Note from the author: The statements of President Trump threatening the voters of Honduras and trying to coerce them are a violation of Article 19 of the Charter of the Organization of American States, to which the United States is a signatory. And the statements of Representative Maria Salazar, from the US Congress, who is a leader of the delegation to the election, are also a violation of the Charter of the Organization of the American States. And they’re more unprecedented for a US official in that they are an attempt to delegitimize a national election before the vote, and also in a volatile political climate where this could cause violence.

History is threatening to repeat itself in Honduras right now, with a vengeance. There is concerted effort by the US government to influence the outcome of the election in Honduras. President Trump now piled on with a ringing endorsement of the National Party candidate, and strong denunciations of the other two leading candidates. The three are seen as tied in the polls.

His endorsement followed an unprecedented move by nine members of the US Congress who are traveling to Honduras to “observe” the national election this weekend. But for most of them, it is not so much an observation as a political intervention. Some of the Congresspeople on the delegation have made this clear.

For those who remember how the Honduran military kidnapped the democratically elected president of Honduras, Mel Zelaya, in the middle of the night and flew him out of the country in 2009, this looks like advance preparation for a repeat. Here is a leader of the current delegation, neoconservative Representative Maria Salazar (R-FL), describing the 2009 military coup that overthrew the government:

“Then the Honduran democracy stood strong; thank God for that, and the armed forces abided by their duty to uphold democracy and Mr. Zelaya was out of office.”

This is democracy for Rep. Salazar and many of her Republican colleagues: elections only matter if their candidate wins. And a lot of them have been talking and acting like they want to bring it on home to us. But that is another story.

A hearing on November 20 of the House Foreign Affairs Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, chaired by Salazar, was titled “Democracy in Peril: the Fight for Free Elections in Honduras.” It was filled with repeated, dire warnings that the current LIBRE government would steal the election.

For Honduras, it’s bad enough that these people are using their overwhelming advantage in media, money, and political power to rewrite history, and to try and convince Hondurans whom they should or should not vote for. But their agenda is more dangerous than that. They are trying to delegitimize, in advance, the electoral process — so that they can claim fraud if their team loses. 

Who is the fearsome dictator, and political party, that is allegedly planning to steal this election? Rixi Moncada is the candidate of the LIBRE Party, which is currently in power, under President Xiomara Castro. Her two main opponents are Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party and Nasry Asfura of the National Party. The 2009 coup was supported by both the National Party and the Liberal Party. Zelaya formed the LIBRE Party in 2011 as an alternative to the two-party rule that the country had experienced for most of the last century. 

LIBRE would have a tough time stealing this election. The Electoral Council (CNE) and Electoral Justice Tribunal each have three members, with representatives of the National and Liberal parties together holding two of the three seats. They are both chaired by the National Party representatives. But that’s only part of the story. These parties also have a history. After their coup of June 2009, Honduras had an election in November that almost the whole world refused to recognize. The coup was also followed by serious violence and human rights violations, which increased through the years. By 2014, when Juan Orlando Hernández became president, Honduras was the most dangerous country in the world for environmental activists. The country became even more infamous in 2016, for the murder of Goldman-Prize-winning environmentalist Berta Cáceres. The convicted murderers included Honduran military.

Hernández’s 2017 reelection was widely disputed. The OAS published a statistical analysis which “reject[ed] the proposition that the National Party won the election legitimately.” Hernández is currently serving a 45-year prison sentence for conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States, as well as weapons offenses. 

In his second endorsement on Friday of the National Party candidate Asfura, President Trump promised a full pardon to Hernández. His endorsements also made it clear that the election of either of the two candidates other than Asfura would significantly damage relations with the United States. Many voters in Honduras would take this as a serious threat.

It may seem deeply ironic that US elected officials are trying to convince the media and the world that the only one of these three parties which has never been implicated in overthrowing democratic rule; or in taking power by extra-legal and/or violent means; or using substantial violence to repress political opponents, is the one that we are being told to fear as the very big threat to democratic elections on Sunday.

But the Republican narrative is even more Orwellian than that. Who among the Big Three candidates in Honduras would have the backing to stay in power against the will of the majority of the electorate? LIBRE, which the governing party of the United States has already made it clear that it wants to depose? Or their opponents who have massive support from the most powerful country in the world, as well as most of the richest people in Honduras?

No matter how you look at it, the odds of LIBRE trying to steal the election seem very small. But a strong enough media and social media campaign can convince enough people that the election is being stolen even when it is not; and the result can be a military coup. US officials who use their power and influence to challenge election results before the votes are even cast are playing with fire. But it is not Washington that is being put at risk — it’s Honduras.