country, which proved to be his undoing.

Ironically, the ultimate winner of the 2009 coup was probably Mel Zelaya, given that it made him the leader of the rebellious anti-system left-wing outsiders, the base of Libre.

Xiomara has been married to Zelaya since 1976. After the coup, she gained prominence as the leader of the anti-coup resistance movement in the streets, demanding her husband’s reinstatement. Xiomara has gained assurance and strength as a candidate now that she’s fighting her third election, although she still seldom gives interviews to the media. Mel Zelaya remains a powerful figure, as the coordinator general of Libre and her closest advisor. Their critics, including Libre dissidents, claim that the party only defends Zelaya’s interests.

In October, Xiomara Castro’s candidacy received a major boost by forming an alliance with Nasralla, and his Saviour Party of Honduras (Partido Salvador de Honduras), whose candidacy threatened the split the opposition vote and allow the Nationalists to win by default. The deal, negotiated by Zelaya, gives Nasralla’s party the presidency of Congress and they agree to share cabinet appointments

Salvador Nasralla is a histrionic and narcissistic sports journalist, TV host, MC and businessman who ran for president in 2013 and 2017 (the latter time as the candidate of an opposition alliance with Libre) and insists that he won both (he has a strong case for 2017, at least). Nasralla has a rather Trumpian personality – very full of himself, incessantly claiming that he’s the smartest and the best businessman/TV host/politician – and has penchant for making strange or provocative statements. He was pretty fanatical sports commentator who got into fights with refs, managers, owners, colleagues and politicians (his most famous incident is when he went completely apesh**t over a Mexican referee's controversial call in a game in 2009). His usual explanation for the Honduran football team’s poor performance is that players were malnourished as children and therefore they cannot give the same high performance as Americans and Canadians. As a politician, he's accused everyone else (even his current allies) of being crooks, criminals and drug traffickers. He’s often contradicted himself and alienated nearly all of his former allies at one time or another and seems to have no clear political beliefs or even strategy. In 2017, for example, he praised Augusto Pinochet and his policies, said that the crisis in Venezuela was exaggerated by the media and that North Korea sounds pretty cool because there's no unemployment there.

Xiomara Castro is the left-wing anti-establishment candidate, who promises the dismantle the ‘narco-dictatorship’ and the corrupt, exclusionary status quo to build a “socialist and democratic state”. Her opponents say she has two platforms: a moderate one, with Nasralla, and a more radical one, the Libre platform. They’re kind of right: a lot of Libre’s very left-wing platform reads as a wish list which may or may not be her actual policy. For example, her platform wants a national constituent assembly to adopt a new constitution, but Mel Zelaya has said that although it is party policy the country doesn’t have, at this time, the “feasible environment” to convene a constituent assembly, as he’s aware of what happened to him when he tried to do the same thing in 2009.

Libre’s platform promises a rather fundamental transformation of Honduras’ political and economic system, and a clean break with the last decade of Nationalist rule. Her key promise is to reduce poverty and inequality.

Castro has repeatedly promised to abolish ZEDEs, and to repeal the most controversial laws of Nationalist rule: the new penal code, the secrets law, the creation of the national defence and security council, the 2019 ‘impunity pact’ and others. She also wants to create a UN-backed international commission against corruption (i.e. CICIG). Libre would reverse Nationalist policies like the shift towards privatization of healthcare and education, the militarization of security policy (and focus more on the structural and socioeconomic causes of delinquency and violence, while strengthening intelligence to fight extortion and money laundering), the neoliberal economic model (in favour of an ‘alternative’ model with a stronger role for the state) and the creeping privatization of the electricity sector. However, she’s also been careful to meet with business groups to reassure them that she would create good conditions for job creation and private investments, and work with all economic sectors to rebuild the economy. It’s clear that Xiomara and Mel learned some lessons from 2009 and are more pragmatic, particularly Xiomara.

Xiomara Castro is probably the most progressive you can hope for in a conservative country like Honduras: she supports the decriminalization of abortion in the cases of rape, risk to the mother’s life and fetal malformations, as well as the use of emergency contraception (currently banned), and comprehensive sex ed in schools. She also supports a gender identity law and a law protecting LGBTQ persons.

