Senior Honduras Election Official: "The Trend Reversed Following a System Failure."
This interview with Marco Ramiro Lobo, a non-voting member of the Honduran electoral authority (TSE by its Spanish acronym) was published on December 3rd by El Faro. In the days since, the TSE has conducted a partial review of actas in an attempt to satisfy concerns raised by international observers and the political opposition, and has agreed to recount the 5000 actas discussed in the interview. However, both the second and third-place finishers continue to reject the results provided by the TSE, which they say has lost all credibility. Both parties filed legal challenges to the results requesting a full vote-by-vote recount and the annulment of the elections, respectively. More than two weeks since the election, many questions remain about how things went so wrong.
He’s an alternate member but, after the president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE in Spanish) of Honduras, he is the most visible of the tribunal’s four magistrates. He doesn’t have a vote, but he has a voice and he has made certain that he is heard. Marco Ramiro Lobo was appointed by the Honduran congress three years ago, and today he appears to be the magistrate most opposed to the decisions of the tribunal’s president, David Matamoros. He’s demanding an in-depth investigation of two system failures by the TSE’s vote-tallying technology. He admits that the TSE bears the primary responsibility for the political and social crisis gripping Honduras a week after its presidential election.
The tribunal consists of a magistrate, President David Matamoros, from the National Party, a representative from the Liberal Party, Erick Rodríguez, a member of the tiny Democratic Christian Party, Saúl Bonilla, and Lobo, a member of the small Party of Democratic Unification (UD). The Honduran congress refused to name a representative from the Free Party or the Party for Innovation and Unity (PINU), which make up the Opposition Alliance headed by Salvador Nasralla and Mel Zelaya, who are currently denouncing the reported results as fraudulent.