Category World News

Incriminating audio. A military demanding oversight. And a powerful leader from abroad, trying to sway voters to the right.

Those are just three of the scandals that have made Sunday’s presidential election in Honduras one of the most closely watched votes in the country’s history.

Already, even before the polls have opened, some high-level politicians are alleging that a stolen vote is under way.

Outgoing President Xiomara Castro, for instance, has compared the situation to a “criminal conspiracy aimed at staging an electoral coup”.

But experts who spoke to Al Jazeera said that the public has grown accustomed to the uncertainty and upheaval.

After all, Honduras’s democracy is only about four decades old, and during that time, the country has struggled with government corruption and even a coup d’etat.

“Obviously, there’s a fear of violence or a coup,” said Daniel Valladares, an activist and history professor at the National Autonomous University of Honduras. “But it’s a fear we’ve always had.”

In the final days before the election, Valladares has observed a tense calm grip the Central American country.

“The environment is normal,” he said. “It’s the same thing people always say: ‘I hope there isn’t a sh** show.’”

Unclear poll results

Part of the uncertainty ahead of this year’s election stems from the poll numbers. None of the five presidential candidates on the ballot holds a definitive lead.

There are, however, three frontrunners, considered to be neck and neck in the race.

Voters on Sunday are most likely to choose between Rixi Moncada, the candidate for Castro’s left-leaning LIBRE Party; Salvador Nasralla of the centre-right Liberal Party; and Nasry “Tito” Asfura of the conservative National Party.

None of the three has definitively pulled ahead, and voter surveys have fluctuated wildly.

For instance, one poll conducted by the Instituto de la Justicia found Moncada trailing. She had 25 percent support, compared with Asfura’s 31 percent and Nasralla’s 40.

Another poll, meanwhile, showed Moncada in the lead. More than 44 percent of those surveyed by the Mexican firm TResearch backed the left-wing candidate, compared with 19.6 percent for Nasralla and 14.8 percent for Asfura.

Other surveys have shown the three candidates in a virtual tie.

That ambiguity has led to recriminations from the major parties in the election, with each side accusing the other of manipulating the vote.

Asfura, for instance, has accused the governing LIBRE party of wielding “pressure” and “abuse” against election officials. He threatened to mobilise his supporters in protest.

“Yes, we are going to take to the streets so that there are elections and so that there is democracy and freedom,” he told the television network HCH.

Moncada, meanwhile, alleged at one of her rallies that there was an “illicit” partnership between rival parties to “steal the elections”.

“We will take the necessary measures to defend the vote of every Honduran man and woman,” she told the crowd.

Infighting at the election council

The heated rhetoric stems from several scandals. But one of the most prominent erupted in late October.

A government body known as the National Electoral Council (CNE) organises the country’s elections. It is composed of three officials, selected to represent the country’s three main political parties.

But on October 29, Marlon Ochoa, the LIBRE representative, delivered audio to prosecutors that purported to capture a conversation between his CNE colleague Cossette Lopez and an unnamed military official.

In the recording, Lopez, who represents the right-leaning National Party, allegedly discusses plans to sabotage the electoral process by “altering the popular vote” and staging a possible boycott.

“What I am sure of is that the military is on our side,” Lopez allegedly said.

Attorney General Johel Zelaya has asserted that the recording is real, and he has opened an investigation into the incident.

But Congressional Deputy Tomas Zambrano, who is also featured on the recording, maintained the audio is “totally false, fabricated and manipulated with artificial intelligence”.

He and Asfura have defended Lopez, framing the investigation as a campaign to undermine her authority.

But the audio scandal was not the only conflict to shake the CNE.

Also in October, the head of Honduras’s armed forces, Roosevelt Hernandez, demanded that the military be allowed to conduct its own count of the upcoming election results.

Hernandez is perceived to be allied with LIBRE. Ana Paola Hall, the president of the CNE and a member of the Liberal Party, denounced his demand as “interference” in the election process.