On foreign policy, Castro wants to switch recognition from Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China (like El Salvador did a few years ago) – Honduras is one of the few countries which still recognizes Taiwan and has no diplomatic relations with China. In reaction, JOH went on an official visit to Taiwan in early November and met with President Tsai Ing-wen, reaffirming the ‘strong relationship’ between the two countries.

Naturally, Castro has faced the usual anti-communist campaigns from the right, and the familiar accusation that she would turn Honduras into Venezuela (as well as the far-right ultra-conservative claims about ‘gender ideology’). The Miami-based right-wing Diario Las Américas said that she was proposing the exact same measures as Hugo Chávez 23 years ago, a claim which was widely republished in the Honduran media with headlines that her platform was “made in Venezuela”.

[Hash]

Yani Rosenthal (Liberal Party): The Liberal Party’s candidate is Yani Rosenthal, convicted drug money launderer.

Yani Rosenthal is the son of the late business magnate and Liberal politician Jaime Rosenthal (born in 1936 in San Pedro Sula), the son of a Romanian Jewish immigrant who settled in Honduras in 1929. Jaime Rosenthal studied engineering at MIT and took over the family’s business upon his return to Honduras in 1958. The Rosenthal family owns the Grupo Continental, a large business conglomerate which includes over 50 companies including a bank (Banco Continental), a newspaper (El Tiempo), an insurance company, a broadcast TV network, a cable TV network, a cement company, a meatpacking plant, a coffee exporter, a sugar refinery, a crocodile meat and skin export company, a processing company, a banana plantation, a cacao plantation, ranches as well as real estate developments. The family also owned the C.D. Marathón, one of the top football teams in Honduras based in San Pedro Sula (its home stadium is named after Yani’s cousin Yankel).

Parallel to his business ventures, Jaime Rosenthal was also a prominent Liberal politician who unsuccessfully sought the Liberal presidential nomination and served as one of the vice presidents during José Azcona’s presidency (1986-1990) and one term in Congress (2002-2006). His power was stronger behind the scenes, with control over Supreme Court magistrates and an advisor to several Liberal administrations, including Mel Zelaya. The family’s companies also did a lot of business with the government

Yani Rosenthal followed in his father’s footsteps in business and politics. Despite his inexperience, Zelaya appointed him minister of the presidency (similar to chief of staff) in 2006. Rosenthal left Zelaya’s cabinet in 2008 to run in the 2009 elections, in which he was elected to Congress from Cortés department. Yani Rosenthal unsuccessfully ran for the Liberal nomination in the 2012 primaries but lost to Mauricio Villeda.

In October 2015, Yankel Rosenthal – Yani’s cousin who was the ‘black sheep’ of the family because he had become a conservative and served in JOH’s cabinet as investment minister – was arrested in Miami. Shortly thereafter, Yankel, Yani and Jaime Rosenthal were indicted on money laundering and drug trafficking charges. The US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Yani, Yankel and Jaime Rosenthal and seven businesses as specially designated narcotics traffickers under the Kingpin Act, effectively destroying the Grupo Continental.

The Rosenthal family was accused of helping launder assets for the Cachiros drug trafficking clan. The Cachiros at their height had become a major player in the regional economy of northeastern Honduras, injecting their multi-million-dollar wealth into the legal economy. They had a cattle business, one of the main purveyors of meat in the region, as well as vast African palm plantations in the Bajo Aguán valley.

This brought them in contact with the economic elites, most notably the banking sector. The majority of the Cachiros’ bank accounts and all their lines of credit were with the Rosenthal family’s Banco Continental. The Rosenthal family said that the Rivera Maradiaga brothers began selling cattle to their meatpacking plant in the late 1970s or early 1980s, before they became powerful drug traffickers.

Years later, around 2006, the Rosenthals began to loan them money for their cattle and dairy business, sponsored a football team in Tocoa (which the Rivera Maradiaga family allegedly supported financially) and invested in the Cachiros’ palm oil plantations and a zoo/eco-park. The Rosenthal family said that they were good clients, and their due diligence raised no red flags. They defended the very public investment in the Cachiros’ zoo and eco-park, saying that it was a good investment that paid itself off and benefited the country by attracting international tourists. The Rosenthals said that they didn’t know that the Rivera Maradiaga family was involved in illegal activities until the US Treasury declared them targets in 2013 – even though in 2012, Jaime Rosenthal had already written to the US ambassador seeking American (including DEA) assistance in doing due diligence for Banco Continental. As businessmen, the Rosenthals claimed that it wasn’t their responsibility determine who is a criminal.

