The following is a transcript of episode 51 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.
HERNÁNDEZ (in Spanish): I very respectfully told the plenary that we, the Armed Forces, should participate in the part where they share with us the results at the polling stations, that record. That record is the only thing we are interested in, the only thing that matters to us.
GRESSIER, HOST: The head of the Honduran Armed Forces is saying that he asked the National Electoral Council, or CNE, to give the Army a copy of each “act,” which is a legal document carrying the vote tally, and there’s one for each voting table across Honduras. The Army has never done that before.
“An attack on electoral legitimacy”
In Honduras, the National Electoral Council is the highest authority responsible for administering the vote and announcing the winner. The Army is tasked with guaranteeing “security,” including transporting voting materials.
But just one month before election day, already having gone through the primaries, and without any new constitutional interpretation, the head of the Armed Forces says the Army wants to run its own parallel count.
HERNÁNDEZ (in Spanish): We care about one record, as stated in the constitution, which is the presidential record of the presidential election, where we, through that information, through that tally of the five parties... we collect it and are able to take that information to our operations center and also have the final count for the presidential part.
GRESSIER: Hernández says that the Army is only interested in counting presidential ballots. And he claims this is all by the books, in keeping with the Constitution.
International observers aren’t amused. Jesús Delgado, from the Latin American election watchdog Transparencia Electoral, told the digital outlet Expediente Público that “allowing the Armed Forces to access the voting acts, or run a parallel count, is an attack on electoral legitimacy.”
“The risk of military interference in the Honduran elections is setting off alarms,” the organization added. But the truth is, alarms have been sounding for months. This was the focus of the September issue of Central America Monthly, our digital magazine.
During the primaries in March, the Army broke the chain of custody of ballots in Tegucigalpa. But instead of investigating the Armed Forces, the Public Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into the CNE.
Rotating Council President Ana Paola Hall, of the opposition Liberal Party, has said they won’t allow the Army to run a separate count. In episode 43, we explained how the three top seats of the CNE were divided up among the three main parties —in true Honduran style— and how the political rather than technical selection process has posed risks to the elections.
As for the military, the Army cannot participate directly in party politics. Since the end of the civil wars in Central America at the end of the last century, constitutions have given them a role subordinate to civilian power.
In Honduras, the elections this year have taken place under a state of exception suspending constitutional rights in dozens of communities in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, the two biggest cities.
The political crisis reached distressing levels in July, when Congress refused to allow the current president of the CNE —again, from the opposition Liberal Party— to resign amid gridlock and threats of violence. She was a councillor at the time.
In August, the three electoral councillors from the three parties claimed to have reached a political agreement to keep things afloat. They didn’t say what it was. But whatever it is that they privately agreed to seems to have fallen apart again.
Because last week, the ruling party representative Marlon Ochoa posted a video holding a USB stick, claiming he had turned over to prosecutors 24 audio recordings of one of the other two councillors (he didn’t say which one) plotting “attempted fraud” in the elections.
Podcast: Two Years of Siege at the Guatemalan Electoral Tribunal
The attorney general, who was illegally instated by the ruling Libre party in 2023, already announced earlier this year that it would investigate the CNE for crimes including treason. And now they’ve said they will open a new investigation into the audio files.
The issue at hand —and our close Guatemala observers will appreciate this— are supposed irregularities with the private contract to run the TREP, or the Transmission of Preliminary Election Results system. It offers a projection on election day, but then has to be confirmed by the official CNE tally.
In Guatemala in 2023, coup conspirators attacked the TREP in a baseless effort to claim fraud. And they failed. Neighboring Honduras knows a thing or two about coups — like the one in 2009, which deposed current presidential advisor Mel Zelaya.
Sixteen years later, the head of the Army’s attempt to strongarm his way into the vote count deepens questions about whether the ruling party —which is run by Mel— is interested in a clean race.
A rogue judge in Guatemala
Now we turn to Guatemala, where those very same coup actors we just mentioned tried to reactivate their plans this week.
ARÉVALO: They’re the visible faces of a corrupt, coup-plotting, and authoritarian criminal alliance that feels threatened by a government that only obeys the democratic mandate granted by the people in free and transparent elections.
GRESSIER: That’s the president of Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo, speaking in a national broadcast. On Sunday, October 26, Arévalo declared Attorney General Consuelo Porras and Judge Fredy Orellana “enemies of the country.”
He’s been on his heels recently, wading from political crisis to security crisis. We covered that last week. But then his opponents cut him an unlikely break.
On October 24, Trial Judge Orellana ordered the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to dissolve the official party Semilla, essentially seeking to annul the 2023 election results and removing a mayor, two-dozen legislators, and the president and vice president.
This is the exact reason the same judge was internationally sanctioned in 2023, when he intervened five weeks before the presidential run-off. He tried to cancel Arévalo’s party on the grounds of just twelve signatures that prosecutors claimed had been forged when the party was formed years prior.
Arévalo has repeatedly promised to dismiss the attorney general, but it wasn’t until that national broadcast that he requested that the Constitutional Court dismiss her and Orellana. He had presented a bill to expand his power to remove the top prosecutor, which has gotten nowhere.
That’s partly because the Constitutional Court ordered him in May 2024 to not “violate” Porras’ term, which ends in May. In Orellana’s case, his removal must pass through two disciplinary councils before the Supreme Court can make up its mind.
This isn’t the first time. According to public records, Fredy Orellana has faced 18 removal requests since 2019. The Supreme Court has rejected fourteen, and four are pending.
Podcast: Six Threats to the Election in Honduras
But this time could be different: The Constitutional Court suspended Orellana’s order on Wednesday and warned that he may have ruled contrary to law, a crime punishable with two to six years in prison.
Despite the setbacks, new attacks are speeding ahead. Just after the court’s rebuke of Orellana, prosecutors asked to strip the immunity of Arévalo and Vice President Karin Herrera, arguing they had breached duty for the escape of 18th street gang members from prison. You can learn more about that in episode 49.
The Supreme Court has said nothing so far. With just six months before the president appoints a new attorney general, it looks like their bare-knuckle sparring is entering the final round.
This episode of Central America in Minutes was written by Gabriel Labrador, Yuliana Ramazzini, and Roman Gressier. Sound design by Omnionn. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, and iHeart podcast platforms.