Watchdog groups have echoed those concerns. Human Rights Watch, for instance, issued a statement saying the military “does not have any authority to access, count, transmit or review the results”.

Trump weighs in

Adding to the election turmoil is pressure from abroad.

Honduras’s largest trading partner is the United States, and the two countries have closely collaborated on issues like combating drug trafficking.

But right-wing leaders in the US have spread false information before Sunday’s election, stirring further fears about the integrity of the election.

On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump weighed in personally on his Truth Social platform.

He endorsed Asfuro while falsely describing the conservative candidate’s two closest rivals as puppets of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

A Moncada victory, Trump wrote, would hand the country over to “Maduro and his narco-terrorists”. And Nasralla, the US president alleged, is a “borderline Communist” who seeks to split the right-wing vote.

“The Communists are trying to trick the people by running a third Candidate, Salvador Nasralla,” Trump wrote. “The people of Honduras must not be tricked again. The only real friend of Freedom in Honduras is Tito Asfura.”

Trump is not alone in turning up the heat from the US.

Florida Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar, a Republican, has likewise accused Moncada of being in Maduro’s pocket, saying the LIBRE candidate would drag Honduras into a “socialist hell”.

Valladares believes the US pressure campaign is the result of coordination with Honduras’s right wing.

“The fact that they’ve gone so far as to request that a congresswoman write a note [about the election] is frightening,” said Valladares.

Ghosts of the past

On Honduras’s left, the pressure has reawakened memories of the military coup that toppled President Castro’s husband, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya.

The ghost of the 2009 coup still looms large in the country. Three years into his term, Zelaya had proposed holding a referendum to rewrite Honduras’s constitution.

But the pushback was swift. The Supreme Court issued a secret warrant for his arrest, and soldiers forced Zelaya into exile, placing him on an aeroplane to Costa Rica against his will.

Political violence spiked after the coup, and a series of contested elections followed, with right-wing governments elected each time.

In an October 29 post, President Castro compared that turmoil to the present-day election proceedings.

“The same groups that violated the Constitution in the 2009 coup and perpetrated the electoral frauds of 2013 and 2017 are now attempting once again to supplant the will of the people, sow chaos, and hijack popular sovereignty,” she wrote.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Illiam Rivera, a biology professor and LIBRE activist, accused business interests in the country of attempting to torpedo the left’s chances of re-election.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty,” said Rivera. “The Honduran right, financed by the country’s economic power groups, has triggered an insane media campaign against the candidate of the LIBRE party, Rixi Moncada.”

Another activist, Guido Eguguire, told Al Jazeera that he feared a repeat of the 2017 election cycle.

“In 2017, there was a ‘blackout’ in the voting system that hid the results in real-time,” he said. “We’re worried that there will be dynamics like what will happen in 2017.”

Still, Eguguire said, what Honduras is experiencing now is nothing new. He described the corruption allegations as an endemic problem that Sunday’s vote alone would not solve.

“Fraud has been a common practice in the country,” he said. “Frauds and coups. It’s been part of our story.”

The Organization of American States, comprised of 33 member countries, has already announced it plans to send 100 election monitors to Honduras for Sunday’s vote.

According to data, Canada’s economy expanded much more quickly than expected in the third quarter as crude oil exports and government spending boosted economic activity, despite disappointing business investments and household consumption as a result of the country’s persistent trade uncertainty.

According to Statistics Canada, the third-quarter annualized gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 2.6 percent on Friday, avoiding what might have been a technical recession after a downwardly revised 1.8% contraction the previous quarter.

The Bank of Canada won’t cut interest rates until December 10th, according to economists’ predictions.

Unlike the monthly GDP, which is derived from industrial output, the quarterly GDP reading is based on income and expenditure.

Because the US government shutdown’s most recent release prevented the third-quarter number from being released in February, according to the statistics agency, the third-quarter number may be subject to a larger-than-normal revision.

Analysts polled by the Reuters news agency had predicted monthly GDP growth of 0.2% and annualized growth of 0.5% in the third quarter.

