Monday, November 25, 2013

Honduras elections: more thoughts

Honduras is still waiting.

I was out in a village until almost 2 o’clock and then worked until 6 pm with Father German, preparing for the Parish meeting next week.

But here are a few more remarks.

This afternoon the Honduran Electoral Tribunal (TSE) stated that with 61.7% of the polls counted, National Party candidate Juan Orlando Hernández has 34.19% of the votes and LIBRE’s Xiomara Castro 28.83%.

Tomorrow they may have final results, but they say that this is not a prediction of the results. Hmmh?

However, both LIBRE and the Anti-Corruption Party are claiming that about 20% of the reported numbers are inaccurate and that they’ve found inconsistencies between the reports to the TSE and other reports.

Ministerio Publico that takes legal complaints seems to have been taken over by the military.

This morning a friend told me how, in one municipality of the parish of Dulce Nombre, National Party activities were going around Saturday night until 2 am on Sunday morning giving out money and supplies in an effort out buy votes. It appears to have worked since the Liberal Party incumbent was defeated.

Will we know anything more tomorrow after the TSE makes a final report?


2 comments:

Charles said...

Well, they now claim the results are "irreversible." Guess they have been taking lessons from the US Supreme Court.

I find it difficult to believe that people would sell their votes absent some mechanism to verify that they had done so. In Mexico, the PRI had small children go into the voting booth to verify how voters were actually voting. So, if there's vote buying, I would guess there's more to it than just handing out money.

John (Juancito) Donaghy said...

The "buying" of votes is something that I cannot really understand. I think it's mostly using monetary incentives to pull people into voting for a party or candidate.

However, talking to someone who worked with Caritas' observer process, he gave me an idea of how this might work. The person getting the money agrees to put a tiny symbol in the upper right corner of the ballot. Those working on the counting take note of this and can figure out who really voted.

Sounds strange - but much of what happens in elections here is really strange.

Including the claim that the "election: of JOH is "irreversible."