The Latin American Report # 661

The vote-counting process in the general elections in Honduras has left that bitter aftertaste I predicted here, consistent with the country's tragic history of bad institutional health, particularly on the electoral front. From what I have been able to learn these days from electoral legislation and other reliable sources, it is a very messy system where ideology and political affiliation end up determining—by design—the actions of key institutional actors like the Juntas Receptoras de Voto (Voting Boards) and the National Electoral Council itself.

In the very early hours of this Wednesday, Salvador Nasralla consolidated his lead in the slow count—around 80% of tally sheets transmitted by my estimates—, after overcoming the initial difference that favored the candidate blessed by the White House, Nasry Asfura. The Liberal Party candidate currently leads by about 19,135 votes over the one from the conservative National Party, whose supporters celebrated yesterday the release from an American prison of former President Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted for massive drug trafficking crimes and controversially pardoned by Donald Trump as part of his brazen intervention in the Honduran electoral landscape.

Since Monday, it has not been possible for the public to access the website set up for disseminating the preliminary results, which is the responsibility of a company contracted by the National Electoral Council for this purpose. These kinds of setups seem nonsensical to me. The responsibility for the entire electoral system should rest exclusively, all along the line, with the electoral authority. The latter recognized early Tuesday that the contracted service "faced technical problems" since Monday, and that the company had also reported that batches of tally sheets transmitted on Sunday had not yet been processed.

As an alternative, they enabled an exclusive link so that at least the media and political parties could follow the live count and act as bridges to transmit the information to the population. The ruling party's candidate, Rixi Moncada, who performed poorly according to the official results—where she appears with a little over 19% of the vote—denounced on Monday night the existence of an electoral plot coordinated by the "bipartisan system," pointing to the collusion of the Liberal and National parties.

From the LIBRE party, certain potentially problematic dynamics have been blasted, such as the operation of several polling stations on Sunday that did not have the biometric device mandated by law to verify voter identity—international observers also noted its absence and malfunctioning—, the referred withholding of tally sheets in the preliminary results transmission system and other serious inconsistencies within it. For example, Moncada denounced the existence of a pattern in which about 92% of the tally sheets from those voting boards where the biometric device was not used reflect victory for the National Party or the Liberal Party, which, for her, indicates that the data is tainted or "inflated".

I consider there are somewhat plausible arguments, but I don't know if they will be sufficient insofar as they do not necessarily indicate the commission of fraud—as is implied—but rather its possibility, and there is also the problem of the representativeness of the issue. Moncada indicated she would challenge the result by appealing through the mechanisms provided in the regulatory framework, so this story is closer to its beginning than its end. Protests by supporters of LIBRE are already being reported in several points of Tegucigalpa, the capital. Last Sunday, three vice presidents, 128 national deputies, 20 representatives to the Central American Parliament, and 298 municipal corporations were being elected too.

_{Salvador Nasralla, by my estimates, could be declared the President-elect of Honduras this Wednesday (source of the image).}

Despite Honduras being the country with the worst homicide rate in Central America, massacres like this one do not make headlines in the international press. But, consistent with that unhappy ranking position, they are more frequent than we can imagine, as I have been able to attest while surfing a bit more through the Honduran press amid the electoral context.

Regional news brief

• In another display of the scandalous levels of (political) violence in the region, a Peruvian presidential candidate was assaulted with gunshots last Tuesday during his stay in a coastal area of the country. Rafael Belaúnde Llosa, grandson of the two-time president Fernando Beláunde—politics is a cycle—said that Peruvians live in a convulsive era, with much citizen insecurity. According to the General Commander of the Peruvian National Police, the attack took place when Belaúnde was leaving some lands of his property that he was supervising.
  

• Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison for attempting a coup, will only be entitled to the semi-open prison regime at the end of April 2033, meaning about seven and a half years from the current date. In Brazil, the mentioned semi-open prison regime indicates that the controversial conservative leader could leave prison during the day to work or study, but must return to sleep in the special cell housing him at the Federal Police headquarters in the capital. Meanwhile, the possibility of applying for parole would only become available in March 2037, when he would be approaching 82 years old. One way or another, I don't think Bolsonaro will reach that date in prison.
  

• After pressing Planalto Palace hard over the Bolsonaro case, applying 50% tariffs to a wide range of critical Brazilian products, Trump had to back down at the end of last month. Thus, yesterday, he said he had held a "good" conversation with his counterpart Lula da Silva about "trade" and "sanctions," according to an EFE report.
  

• Pope Leo XIV stated this Tuesday that "it is always better to seek ways of dialogue or pressure, perhaps economic pressures" in reference to the tension between Washington and Caracas. Seriously? He is an American Pope for sure.
  

• Agents from the Texas Department of Public Safety intercepted a truck very close to the border with Mexico in which 23 migrants from Central American countries, including Mexico, were hidden. It's the first time in a long while that I've seen a migrant smuggling news story, as Trump's harsh anti-immigration policy has significantly reduced illegal migration.
  

This is all for today’s report.