Opinion: "Frank: Hernández's election was built on corruption" (Honduras)

[Judi Lynn]

Last edited Mon Jan 27, 2014, 01:53 AM - Edit history (1)

Frank: Hernández's election was built on corruption

U.S. support for nation's new leaderis misguided and unethical

By Dana Frank | January 25, 2014 | Updated: January 25, 2014 3:03pm

OnMonday, a new president will take the helm in Honduras: Juan Orlando Hernández. He's handsome. He's charming. He's young. He looks as though he was born wearing a clean white shirt. And he's a dangerous thug. Hernández was one of the key architects of the 2009 military coup, and has a stellar track record ever since overthrowing the rule of law. Yet, the Obama administration is welcoming him with open arms, pretending Hernández has somehow changed his stripes and will now effectively address the country's dire human rights nightmare.

As is well-documented, the coup ushered in a reign of horror in Honduras, where U.S. police and military aid in 2012 rang up at least $27.6 million. The police are largely corrupt and kill people, the judicial system barely functions and drug traffickers and organized crime have allegedly wormed their way to the very top levels of the government. Impunity reigns. And Honduras has the highest per capita murder rate in the world. Outgoing President Porfirio Lobo, who came to power in 2009 through an illegitimate election managed by the coup perpetrators, has utterly failed to clean up the police or address the corruption.

Now Hernández, from the same ruling National Party, is in charge. Hernández enthusiastically supported the coup as chair of a key committee in the Honduran congress. For more than a year now, he's already been the big strongman running the show in Honduran politics. In December 2012, as president of Congress, he led the "technical coup" in which four members of the Supreme Court were illegally deposed and their replacements, loyal to Hernández, named the next day. In machinating the overthrow, Hernández was not only paving the way for the re-passage of numerous laws the court had declared unconstitutional, he also was declaring supremacy over his own powerful rivals on the right, in light of a dubious primary victory.

Hernández then built his presidential campaign around a rapid militarization of the police, promising "a soldier on every corner." In August, he was the most prominent proponent of a new military police, 5,000-strong. They have already committed egregious human rights violations, as have regular Honduran military forces, which have increasingly been deployed to conduct regular policing in the past three years. On July 15, for example, the Engineers' Battalion shot and killed Tomás García, an indigenous activist while he was protesting a hydroelectric dam.

More:
http://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/article/Frank-Hern-ndez-s-election-was-built-on-5174987.php

[MisterP]

1. IIRC he's basically the Army's secretary (like Zuniga in the 70s)

[Peace Patriot]

2. "an illegitimate election managed by the coup perpetrators" ?

Outgoing President Porfirio Lobo, who came to power in 2009 through an illegitimate election managed by the coup perpetrators, has utterly failed to clean up the police or address the corruption. --from the OP

Lobo's illegitimate election was managed by the U.S. State Department, using entities like the International Republican Institute, when no legitimate election monitoring group on earth would touch that election. The U.S. State Department may have had its local fascist thugs as s/election front people, but the election misrule and its outcome were determined in Washington DC.

And this explains the current rule by thugs--mafia don Juan Orlando Hernández and his gang. Hernández is another Alvaro Uribe, the mafia don/thug that the Bush Junta installed in Colombia. The police state brutality and utter lawlessness of the U.S.-funded police, the U.S.-funded military and the U.S.-preferred drug gangs--and their interconnectedness--and the devastation of civic life, are a deliberate, conscious, approved of, designed U.S. policy to condition the country for U.S. "free trade for the rich."

That is what happened in Colombia. That is what is happening in Honduras. And it is DISGUSTING.