Honduras (IV)

Neste momento (17:06 de 27/11/2017) ainda não se sabe quem ganhou as eleições - a oposição ia à frente quando o Tribunal Eleitoral deixou de anunciar resultados parciais, já há várias horas (os últimos resultados parecem ter sido dados por volta das 10 da noite, hora de Tegucigalpa - ou seja, às 4 da manhã do dia de hoje, hora de Portugal).

Mas, enquanto não se sabe mais nada, deixo-vos mais um artigo sobre o assunto - Distaste for Honduran Leaders Who Linger Fuels Distrust in Election, por Elisabeth Malkin (New York Times, 25/11/2017):

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — There are two versions of President Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras, who is seeking a second term in a country where the idea of re-election is so toxic that another president was ousted in a coup just for talking about it.

The first image is one of a law-and-order leader who pulled his country back from the brink of becoming a failed state. The other picture is one of an autocrat who has imposed his will on every branch of government.

That stark difference in perceptions has turned Sunday’s election into a referendum on how much control over the country’s fragile institutions Honduran voters are willing to cede to Mr. Hernández, a conservative. (...)

Although many Latin American countries now allow re-election, a deep distrust of leaders who maneuver to stay in power persists, a legacy of the region’s history of dictatorship. That suspicion is at the heart of this election campaign, in which the opposition argues that Mr. Hernández’s place on the ballot is illegitimate.

What put him there was a ruling by the Supreme Court, which lifted the Constitution’s ironclad ban on presidential re-elections in a circuitous ruling two years ago. The five judges who made the decision all owed their positions to Mr. Hernández, and their predecessors had been hurriedly dismissed or moved.

The ruling went unopposed by the country’s political and business leaders — who had a very different attitude in 2009, when they removed the leftist President Manuel Zelaya on the grounds that he was maneuvering to find a way around the re-election ban. (...)

Confidence in the electoral system has eroded among many Hondurans. The allies of Mr. Hernández control the election tribunal, at least 30 percent of the people on the voter rolls have died or have emigrated, and changes to the election law allow his National Party to control the vote count at polling places.