Blows, shoves and shouts in the election of the director of the Parliament of Honduras

A scene inside the Honduran Congress, this Friday. ORLANDO SIERRA (AFP)

President Xiomara Castro has not yet assumed power in Honduras and is already facing her first political crisis: the election of the Parliament's board of directors ended in a brawl this Friday, in which there were blows and shoves, after twenty deputies from the ruling Party Libertad y Refundación (Libre) opposed the head of the congress being Luis Redondo, the one designated by the elected president.

"The betrayal was consummated," Castro said on his Twitter account in reference to the legislators of his party, who promoted Jorge Cálix, one of the dissidents of Libre, as parliamentary president. At the Congress headquarters, tempers flared and some deputies climbed onto the main table and beat each other up, while bags of water were thrown from the seats. “Traitors, traitors!” the Libre legislators shouted.

The election of Cálix had the 44 votes of the National Party, the political movement that has been in power for twelve consecutive years, and is chaired by outgoing president Juan Orlando Hernández, accused by a New York Court of having links with drug trafficking. . According to political sources in Honduras, Cálix is ​​a controversial type "who responds to the elites, especially the owners of the Ficohsa bank."

Cálix distanced himself from Castro and her husband, former President Manuel Zelaya, who suffered a coup in 2009. Edgardo Castro, one of the deputies who voted for Cálix, said that they are not "traitors, and that they have the right to think differently." “I only say to President Manuel Zelaya, calm down, we continue to respect his investiture as general coordinator (of Libre). What has happened in Congress is the shielding of Xiomara Castro's 4 years as president," Castro said.

For her part, Castro, the president who will take office on January 27, described the deputies' move as "the omen of a counterrevolutionary betrayal of the party and the Honduran people who defeated the nationalist narco-dictatorship on Sunday, November 28, and a betrayal of the political project of the refoundation of the homeland by trying tomorrow (today) to impose the plan of the corrupt elite led by Juan Orlando Hernández”.

The session of the Parliament was presided over by the Minister of the Interior, Leonel Ayala, who gave the floor to the deputy Beatriz Valle, one of the 20 dissidents of the 50 deputies who obtained Free in the general elections of November 28.

Valle proposed her three provisional directors, including her as her secretary.

For his part, Ayala did not allow deputy Rasel Tomé, spokesman for Libre, to present the second proposal headed by Luis Redondo.

So the minister proceeded to swear in the provisional board of directors, giving rise to the brawl.

The new definitive meeting of Parliament, whose chairman is currently unknown, will be elected next Sunday and on the 25th the new Legislative power will take office for the period 2022-2026, two days before Castro's inauguration. The division in Libre has been a bucket of cold water for the jubilation that overflowed in Honduras with the election of Castro, who obtained 1.7 million votes, surpassing the presidential candidate of the National Party, Nasry Asfura, by 15 points.

The crisis in Libre began to take shape since deputies began to express their rejection of Luis Redondo, who was chosen by the president of the Salvador Party of Honduras (PSH), Salvador Nasralla, as part of the de facto alliance he signed last October with the elected president, to ensure her victory in the last general elections on November 28, 2021. The agreement was that Nasralla, who is one of the three newly elected vice presidents of the country, would choose the candidate to preside over Parliament.

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