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The Parliament of Honduras elected this Friday, January 21, its provisional board of directors in the midst of a political crisis that ended in a fight between deputies. Twenty members of the Partido Libertad y Refundación (Libre) opposed the provisional president being Luis Redondo, proposed by the country’s elected president, Xiomara Castro, and instead voted for the dissident Jorge Cálix.
With blows, shouts and shoves, the session to elect the provisional board of directors of the Honduran Parliament was held this Friday, January 21.
Congress opened its legislative work for the 2022-2026 period with the election of its provisional directory, in the midst of a rebellion unleashed by a group of deputies from the party of the president-elect, the leftist Xiomara Castro, who won the presidential elections last November 28 and thus becomes the first woman to reach the Presidency of the Central American country.
It all started when the Minister of the Interior, Leonel Ayala, opened the session and 20 deputies from the Libertad y Refundación (Libre) party (left) proposed Jorge Cálix as provisional president, violating a pact with the allied party.
“The betrayal was consummated,” said Xiomara Castro on her Twitter account, after learning that the provisional board of directors would not be chaired by its candidate, Luis Redondo, but by Jorge Cálix, one of Libre’s dissidents.
During the session, Ayala called Cálix and swore him in. But the cries of “traitors” increased the tension in the room and seven deputies loyal to Castro went up to attack Cálix, who ended up fleeing.
The agreement that ended in a “betrayal”
On Thursday night, Castro called the 50 deputies of his party to ask them to support legislator Luis Redondo as president of the legislature. But, the non-participation of 20 of them meant a “betrayal” for the president-elect, according to what he said.
“The absence of the 20 deputies is the omen of a counterrevolutionary betrayal of the Honduran party and people that overthrew the nationalist narco-dictatorship (of the National Party) on November 28, and a betrayal of the political project of refounding the country, by try to (…) impose a plan of the corrupt elite led by (former president) Juan Orlando Hernández,” Castro said in a statement.
For her, it was a betrayal since, in October 2021, in the alliance formed under the name ‘Libre’ and coordinated by former President Manuel Zelaya, Castro’s husband, an agreement was reached with the then candidate of the Salvador Party of Honduras (PSH), Salvador Nasralla, who, in case he wins the presidential elections, would appoint him vice president and allow him to elect the leader of Parliament.
The Honduran Congress, made up of 128 deputies (50 from Libre, 10 from PSH, 44 from the National Party, 22 from the Liberal Party, and two minority parties), needs 65 seats to elect its president.
The betrayal was done!
– Xiomara Castro de Zelaya (@XiomaraCastroZ) January 21, 2022
After this, the 20 deputies who did not comply with the agreement proposed Jorge Cálix, a member of their bench, as a candidate for president of the Legislative Assembly, against Castro’s will. The chosen one obtained at least 30 votes from Libre, 44 from the National Party and 10 from PSH.
This caused the confrontation this Friday in the hemicycle, where the deputies of Libre and several dissidents went to blows and threw bags of water at the directors of the provisional board of Parliament.
After the chaotic day, it is now expected that Congress will take office on January 25 with a definitive directive that must be appointed before January 27, the day that Xiomara Castro will be sworn in as president of Honduras, to put an end to 12 years of National Party in power.
With EFE and AFP
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