The Rosenthals, however, were perhaps less than forthcoming. More recent evidence from the US trials revealed that, in 2009, Jaime transferred a parcel of land to one of the Rivera Maradiaga brothers, expecting to get a below-market rate for the cows that the brothers were selling to them. In 2010-2011, a Rivera Maradiaga brother or an associate told Yankel that he was a drug trafficker and invested $400,000 in Yankel’s football team, Marathón. In 2012-2013, two Cachiros members met Yani and Yankel, at which point Yani asked them to contribute to his presidential campaign. It is unclear whether they actually did contribute to Yani’s campaign.

More info about the Rosenthal/Cachiros: https://insightcrime.org/investigations/honduras-elites-and-organized-crime-the-cachiros/
https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/why-elites-do-business-with-criminals-in-honduras/

Three weeks after his cousin was arrested, Yani surrendered to American authorities and later pleaded guilty, as did Yankel. Yankel Rosenthal was sentenced to 2 years and 5 months imprisonment, while in December 2017 Yani was sentenced to 3 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $500,000 and pay a $2.5 million fine.

In November 2015, Honduran authorities indicted Jaime Rosenthal for tax fraud and placed him under house arrest – something which allowed the patriarch to avoid extradition to the US, as Honduran law prohibits extradition when their citizens have pending cases in the country. Jaime Rosenthal died in San Pedro Sula in 2019, without ever facing justice.

Yani Rosenthal served his sentence and was deported back to Honduras in August 2020. He has tried to downplay his criminal past by saying that he had been convicted of a crime in the US that isn’t a crime in Honduras, and that all he did wrong was having bought a few cows without thoroughly investigating their origins. He has also tried to get sympathy for losing everything and for him time in prison, claiming that he learned about hunger, the lack of medical care and being separated from his loved ones – dude, you’re not Nelson Mandela. He claims that he was persecuted by the National Party, who tried to humiliate him, take everything away from him and persecute his father to the grave

Yani Rosenthal’s problems with the US may not be over yet. Unlike his late father or his cousin, he is still on the OFAC sanctions list. He has no US visa and has a lifetime ban from ever re-entering the United States. In December 2020, sentencing documents in former Liberal deputy Fredy Nájera’s case claim that Nájera received $1 million from the Sinaloa Cartel for Yani’s 2012 campaign. In the unlikely event that he was to win, relations with the United States would be weird – similar, or worse, to how they were between Colombia and the US during the Samper presidency.

Shortly after his return to Honduras, he launched his presidential campaign. The Biden administration was apparently dismayed at how quickly Rosenthal jumped back into Honduran politics after his release from American prison.

In March 2021, Yani Rosenthal won the Liberal primaries with 50% against 33.9% for Luis Zelaya, the Liberal Party’s president and 2017 presidential candidate. Luis Zelaya, a little-known political novice from the academic world back in 2017, supported Nasralla’s allegations of fraud following the election and consolidated himself as an opposition leader to JOH. He favoured the formation of a broad opposition front against the ruling party. In doing so, Luis Zelaya won the enmity of powerful Liberal caudillos like former President Carlos Flores Facussé and went against the majority of the Liberal caucus in Congress which collaborated with the Nationalists on most issues.

Luis Zelaya has since refused to concede defeat in the primaries or endorse Yani Rosenthal, who he considers to be a criminal. He claims that the primaries were rigged by JOH and other powerful power groups in the National, Liberal and Libre parties who had interests in denying him the presidential nomination. Luis Zelaya’s claims have been supported by Nasralla, who alleges that Yani Rosenthal has a secret deal with JOH to protect one another – although Rosenthal, during the campaign, has said that he would extradite JOH to the US if requested (although months earlier he did say that he had doubts about whether JOH was a drug trafficker).

Yani Rosenthal is essentially the moderate opposition candidate – opposed to the dictatorship and re-election, but not promising any radical institutional or economic changes (indeed, he explicitly supports the market economy and private property). His platform revolves around strengthening the rule of law, administrative simplification, boosting the export economy and a fair and competitive tax system. His main promise is to create a monthly universal basic income of 1,500 lempiras (about $62) for all Honduran adults, the money for which would come from austerity, eliminating corruption and a fairer tax system.