According to StatsCan, the economy matched analysts’ predictions on a month-over-month basis, primarily driven by a 1.6% increase in manufacturing output, which was down from the previous month.

However, an earlier estimate predicted a negative start to the fourth quarter, with GDP dropping by 0.3% in October.

In comments made to Al Jazeera by senior economists Michael Davenport and Tony Stillo, head of Canada Economics at Oxford Economics, said that “the headline growth was flattered by a significant drop in imports that masked underlying weakness in domestic demand.”

We continue to believe that the Canadian economy is fragile and anticipates that the US’s tariffs, uncertainty in trade policy, and slower population growth will cause it to grow.

Tariff imposed

Canadian exports have suffered greatly from US tariffs on crucial sectors. Work losses, sluggish hiring, and subdued business and consumer sentiment have all been the result of them, which has caused predictions of a near-recessionary environment.

However, higher crude oil exports and a 2.9 percent increase in government capital investments, as reported by StatsCan, helped at least some of the impact. Additionally, higher crude oil exports and higher corporate income in the third quarter, as shown by StatsCan’s data, helped cushion the impact.

The rise in government investments was primarily driven by the increase in money spent on nonresidential structures like hospitals and weaponry.

A rise in residential resale activity and renovations also helped.

According to Doug Porter, chief economist at BMO Capital Markets, the report “should stop the recession chatter for now.”

The Bank of Canada announced last month that it would maintain its key interest rate at 2.25 percent until a significant shift in the economy’s outlook is detected.

However, the GDP data showed that the underlying impact of tariffs, as well as the GDP data, continues to be reflected in business and consumer sentiment.

The third quarter’s business capital investment remained unchanged, while household final consumption expenditure decreased by 0.1 percent.

StatsCan added that the period saw a decline in new residential construction of 0.8 percent.

The “execution” of two Palestinian men by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank this week has been condemned by human rights organizations and the UN, claiming that it highlights Israel’s “systematic policy.”

The “brazen killing” in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, which was captured on camera, was described as “yet another apparent summary execution,” according to a UN human rights office spokesperson on Friday.

Palestinian deaths carried out by Israeli forces, settlers, and security forces have increased rapidly in the occupied West Bank, according to Jeremy Laurence, a Geneva-based journalist.

According to the most recent UN data, Israeli forces and settlers killed at least 1,030 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, between October 7, 2023 and November 27 this year. At least 223 Palestinian children are included in that figure.

The illegal use of force by Israel’s security forces and the rise in Israeli settler violence must end, Laurence said.

Since footage from Jenin on Thursday showed its forces shooting two unarmed Palestinian men at close range as they attempted to surrender to the military during a raid, Israel has received widespread condemnation.

Before Israeli forces forced them back into a building they had been hunkered in, the men were later identified as Al-Muntasir Billah Abdullah, 26, and Youssef Asasa, 37.

The Israeli army then shot them dead, according to the video.

According to Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, “evidence andamp; footage show they were unarmed, had surrendered, and posed no threat.”

This reflects Israel’s widespread and systematic policy of unlawful killings throughout occupied Palestinian territory, according to the group, which includes Israel’s ongoing and systematic genocidal conflict with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

We urge the international community to take action right away, impose sanctions, and hold accountable.

Total impunity

The commanders on the ground are reviewing the incident, according to the Israeli military in a statement released on Thursday, and it will be transferred to the appropriate professional bodies.

However, according to experts, Israel only rarely launches criminal investigations into the killings of Palestinians by the military, even when there is footage of the incidents, and soldiers directly involved are rarely held accountable.

They claim that prominent members of the far-right government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have stoked violence against Palestinians.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of Netanyahu’s national security, wrote on social media that “terrorists must die” shortly after the killings in Jenin.

Ben-Gvir has been pushing for Israel to impose the death penalty for “terrorist” crimes, which rights advocates claim would “exclude Palestinians” from the scope of the law.

In response to the recent wave of Israeli attacks in the area, Israeli politicians have been calling for the West Bank to be officially annexed.

