Demonstration in Tegucigalpa on Monday demanding the removal of President Juan Orlando Hernández.ORLANDO SIERRA / AFP
The Honduran Congress rejected this Monday to open a political trial against President Juan Orlando Hernández, whom US federal prosecutors have accused of having received bribes from drug traffickers in 2013 to finance his presidential campaign.
In the accusations, Hernández is accused of giving protection to "drug traffickers" and even published an alleged quote from the president in which he affirms that he wanted to "put the drug in the noses of the gringos by flooding the United States with cocaine."
The motion to initiate an impeachment process against Hernández was presented on January 14 by opposition deputies Luis Redondo, Jorge Cálix and David Armando Reyes, who have alleged that the president committed "actions contrary to the Constitution of the Republic," in addition to be "involved in multiple trials against drug traffickers who are prosecuted in the United States, which harm the national and international interest."
Opponents also accuse Hernández of having reelected himself by overriding the Constitution, which prohibits presidential reelection.
Hernández - whose second term ends next year - managed to get the Electoral Tribunal to approve his candidacy in December 2016.
The president has forged a strong control of the institutions, mainly in key organizations such as the Constitutional Chamber, which in April 2015 declared the stone article of the Honduran Magna Carta that prohibits presidential reelection inapplicable for him.
These are the same reelection ambitions that cost former President Manuel Zelaya his office in Honduras, expelled by a coup in 2009.
To initiate a political trial against the president, Honduran law establishes that the support of three-quarters of the legislators is required, that is, 96 votes in favor of the 128 that make up Congress.
In Monday's session, a majority of ruling party votes rejected the motion, so Hernández will be able to finish his term without setbacks.
The president appeared in Congress and ruled on the accusations of the United States prosecutors, which he described as “calumnies based on the testimonies of these drug traffickers, whom we have captured and others who have surrendered.
They have only the purpose of revenge ”.
On January 8, United States federal prosecutors presented motions before the Southern District of New York accusing Hernandez of having accepted bribes from drug traffickers.
The documents do not directly name the politician, but refer to him as conspirator number 4 (CC-4), but reference is made to his position as president and the link with his brother and former deputy, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández , found guilty of drug trafficking by a New York jury in October 2019. The reading of the sentence against “Torny” Hernández was scheduled for this Wednesday, but the defense of the former Honduran politician has asked the judge in the case to delay it.
This is the eighth postponement requested from the US courts.
Since his brother was found guilty, the president has been strongly questioned in Honduras and internationally, and the motions presented in early January by prosecutors in New York raise doubts about the president's commitment to the fight against organized crime.
In these motions, Hernández is linked to Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez, who was arrested in March 2020 in Miami accused of drug trafficking.
The documents claim that Fuentes Ramírez paid Hernández, then president of Congress, large sums of money in exchange for protection, which included the use of the Armed Forces to protect a cocaine laboratory and the shipment of the drug to the United States.
In one of the strongest allegations of these motions, advanced by France Presse, the president is quoted affirming that he intended the DEA to think that he was fighting organized crime in his country, but that in reality "he would put drugs right under the noses of the gringos" .
On Monday, during his appearance in Congress, Hernández settled: "I have not been, I am not, nor will I be a friend of any of these criminals, and I will continue my fight until the last day of my government, whatever the cost."