August 30, 2021 — Welcome back to El Faro English.

Honduras, in Brief: In November, Hondurans will vote for the successor of President Juan Orlando Hernández, investigated by the U.S. for drug trafficking, yet the candidates offer little chance of rescuing Honduras from its endemic political crisis. 

Goodbye, Juan Orlando?

Today, August 30, the period of campaign propaganda in Honduras officially kicks off, 90 days before presidential and congressional elections on Sunday, November 28. 

The elections will mark the end of eight years of rule under Juan Orlando Hernández, who has been named as a co-conspirator in a drug trafficking case in New York against his brother Tony Hernández, sentenced to life in prison for drug trafficking in March. It may also close a twelve-year period of rule under the National Party since the 2009 coup.

Even with a new president in office, rooting out the influence of drug traffickers within politics and steering Honduras towards a stronger rule of law is a daunting task. “Juan Orlando is only the visible face of a [criminal] structure within the State,” Honduran lawyer Joaquín Mejía told El Faro English. “When he leaves, this structure remains intact.”

For decades now, Honduras has been a major transit hub for cocaine and there are testimonies of the last three presidents’ involvement in the drug trade. Just days ago, on August 27, the mayor of Roatán, the popular island vacation destination and one of the country’s economic motors, was arrested on drug trafficking charges in the latest case that shows the depths of drug traffickers’ hooks in the Honduran state.

To round out the scene, one of the four main candidates competing to replace Hernández just served three years for drug trafficking in a U.S. prison.  

No Clear Frontrunner

Three major parties dominate Honduran politics: the conservative National Party, the centrist Liberal Party, and the left-wing Libre Party. With more than 50 percent of voters undecided, none of these parties’ candidates is polling higher than 15 percent, according to a May poll by the Center for Studies of Democracy (CESPAD).

Nasry “Tito” Asfura, mayor of capital Tegucigalpa, leads at 14.9 percent according to the CESPAD poll. Asfura, nicknamed “Papi a la Orden” or “At your service Papi,” is a member of Hernández’s National Party and is believed to be the hand-picked successor for him. Owner of a construction company, the media-shy Asfura is of Palestinian descent. 

In second place is the Libre party candidate, Xiomara Castro, wife of former president Manuel Zelaya who was deposed in the 2009 coup and after returning to the country created his own tailor-made party. Once close to Chávez’s Venezuela, Zelaya has been accused of receiving bribes from drug traffickers in the same case in New York that names Hernández. 

Xiomara Castro ran in 2013 and came in second place with about 28 percent of the vote compared to Hernandez’s 36 percent. According to the CESPAD poll, she is now polling at 11.7 percent.

The businessman Yani Rosenthal has managed to become the Liberal Party candidate despite being sentenced in 2017 to three years in prison in the United States for laundering money for drug traffickers. While his criminal record — he got out of prison just one year ago — might negate his candidacy in another country, that’s not the case in Honduras.

In a recent interview with local media, Rosenthal openly spoke about his conviction and accused the National Party of using the case to humiliate his family, one of the wealthiest in Honduras, and to illegally confiscate their assets. From 2006 to 2008, Rosenthal was a minister under President Zelaya, at the time a member of the Liberal Party. 

A lawsuit filed by the family in a New York court in 2019 against the Honduran state for $1 million to reclaim their property is ongoing. Rosenthal is polling at 6.6 percent.  

The fourth major candidate is former sports journalist and gameshow host Salvador Nasralla, who is running for president for the third time in a row, this time on the ticket of the party Salvador de Honduras, which he founded in 2020 named after himself and translates to Savior of Honduras. He came in second place in 2017 in a highly contested election with 41.4 percent of the vote compared to Hernández with 42.95 percent. Both the Organization of American States (OAS) and European Union reported irregularities in the elections, and Nasralla declared himself the rightful winner.

Hernández’s win was already contested because the Honduran constitution bars reelection, but he assumed a second term anyway. The May CESPAD poll reported that 7.9 percent of voters favor Nasralla. 

A Bleak Outlook

Allegations of fraud and post-electoral violence have been common in Honduras even before the 2009 coup. Especially since then, the country has experienced a “permanent crisis that has never been resolved,” said Mejía.

In a possible foretelling of what is to come, on August 21, the National Electoral Council had to postpone an event to determine the order of the candidates on the ballot because of disagreements between party supporters that turned violent, reports our partner outlet ContraCorriente. 

“It has been a turbulent process,” economist Julio Raudales of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) told El Faro English. “There are many elements that foresee that there could be an even bigger, more polarizing conflict in the country because there are no clear and transparent rules in the process.”

The Honduran political system does not have a runoff election, meaning that a candidate can win the presidency without a majority, resulting in a weak mandate when he or she arrives in office. 

In the case of a close election, Mejía and Raudales think that the current political system favors the ruling National Party, which has perfected its internal apparatus and use of state resources for campaigning. The party will also likely maintain its majority in Congress, ensuring that any candidate that arrives in the presidential office will still need to negotiate with the party to carry out his or her agenda. 

Mejía also considers that the United States may act as a referee in a contested election, and will likely favor the National Party. “The U.S. agenda on Honduras doesn’t typically prioritize democratic consolidation and an anti-corruption stance,” wrote El Faro’s Carlos Dada in The Washington Post in June. “But if Washington is bent on a principled foreign policy, it will have to look under the stones to find legitimate players in a country plagued by organized crime.” 

Doubts not only fall on the future of the country, but also the possibility that Hernández is brought to trial once he leaves his position in January 2022. “The mistake is to think that the exit of Juan Orlando Hernández signifies a structural change,” said Mejía. “In these 12 years, they (the National Party) have built a structure and a network in all of the state apparatus to ensure an exit from power in impunity.” 

By Carlos Martínez

The United States wants to deter undocumented migration, so its president has a simple message — “Don’t come here.” Honduras is a poor, deeply inequitable, and violent country. Its soul has been possessed by criminal organizations. On top of it all, last year the country was ravaged by two hurricanes in less than a month. How can you stay home when you don’t have one?

[Read more]

By Carlos Dada

If we take the story of the duck at face value — if it walks like a duck, if it flies like a duck, if it has a duck’s beak — then Honduras is a narco-state.

[Read more]