A deal woven between rebel congressmen from President Xiomara Castro’s party and her support base may have ended a crisis in Congress that threatened the start of the newly sworn leader’s term.
On the 25th, two days before Xiomara’s inauguration, while Parliament was having a session appointing Luis Redondo to head the Congress, a group of 18 deputies from Libre (Libertad y Refundación), the president’s acronym, rebelled and, with the support of right-wing parties, elected Jorge Cálix as leader of Parliament, in a parallel meeting in a club.
In practice, it is as if two legislatures were installed in separate ceremonies. Due to the conflict, at the inauguration ceremony at the National Stadium in Tegucigalpa, the president was sworn in by a judge. Redondo only put the presidential sash on her.
This Monday (7), Cálix and the other 17 dissidents signed an agreement with Manuel Zelaya, husband of Xiomara, former president of the country and general coordinator of Libre, in which they say they commit to respecting the alliance built by Xiomara.
“Although at the moment we do not share the proposed strategy […]we are willing to respect the decision to support deputy Luis Redondo Guifarro to preside over the board of directors of the National Congress in fulfillment of the mandate of our president”, says the agreement.
“I’m taking a step aside, for now, in my political pretensions. Out of respect for the people, I join as a Libre deputy to fulfill my word, given during the campaign, to support our president,” Cálix said in the text.
With the agreement, the party’s rebels were readmitted to the party’s cadres; they had been expelled, in a movement led by the elected representative, after the rift that gave rise to the crisis — which came to have moments of physical confrontation, with the exchange of punches and kicks in the plenary.
Signs of a rapprochement and a possible agreement began to be emitted as early as January 26. On that occasion, the day before the presidential inauguration, Xiomara published a photo with Cálix and announced that she had proposed that he join the government as coordinator of her cabinet. The deputy, however, did not accept the position and will continue in Parliament.
“It is necessary that they stop violating our democracy. The decisions of the people must be carried out peacefully,” said Xiomara, reaffirming that she considers Redondo, from the Salvadoran Party of Honduras, the legitimate leader of the Legislature.
An impasse between the deputies would obviously hamper the reform agenda that the leftist had been promising to put into motion since the campaign. Among the main challenges facing Honduras is the economic situation — aggravated by the pandemic and climate catastrophes —, which had a GDP contraction of 9% in 2020. According to the World Bank, more than 55.4% of the population lives below the poverty line. poverty. Combined with the violence of the dispute between “maras” (criminal factions), these figures lead thousands of Hondurans to try to emigrate to the US.
One of the reforms promised by Xiomara — and which the opposition National Party wants to stop in its infancy — is the one that creates an anti-corruption body backed by the United Nations. The president had accused the insurgents of her party of allying themselves precisely with the PN, of the right-wing previous president Juan Orlando Hernández.
The leader criticized her predecessor during the inauguration on the 27th, calling the country’s current economic situation an “economic catastrophe without historical parallel”.
Now, with Libre in thesis unified, the leftist base has 68 parliamentarians, out of a total of 128. The PN has 44 seats in the Legislative.
US INCLUDES FORMER HONDUREN PRESIDENT ON CORRUPTION LIST
The United States confirmed on Monday that Juan Orlando Hernández was included on a government list of “corrupt and undemocratic actors” in the Northern Triangle of Central America.
According to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the former Honduran president, who spent eight years in power, was included in the list on July 1 of last year – the information was made public this week, under the argument of transparency and of “accountability in the region”. Inclusion usually makes a person ineligible to obtain a visa and enter the US.
“No one is above the law,” Blinken wrote on Twitter.
At the trial of a drug dealer in New York in March last year, the prosecution accused JOH of helping to bring kilos of cocaine to the United States. In opening court arguments, prosecutor Jacob Gutwillig said drug lord Geovanny Fuentes bribed officials including politicians, the military, police and “even the president of Honduras” to protect his illegal business.
At the time, the then president denied the accusations and presented himself as a hero in the fight against drug trafficking and violent gangs in the country. In the last days of his term, JOH had been seeking agreements that could grant him immunity, avoiding possible extradition to Washington.
His brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, has been imprisoned in the US since 2019.
