Honduras faces repeat of 2009 coup

HONDURAN presidential challenger Salvador Nasralla alleged ballot fraud and urged protests for Wednesday as troops rolled toward the capital.

Fears of a repeat of the 2009 US-backed coup against president Manuel Zelaya were raised after video posted on social media on Tuesday showed long lines of army trucks carrying soldiers on the road from Sigatepeque to La Esperanza — west of the capital Tegucigalpa.

Counting of votes in Sunday’s presidential election resumed after a mysterious two-day hiatus.

Mr Nasralla’s five-point lead over incumbent Juan Orlando Hernandez rapidly shrank to 24,000 — less than one per cent — with around half a million ballots left to count.

The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) promised a final result by Wednesday night.

On Tuesday Opposition Alliance candidate Mr Nasralla accused the ruling National Party of Honduras (PNH) of pressuring the TSE, which had called his 45 per cent to 40 per cent lead irreversible days earlier, to steal the election.

He said: "The company hired to give out the results, under pressure from the magistrate president, removed security mechanisms from the data transmission system."

Mr Nasralla called on his supporters to take to the streets to protest the fraud, insisting: “We’ve already won the election.”

“I‘m not going to tolerate this, and as there are no reliable institutions in Honduras to defend us, tomorrow the Honduran people need to defend the vote on the streets.”

PNH National Secretary Juan Zelaya — no relation of the ousted president — called his supporters on to the streets on Tuesday to “defend the triumph,” despite his candidate still trailing at the ballots.

Mr Hernandez succeeded party mate Porfirio Lobo, who took over from Liberal Party congress speaker Roberto Micheletti.

Mr Michelletti was made interim president after the military coup against Manuel Zelaya after he won a referendum to extend the presidential term limit — with a pledge not to seek re-election.

The coup condoned by then-US secretary of state Hillary Clinton with the support of former Republican senator Jim DeMint, a prominent backer of US President Donald Trump.

It was followed by a vicious security crackdown with the murders and disappearances of Zelaya supporters and others, including indigenous campaigner Berta Caceres.

Mr Nasralla has said his supporter Mr Zelaya would have influence in a new government, and his wife and former presidential candidate Xiomara Castro would join his cabinet.

He has also promised to review the siting of a US military air base in the country that Mr Zelaya vowed to convert to civilian use.

The mystery of the Guanches

The origins and language of the indigenous people of the Canary Islands remain a mystery, writes Dr Sabina Goralski Filonov Translation by James Tweedie The guanches, the aboriginals of the Canary Islands whose origin, lost in the mists of time, still arouses intense and passionate debate and great controversy about their origins and the how the seven Canary Islands were populated – which according to some studies occurred between 10,000 and 8,000 years BC. Literally, the word ‘Guan’ means man or person and ‘Chenech’ or ‘Chinet’ is applied to the island of Tenerife, thus meaning a man or inhabitant of Tenerife – although according to Núñez de la Peña, the Spanish named them the Guanchos during the conquest of the islands. But with the passage of time, experts in the subject are questioning whether the word Guanche was used to designate the primitive inhabitants of all the islands in the pre-Hispanic period. The term ‘Guanche’ has also ceased to be applied to the di...

Homeless dogs’ home fights for compensation

Dingo Dogs owner Phil Nelson at his since-demolished home. DOGS’ home owner Phil Nelson has vowed to take legal action following his eviction from his Dingo Dogs animal sanctuary in August. by James Tweedie Indian-born Mr Nelson, along with former girlfriend and Dingo Dogs treasurer Leigh Crouch were left homeless by the court-ordered eviction and have been sharing a small hut in the mountains near Las Chafiras with ten dogs and three cats ever since. Mr Nelson’s dispute with his former landlord began in September 2004, after he officially registered his rented hillside finca as an animal sanctuary. It was a requirement of his registration that he keep proper financial records, including receipts for payment of rent. Mr Nelson says that despite having a rental contract and paying his rent “as regular as clockwork” for years, his landlord never gave him a receipt even after he began asking for one every month in 2004. In May 2005, after his landlord ha...

No 'day in court' for Zuma as supporters take Durban

The trial of South Africa's ex-president Jacob Zuma was postponed for two months on Friday pending his legal challenge to the resurrection of decade-old corruption charges. Outside the Durban High Court, thousands of Mr Zuma's supporters from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and other organisations brought the Indian Ocean port city to a standstill. Zuma supporters rally around a stage set up outside the Durban High Court The ANC Women's League, Youth League and Umkhonto we Sizwe Veterans' Association were present, along with the Black land First Campaign, National Interfaith Council of South Africa, the Commission for Religious Affairs. Revellers wore ANC t-shirts and other merchandise in defiance of warnings by Police Minister Bheki Cele Former minister Des van Rooyen and Eastern Cape ANC leader Andile Lungisa accompanied Mr Zuma to the doors of the court. Inside he sat smiling a few feet apart from Christine Guerrier, a representative of Fre...

Sun-crossed haters endanger 220,000 lives

My stepmother Shanthie Naidoo and her sister Ramnie were on an overnight flight from Johannesburg to Heathrow for a speaking tour when Extinction Rebellion offshoot Heathrow Pause began wilfully endangering aircraft by flying drones over the airport this morning. Shanthie is an ANC struggle veteran who lived in exile in London from 1973 to 1993, apart from some time in the exile community in Mazimbu, Tanzania. She and all her immediate family were jailed by the Apartheid government for political reasons. Shanthie's late brother Indres did 10 years on Robben Island and later wrote the book 'Island in Chains'. Their grandfather Thembi Naidoo worked alongside Mohandas K Gandhi during the civil disobedience campaigns against the early form of Apartheid. Extinction Rebellion has chosen for its logo a variation on the 'sonnenkreuz', a symbol used by both proto-fascist neo-pagan organisations and modern neo-Nazis. Around 220,000 passengers fly in and out of Heathr...

The Labour-Snatchers

WHAT do you call an event that would see a country lose a third of its population? A catastrophe? An apocalypse? In Europe they call it “Union.” According to the Vienna-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the “free movement of labour” between European Union member states will see that fraction of some countries' populations emigrate in the next 40 years. A recent IIASA study, reported on Friday by the EU Observer website, says Romania and Croatia's populations will fall by 30 percent by 2060, and Lithuania's by 38 percent. By contrast, eight years of the West's proxy war on Syria, when much of the country was overrun by terrorists who behead followers of other religious sects, has seen between 12 and 23 percent of the population flee the country. The 1983-85 Ethiopian famine killed about 1.2 million people and drove another 400,000 out of the country, about five per cent of the population at the time. Another 41 years of EU...

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