Israelis, according to Shai Parnes, director of BTselem’s public relations division, enjoy “total impunity” for their violence against Palestinians. Israel is unwilling and unable to investigate itself, he told Al Jazeera, “again and again.”

According to Parnes, “every time it’s forced to]investigate] because of international coverage in the media or international pressure from other states,” Parnes said.

“But the outcome is essentially the same every time. The “investigating mechanisms” in Israel are completely whitewashed, and their goal is to act as though they are investigating [while] giving the perpetrators total impunity.

He added that Israel has no desire to launch a credible investigation based on Ben-Gvir’s remarks, which appeared to celebrate the killings in Jenin.

Washington, DC – Washington, DC – A man allegedly assaulted two members of the National Guard in the country’s capital after one of his victims passed away from her injuries.

The US attorney for Washington, DC, Jeanine Pirro, made the updated charges known on Friday.

Two days prior to the White House, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national, shot West Virginia National Guard members Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Andrew Wolfe, 24, just blocks away.

Trump, the president’s representative, announced late on Thursday that Beckstrom, who had been stationed in the capital as part of his anti-crime campaign, had passed away.

The following day, Pirro announced that Washington state resident Lakanwal would face three counts of assault with the intent to kill while armed and three counts of firearm possession during a violent crime on the Fox and Friends TV program.

She stated on Friday that Lakanwal will be “further charged with murder in the first degree.”

“We are upgrading the initial charges from assault to murder in the first degree,” he said. “There are undoubtedly many more charges to come.

Prior to the attack, Attorney General Pam Bondi had stated that she would seek the death penalty for the deaths of either of the soldiers. The FBI has stated that it is looking into the “terrorism” attack.

Wolfe, a member of the National Guard, was still in critical condition on Friday.

“Collective punishment”

The Trump administration promised a widespread crackdown on immigration in the wake of the attack, as well as a revetting of immigrants who are already US citizens, with the addition of the upgraded charges.

The actions have been referred to as “collective punishment” by advocacy groups.

Trump expanded a previous decision to halt all immigration requests involving Afghan nationals in a social media post on Thursday night, adding that he would “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries.”

Trump added that he would “remove anyone who is incapable of loving our country or who is not a net asset to the United States.”

The administration had already stated that it would re-visit asylum seekers and refugees who had been admitted to the US under former president Joe Biden, with USCIS’s director declaring on Thursday that it would “completely reexamine every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern” in a “full-scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card.”

As more details about the alleged attacker, Lakanwal, become available, the policy changes are made.

During Biden’s Operation Afghans Welcome, tens of thousands of Afghans were relocated to the US after the withdrawal of Western forces, the Trump administration has repeatedly attributed the shooting to lax vetting practices.

According to reports in US media, Lakanwal was a member of an Afghan force called the “zero unit” that collaborated with the CIA in Afghanistan.

Lakanwal had mental health issues related to the unit’s actions, which included, among other abuses, extrajudicial and civilian killings, according to a friend who spoke to The New York Times.

Lakanawal applied for asylum in December 2024, according to a government report that was reviewed by the Reuters news agency.

However, the case was approved in April, a month after Trump’s second-term as president, with officials praising his efforts to fight in Afghanistan alongside the US. At the time, they discovered no discriminatory information.

Advocates claim that the Trump administration is accelerating immigration reform further.

According to critics, the crackdown targeted both migrant workers and vulnerable people, including refugees who sought refuge from persecution.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) San Francisco Bay Area chapter responded to the government’s decision on Thursday to stop processing Afghan immigration for immigration.

The organization argued that “people who flee violence, persecution, and instability deserve protection and due process, not to be vilified for the alleged acts of one person.”

The Afghan-American Foundation urged media and elected officials to respond responsibly.

After Israeli raids and missile attacks resulted in the deaths of at least 13 people in Beit Jinn, Syria, in a video. After Israel claimed to have entered the village to arrest Jama’a Islamiya militants, violent clashes broke out.