Honduras sets a dangerous precedent for Latin America
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Weeks after I moved to Peru in 2000, a massive corruption scandal erupted starring President Alberto Fujimori and his secretive spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos. Video after video emerged of the normally behind-the-scenes operator, Mr Montesinos, meeting business and other public figures and stacking up wads of notes — their bribes.
Mr Fujimori had just won a third term in office, after dubious polls and fatal protests. Peruvians could not believe their eyes. But perhaps nothing conveyed popular disgust with the government more than a genius civil society stunt, elegantly simple, yet highly effective. Activists began distributing black garbage bags emblazoned with images of the two men in striped prison suits and the slogan: “Put trash in the trash.”
I was reminded of that this month when, in the wake of dubious polls and fatal protests, demonstrators opposed to Honduras’ President Juan Orlando Hernández took full bin bags to a US military base, ripped them open and strewed the contents at the feet of security forces on duty there.
The message was plain: the base is a potent symbol of US power in the Central American country and the stunt was intended to rubbish Washington’s endorsement of Mr Hernández as the winner of November 26 elections. The polls were plagued by so many irregularities and fraud allegations that the Organisation of American States recommended scrapping the vote and starting again.
Salvador Nasralla, the television superstar sportscaster who claimed he was robbed of victory when his early lead evaporated after a string of computer glitches and delays, bowed out of the election race just before Christmas, effectively conceding that he had been outmanoeuvred. The government maintains that Mr Hernández’s victory was legitimate after partial recounts failed to overturn the official results.
Nevertheless, demonstrations and increasingly violent protests look set to escalate in the run-up to Mr Hernández’s inauguration on January 27. It promises to be a tense week.
In one shocking image shared on social media at the weekend, an elderly man is seen staggering across a road, collapsing and apparently dying as a crimson blood stain spreads over his blue shirt. He was the latest in a string of fatalities and injuries on both sides since the vote, in protests in which security forces have used tear gas and live bullets.
The Opposition Alliance Against Dictatorship has called a national strike, which began at the weekend. It is urging protesters to blockade roads and surround the National Stadium in the capital, Tegucigalpa, where Mr Hernández is set to be inaugurated on Saturday for an unprecedented second term in a country long opposed to presidential re-election.
Meanwhile, protesters were further incensed by the swearing-in of the speaker of the government-controlled Congress at 7am on Sunday.
With all this happening at the start of a busy roster of elections in Latin America this year, Honduras sets a worrying precedent.
As Stefano Palestini Céspedes, a post-doctoral fellow at Berlin’s Freie Universität, wrote last week: “After the failed attempts to come up with a collective response in Venezuela, the electoral crisis in Honduras represents a new test for the credibility of American states’ commitment to multilateral democracy protection.”
Some analysts believe that Mr Hernández will be able to steamroller opposition because he controls Congress, and while protests will linger, they are unlikely to oust him.
Whether the demonstrations will fizzle out or be crushed after Mr Hernández’s inauguration remains to be seen. But protesters seeking to wash the country’s dirty electoral laundry in public could take another leaf out of Peru’s book.
Long after the anti-Fujimori street protests died down, activists staged a potent, peaceful weekly ritual: washing the flag in the main square in front of the presidential palace every Friday to symbolise the need to clean up Peru’s tainted politics. The stunt lasted more than six months. Only after the installation of an interim president did the activists iron the flag instead, fold it up and go home.
As chaos continues on its streets, however, Honduras still looks far from putting its house in order.
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