Election fraud in Honduras

Juan Orlando Hernández, President-elect of Honduras

Elections are over. Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH, as he is known in Honduras) is officially the next president of Honduras, winning about 34% of the vote. He will take office January 27, 2014. The election process was declared free and transparent by international observer organizations. No vote recounts will be done by the TSE (Honduras' election authority) despite numerous and some very valid claims of errors and even fraud. TSE says that their only obligation is to certify the actas (explained later) not the ballots. The international auditor says the same. Despite election observer organization positive reports to the contrary, organizations such as OAS provided long lists of changes that are necessary and even the TSE has campaigned for changes to the election law.

Candidates showed proof on television and online of serious errors if not downright fraud both within the polling places as well as within the TSE. Often the claims of errors could be confirmed by viewing the scanned documents on the TSE website. I saw and verified enough to convince me that some of the diputado (congressman) races deserved a fresh count of the ballots.

The election process

Registered voter lists

The basic election process is to confirm voter identity (ID card) and ensure that the voter is registered at that voting table by comparing against voter rolls complete with color photos of the citizens. The ballots are certified by the poll workers.

Voters move to a private table to mark 'x's' on ballots which include names, party designations, and color photos of the candidates (separate presidential, congress, municipal ballots) and deposit them in the appropriate ballot box. The voter's pinky is inked so that he cannot vote again.

The biggest fallacy in the system is that the legitimacy of the election results relies on the independence and honesty of the poll workers. Each voting table is supposed to have a poll representative and a substitute from each party (eight parties this year) to ensure honesty in the count, though that doesn't happen in most cases in much of the country. Rather than 16 or even 8 poll workers, many of the actas that I viewed online were signed by four or even fewer poll workers. Polling places may start out the day with representatives from each party, but often some leave before the actual count is done. Additionally, political parties and individuals are known to traffic in polling credentials (which are issued in blank to the parties, not the individuals), selling their badges to the highest bidder. Channel 10 news interviewed one poll worker who proudly stated that he was a Nacionalista though he couldn't explain why he was wearing a badge from another party. At the location where J voted, the LIBRE party workers loudly stated that they would only verify known LIBRE party voters. In a small town, every knows who has what party loyalty.

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USA issues new travel warning for Honduras

On Christmas Eve, the US State Department issued a new travel warning for US citizens traveling to Honduras. Though the warning states that "tens of thousands of U.S. citizens visit Honduras each year for study, tourism, business, and volunteer work without incident", it goes on to state this:

"The vast majority of serious crimes in Honduras, including those against U.S. citizens, are never solved; of the 50 murders committed against U.S. citizens since 2008, police have only solved two. Members of the Honduran National Police are known to engage in criminal activity, including murder and car theft. The Government of Honduras lacks sufficient resources to properly investigate and prosecute cases, and police often lack vehicles or fuel to respond to calls for assistance. In practice, this means police may take hours to arrive at the scene of a violent crime, or may not respond at all. As a result, criminals operate with a high degree of impunity throughout Honduras. The Honduran government is in the early stages of substantial reforms to its criminal justice institutions."

Apparently the Embassy does not agree with President Lobo's assessment that homicide has decreased tremendously in Honduras this year. If there really had been a reduction, the Secretary of Security would provide the data to the Observatorio Nacional de la Violencia (ONV), an independent academic research institution based out of Honduras’ national university and supported by the UN. ONV has been charged with providing Honduras' official crime statistics for many years and has always worked with the police and media to generate the statistics – until Arturo Corrales became Secretary of Security. Recently, the director of the ONV denounced that based on Secretary Corrales' orders, police have refused to provide any crime information since June 2013. The State Department chose to include ONV's estimate of an increase in 2013 homicides in their warning rather than President Lobo's verbal assurance of a big reduction.

Alianza para la Paz y la Justicia (Alliance for Peace and Justice, APJ) issued a public pronouncement (in Spanish) earlier this month condemning not only the failure of the government to purify the police department but also a condemnation of the Secretary in particular for his inability to reduce murder and violence as well as his lack of transparency and his refusal to provide data to ONV.

APJ demands reforms in the entire justice system, which they say have been obstructed to date. They say that the new president has an obligation to name a new Secretary of Security who is valiant, honest, and professionally capable of fomenting a policy of transparency, accountability, and an open-door policy for the media, civil society, academia, and citizens in general. APJ (Facebook page) is a coalition of civil society, NGOs, and religious organizations whose leading members are among the bravest people in Honduras. They literally risk their lives every day by speaking out against crime and corruption in the government and justice system. One of their member organizations (AJS) is the national representative for Transparency International and another, Transformemos Honduras, has worked with the Secretary of Education to develop numerous improvements in the education system as well reductions in corruption. APJ has my total respect.

The previous June 17th US State Department travel warning as well as a comparison with the November 2012 warning can be found here.

Merry Christmas and Feliz Navidad from La Ceiba

"House of a million lights"
Images: La Prensa

I'd like to wish all of the Blogicito readers a Merry Christmas and Feliz Navidad! I hope your holidays are filled with love and happiness.

The house shown above was called the "House of a million lights" by La Prensa. The owners have put on a different display every Christmas for several years but I think they've outdone themselves this year. If you are in La Ceiba, you can see the house in Las Colinas. Las Colinas is a very pretty, and as the name would indicate, very hilly colonia (neighborhood) just outside of town. I can't give you directions to the house, but I'm sure you'll have no trouble following the glow of lights to find it; there aren't that many streets in Las Colinas. You can also see it from above by following the highest street that runs along the back of the colonia, as shown in the photo below.

La Colinas, La Ceiba, Honduras

Here are some old photos taken from that same upper street in Las Colinas during the daytime:

Las Colinas in the daytime

This is a great place to get a panoramic view of La Ceiba.

The spectacular view from the other side of that road