In Post-Election Honduras, Challenges and Opportunities for the Resistance
In Post-Election Honduras, Challenges and Opportunities for the Resistance
Wednesday, 25 December 2013 11:52
By Emily Achtenberg, North American Congress on Latin America | News Analysis
On December 12, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) announced the final results of Honduras’s contested election, awarding the presidency to ruling National Party candidate Juan Orlando Hernández with 37% of the vote. Despite evidence of significant irregularities, the TSE refused to conduct a partial ballot recount as demanded by LIBRE (the Freedom and Refoundation Party) and PAC (the Anti-Corruption Party), whose candidates finished second and fourth, respectively, with a combined total of 42% of the vote.
While LIBRE has petitioned the Supreme Judicial Court to nullify the election, few expect this to happen, given the current regime’s recent stacking of the Court with conservative members—an initiative led by Hernández himself, as president of the national Congress. Meanwhile, Hernández, whose party has consolidated broad control over government institutions since the 2009 coup, is gearing up to lead what has been described as the most authoritarian Honduran administration in memory.
Still, Hernández faces formidable obstacles. He will assume control of a nation struggling with major security and economic crises, under the cloud of a tainted election. He will confront a changing political and social landscape, including a fragmented Congress, a potentially powerful opposition party in the form of LIBRE, and a resilient grassroots resistance movement.
In this context, continued conflict and repression is virtually guaranteed. But with a coordinated oppositional strategy both in the “halls of power” and in the streets, the anti-coup resistance may have an opportunity to curtail the most egregious abuses of economic and political power, and even to advance its own agenda.
More:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/20842-in-post-election-honduras-challenges-and-opportunities-for-the-resistance