NOVANEWS
People take part in a march to demand the resignation of Honduras’ President Juan Hernandez in Tegucigalpa June 26, 2015.
Popular movements call for an independent corruption investigation as they condemn the bankruptcy of Honduran democracy.
Tens of thousands of Hondurans took to the streets in torchlit marches for the fifth week straight on Friday night to demand the resignation of President Juan Orlando Hernandez and an independent investigation into the multi-million dollar corruption scandal embroiling the government.
Massive marches took place simultaneously in the capital city Tegucigalpa and business capital San Pedro Sula. In Tegucigalpa, the march moved from a working class neighborhood past a commercial area to the presidential palace, with some 25,000 protesters shouting slogans telling President Hernandez to “get out” of government. Opposition groups also rallied in other cities.
“Impressive: March of the Torches, Honduras.” The latest round of marches comes just two days before the sixth anniversary of June 28, 2009, coup that ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya and sparked a national popular resistance movement that later gave rise to the opposition LIBRE party.
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The marches also follow the government announcement this week that President Hernandez has initiated a dialogue process and measures to “combat corruption and impunity.”
But Honduras’ “indignant opposition” have condemned the bankruptcy of Honduran democracy and expressed their complete distrust in the government to execute a fair and adequate investigation, calling for independent probe.
“An honest public doesn’t hold dialogue with the corrupt!” Tweet tags the president, with hashtags calling for Hernandez to resign, go to jail.
The weekly anti-corruption marches were spurred by the massive US$200 million embezzlement scandal in the country’s Social Security Institute, known as IHSS, implicating President Hernandez and his National Party. Hernandez has admitted to accepting funds from corrupt sources for his 2013 presidential campaign in which he narrowly defeated LIBRE party candidate Xiomara Castro amid widespread claims of electoral fraud and political violence.
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But Hernandez has shirked responsibility, claiming he did not know where the money was coming from. He has also admitted to accepting only US$145,000, a fraction of the alleged US$90 million he is accused of funneling into his campaign.
Despite ongoing calls from popular movements to establish an independent U.N. accountability body to investigate government corruption, Honduran and U.N. officials have yet to respond. The desired anti-impunity body, referred to as CICIH, would be similar to Guatemala’s CICIG, which is currently leading an independent probe into the massive corruption scandal gripping the neighboring Central American country.
“The brave Honduran people will not tire of demanding jail for the dictatorship.”
A group of youths initiated a hunger strike against corruption this week to reinforce calls for the establishment of the anti-impunity body CICIH.
On Sunday, Honduras will mark six years since the 2009 military coup that launched the country into a grave human rights situation including government-sponsored repression and criminalization of journalists, indigenous people, human rights defenders, campesinos, political opposition, and popular resistance activists.
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According to analysts, the situation in Honduras is nothing short of a deep institutional political crisis.
