Honduras election council member accuses colleague of ‘intimidation’

A member of Honduras’s election council has accused one of her colleagues of seeking to derail proceedings as the Central American country awaits the outcome of Sunday’s presidential election.

In a social media post on Tuesday, Cossette Lopez-Osorio of the National Electoral Council (CNE) alleged that her fellow panel member, Marlon Ochoa, sought to delay a news conference through “intimidation”.

“The press conference to mark the resumption of the results release was disrupted,” Lopez-Osorio wrote.

“Councillor Marlon Ochoa opposed restarting the process and sent members of the LIBRE party, as well as members of his staff, to storm the Hotel Plaza Juan Carlos, engaging in acts of intimidation to prevent the public appearance.”

The accusations escalate the already heated atmosphere surrounding Sunday’s race.

Currently, two candidates are in a dead heat as votes continue to be counted: Salvador Nasralla of the centre-right Liberal Party and Nasry “Tito” Asfura of the right-wing National Party.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Nasralla had inched ahead with more than 39.93 percent of the vote, with Asfura close behind at 39.86 percent.

A former frontrunner in the race, Rixi Moncada of the left-leaning LIBRE party, had fallen behind in early vote counts. According to the CNE, approximately 20 percent of the votes have yet to be tallied.

Infighting on the council

But even before the first ballots were cast in Sunday’s election, controversies had gripped the council, resulting in accusations of malpractice from all three leading parties.

The CNE is led by a three-person panel. Each CNE councillor is selected by Honduras’s legislature to represent the three main political parties: the Liberal Party, the National Party and LIBRE, the party of outgoing President Xiomara Castro.

Lopez-Osorio represents the National Party. She has had a tumultuous relationship with her LIBRE counterpart, Ochoa.

In October, Ochoa filed a complaint with federal prosecutors, alleging that Lopez-Osorio had been caught in audio recordings conspiring with the Honduran military to influence the results.

Lopez-Osorio has denied the allegations. “These are fabricated recordings,” she told the Honduran newspaper La Prensa, calling Ochoa’s complaint “outrageous”.

Attorney General Johel Zelaya nevertheless opened an investigation into the audio recordings on October 29.

Ochoa, meanwhile, continued to raise doubts about the election proceedings as the November 30 vote drew near.

On November 9, for instance, he posted on social media that a test of the voting system had “failed”, citing connectivity issues.

That result, he said, “constitutes further proof that the leaked audios are true and that there is a conspiracy against the electoral process, orchestrated from within the electoral body itself”.

The CNE has faced other high-profile conflicts as well. Also in October, the head of Honduras’s joint chiefs of staff, Roosevelt Hernandez, said the armed forces would seek to hold its own vote count.

But the president of the CNE, Liberal Party member Ana Paola Hall, rejected his demand, and legal experts have said there is no constitutional basis for the Honduran military to review the results.

Trouble at the ballot box

Fears of irregularities and electoral interference have long loomed over Honduras’s presidential race.

In March, for example, advocates argued that long lines and delays in the distribution of election material impeded voters from participating in the election. Some polling stations stayed open late into the night as a result of the delays.

This week’s vote count also stuttered amid government website crashes. In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Lopez-Osorio addressed some of the “technical failures” and “transmission issues” that have marred the proceedings.

She denied that the hiccups were part of any kind of conspiracy. “It is literally a technical failure in the disclosure platform,” she told CNN host Fernando del Rincon.

Lopez-Osorio explained that the CNE was “searching for explanations” and had been in contact with the company in charge of the technology, ASD SAS. The vote count, she added, would continue.

“We have very narrow margins, and we also have a large proportion of ballots to process in these remaining days,” she said.

A statement published on the CNE website echoed her comments. “The CNE has demanded that ASD SAS provide the fastest possible technical solution, so that all citizens have full and permanent access to the statistical data,” it read in part.

Still, those comments are unlikely to dampen efforts to contest the election results in the coming days.

Already, United States President Donald Trump — supporter of the right-wing Asfura — has amplified election fraud claims with posts on his online platform Truth Social.

“Looks like Honduras is trying to change the results of their Presidential Election. If they do, there will be hell to pay!” Trump wrote on Monday.

Moncada, the left-wing candidate, also appears poised to challenge the results. In a statement this week, she denounced Trump for his “imperial foreign interference” in the election process. She also called the initial election results proof that October’s audio leak was authentic.

“The elections are not lost,” she wrote. “The two-party system imposed its electoral plot on us, following the trap revealed by the 26 audio recordings.”

She added, “I declare that I will maintain my positions and that I will not surrender.”

For her part, Lopez-Osorio also called on the electorate to be vigilant, ending her post about her colleague Ochoa with the message: Stay “alert, Honduran people”.