Former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has denounced in a forceful statement on his social media account, the intervention of President Donald Trump, with the aim of manipulating the outcome of the elections in Honduras.
The former president, who is also the general coordinator of the Liberty and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), warned that this interference was intended to sabotage the candidacy of Rixi Moncada, his party’s candidate, in order to halt LIBRE’s political project.
Zelaya stated that the US president and sectors of the Honduran two-party system are seeking to impose an “electoral coup,” but the current situation reflects Xiomara Castro as the leader with “more than 55 percent support due to her good governance.”
“LIBRE presents an impeccable, honest, compassionate, and capable candidate with a firm character and a profoundly democratic campaign, based on an economic proposal that liberates the people and breaks the privileges of the elites,” the former president added, referring to Rixi Moncada, the party’s candidate for the upcoming elections.
The general coordinator of LIBRE described these actions as an attempt by the opposition, unable to win fairly in the electoral process, to ignore the Honduran people’s capacity for struggle. The former president called the intervention “crude, threatening, and infamous,” while accusing Trump of granting a “pardon” to former president Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), linked to drug trafficking cases, in order to influence the internal process.
In his message, Zelaya rejected external pressures and evoked Honduras’s historical resilience, which has “withstood coups, monumental frauds, political assassinations, and persecution.” “If we survived the narco-dictatorship, do you think one of your tweets is going to bend us to your will?” he wrote, addressing Trump directly, who openly expressed his support for Tito Asfura and the possibility of withholding “good money” if he doesn’t win.
“You can call us communists, socialists, insurgents, whatever you want. We are free Hondurans, and we fight for the self-determination of peoples and for a dignified, just, and independent homeland. Neither Washington nor the oligarchy can decide for us,” the former president stated, denouncing U.S. interference in a process crucial to the future of the Latin American nation.
Zelaya concluded with a call for unity, declaring that “those of us who fight for freedom are standing strong; “We are patriots and no one surrenders.” Former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya had already accused the United States a year ago of using Honduras as a “laboratory for its interventionist policies,” which he contextualizes with the events of this current electoral process.
Following the results of the general elections held on November 30, a series of irregularities in the process were reported, reinforcing the idea of electoral fraud that candidate Rixi Moncada had foreseen. Marlos Ochoa, a member of the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Honduras, confirmed these irregularities, stating that the results provided by the TREP system “lack certainty and consistency,” while also denouncing the lack of public access to the preliminary results.
IMAGE CREDIT: Former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya had already accused the United States a year ago of using Honduras as a “laboratory for its interventionist policies.” Photo: EFE.
[ SOURCE: teleSUR ]