[Hash]

An exit poll gives Castro a 48-37 victory, but exit polls in Honduras are either fake, manipulated or untrustworthy. The CNE is supposed to have the first preliminary results by 8pm local time, but of course the CNE's website is now down (not necessarily foul play, most likely their incompetence).

Of course, as is to be expected, both Asfura and Castro have declared victory.

[Hash]

With only 16% precincts counted so far, CNE reports:

Castro 53.4%
Asfura 34%
Rosenthal 9.2%

The Nationalists are getting aggressive and are still claiming that they will win with the outstanding votes.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Are early results expected to be more favorable to one candidate in particular? Do they have any real predictive value?

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Are early results expected to be more favorable to one candidate in particular? Do they have any real predictive value?

Aaaand they seem pretty reflective thus far. Per El Heraldo (CNE website is down for me), with 26% of the vote Castro has 53.7%, Asfura has 34%, Rosenthal has 9.1%.

[PSOL]

The ‘09 regime have likely been voted out of power, and hopefully this time it is permanent.

[Hash]

La Prensa seems to be carrying the CNE's results (embedded). With 32.5% reporting, Castro leads with 53.5% against 34.1% for Asfura. Ever so slightly shrinking her lead, but let's wait and see.

Are early results expected to be more favorable to one candidate in particular? Do they have any real predictive value?

It's unclear. In 2017, the Nationalists' official explanation for them overturning Nasralla's lead was that late-counting rural votes favoured them, but this argument was proven false by actual analysis (i.e. the vote was rigged). Right now, some of the Nationalists' more rural strongholds in inland southern Honduras like Lempira are a bit behind on the count, but really there is nothing that tells me (uneducated about such intricacies) that these results would be particularly unrepresentative or biased for any one candidate. Castro is leading Francisco Morazán (incl Tegucigalpa) 51.7-37.7, so if Nationalists had hope that Tito would win a landslide there, that's not coming true for now. In Cortés (San Pedro Sula), which is a bit faster, she leads 63.8-21.3.

[Hash]

Results at 51.5% reporting:

Castro 53.6%
Asfura 33.9%
Rosenthal 9.2%

Updates seem to have stopped for the time being.

[Logical]

Se cayó el sistema?

[CumbrianLefty]

I thought the Peru election was a bad choice, but poor nicuragans. Everyone they can elect is a crook of some kind.

Nicaraguans are indeed in a pretty bad way, but......

[JM1295]

Turnout looks pretty great for this election. Last I checked it was at 68% and the highest turnout since 1997.

[Hash]

Presidential updates have been frozen since 6:55am local time today, but preliminary mayoral and congressional results were recently added today.

It's unclear as to why the presidential vote count has stopped, but unlike in 2017, you shouldn't necessarily assume any foul play: among the official explanations provided by the CNE is that more remote/rural voting locations were not able to upload their results given lack of internet, and their votes have been sent to the capital to be counted (iirc, this is one of the stages when the rigging began in 2017).

But Xiomara Castro has widely been proclaimed as the virtual president-elect. Yani Rosenthal conceded defeat and recognized her victory, and she was also congratulated by COHEP, the private sector employers' organization. Most importantly, at least one Nationalist politician (Jesús Mejía, former director of ENEE) has de facto recognized her victory and the party seems to have begrudgingly accepted its fate, and should pfficially concede defeat soon.

At the mayoral level, Libre-PSH's candidate Jorge Aldana has been elected mayor of Distrito Central (i.e. Tegucigalpa and Comayagüela), with 48.3% of the votes against 32.6% for David Chávez (National Party) with 62% reporting, and Chávez has already conceded defeat. In San Pedro Sula, with 60% reporting, opposition candidate Rolando Contreras (who is actually the stand-in candidate for his brother, restaurant chain owner and eccentric businessman Roberto Contreras, who is expected to be mayor) has defeated incumbent Nationalist mayor Armando Calidonio, a nasty and almost certainly narco-tied guy who was seeking a third term, in a landslide, 62.3% to 22.6%.

I'll take a look at congressional results later but from a very quick glance the searing defeat of the Nationalist mafia extends to the congressional level as well so far. I'd expect that there will be some big names who will have lost.