Analysis | Over 2 million Hondurans cast their vote amid foreign interference

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As general elections take place this Sunday in Honduras, we talk to political scientist Rodolfo Pastor, for her outlook into the situation surrounding the vote in the country and the regional instability being promoted by the U.S. teleSUR

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00:00Now, let's continue with the analysis of the Sunday's Electoral Day in Honduras.

00:04And for that, we are joined now by political scientist Rodolfo Pastor.

00:09Hello, Rodolfo. Welcome to From the South.

00:12Hello. Thank you so much for having me.

00:15First thing, voting day in Honduras, he's reaching its deadline in a context of harassment,

00:22in a context of interference attempts.

00:24In this scenario, how would you describe the role played by the people in defending the democratic institutions today?

00:33Well, fortunately, what we have seen this day is a very high turnout.

00:38Citizens of Honduras have gone out to vote, regardless of the threats and regardless of the confrontation

00:46and the polarization that we've been experiencing for the last couple of months.

00:53There has been a lot of confrontation within the institutions in charge of the electoral process.

01:00And that has resulted, of course, in a lack of credibility in these institutions.

01:08And, of course, we're also confronted as a government and a party that is proposing a very deep reform

01:17of the structural reality in our country, a very formidable obstacle by the opposition parties

01:26that represent the political and economic elites.

01:32And there has been an open attempt to impose the Monroe Doctrine in Honduras

01:37with the complexity of the extreme right wing of the country throughout this electoral process.

01:41From a Latin American perspective, what regional patterns do you identify in the way far-right movements

01:48challenge electoral results or democratic institutions?

01:53Well, they do so without any respect for sovereignty, without any respect for the right to self-determine

02:00our destiny as independent, autonomous peoples and countries.

02:05They do so beyond borders.

02:08And what we have experienced here in Honduras throughout this electoral process is almost surreal.

02:14A couple of days ago, there was a post by President Trump basically stating the candidate that he would support

02:21and that we should support and referring to the other two candidates in a very, very despicable way,

02:27a very hostile, aggressive statement, completely public interference, intervening in our own sovereign process.

02:38And not only that, but a day ago, just one day before the elections, he actually went so far as to promise

02:46that if the candidate that he preferred won the elections, that he would go ahead and he would grant a pardon

02:54to former President Juan Orlando Hernández, who is currently serving a 47-year sentence in the U.S. courts

03:03as he has been sentenced because of his links with organized crime and narco-trafficking.

03:09So he's clearly taking sides.

03:12He's doing so in a very bracing way.

03:15And he's doing so lacking completely any respect for the sovereignty and the independence of our own people.

03:22And this fact that you just mentioned, that is the stance that the U.S. President Donald Trump has taken

03:30in the context of this electoral process, granting a pardon to former convicted ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández,

03:41I want to ask you, how would you connect this stance with the current military deployment

03:49the U.S. has in Caribbean waters that is also putting at risk sovereignty in the region?

03:57How can we connect this scenario?

04:00Well, it's very much connected and it's very contradictory.

04:03And it exposes the hypocritical approach that the U.S. and specifically President Trump is taking

04:11against, you know, very different contexts within the region.

04:15On one side, he is justifying whatever he is doing to be very aggressive against Venezuela

04:24and anyone who is in solidarity with Venezuela, claiming that he has mobilized this massive movement

04:31of troops and war equipment to the Caribbean Sea in order to somehow stop drug traffic from happening.

04:41And yet he is willing to grant a pardon for a man who is convicted, not by Honduran courts,

04:48not by Venezuelan courts, but by American courts, has been convicted for drug dealing

04:53and for moving tons and tons of drugs up to the U.S.

04:57This is, you know, I think, self-evident hypocrisy and it exposes the kind of contradiction that Trump

05:09so commonly falls into.

05:13In this scenario, Honduras have been facing this attempt of interference from abroad,

05:22from the U.S. empire, and I wanted to mention that this is no news for the people of Honduras.

05:28And in this context, what role have Honduran social movements historically have played

05:34in defending democratic institutions?

05:37Well, we are the emblematic banana republic.

05:42Honduras was colonized in the modern times by huge U.S. corporations

05:48that planted and grew bananas for export, that ran the country for, you know, a very, very long time,

05:56that shaped the country's politics and democracy in many ways,

06:00and that still has a lot of traces in it within the institutional arrangements

06:06of our democracy and our political system.

06:09Against this imposition, the Honduran people have organized throughout its history,

06:16and they have suffered repression from military governments that have been boosted

06:21and sustained by the U.S. in many cases.

06:27In the most recent one of those, it was the coup back in 2009

06:31that was supported by the United States in many ways,

06:36and that was able to sustain a de facto regime for six months

06:40that eventually led to the consolidation of this corrupt and repressive regime

06:46led by Juan Orlando Hernández, who was later, like we were saying,

06:51convicted for his links to drug traffic and weapon trafficking.

06:55So, you know, we are used in Honduras, we are used to the influence,

07:02to the interference of the United States of America,

07:08and we are used to resisting that interference

07:10and to try to defend our democratic rights

07:14and our right to self-determine our destiny.

07:18And yet, it is no less shocking that President Trump would come out

07:24and, through his social media, state in such a brazen way

07:27that we should vote for the candidate that he prefers,

07:30because if not, there would be consequences.

07:34I think that the results, the outcome of the elections,

07:38will be eloquent about how much that impacted our own political process.

07:44Thank you very much, Rodolfo, for your time here from the South,

07:48for helping us getting deep into the relevance of today's elections in Honduras,

07:54for the people of Honduras and for the rest of the region.

07:57Thank you very much.

07:58Thank you very much.

Analysis | Over 2 million Hondurans cast their vote amid foreign interference

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