Nine days after the presidential elections in Honduras, international observers and some members of the Electoral Supreme Court have confirmed irregularities in the counting of votes, aiming to keep Juan Orlando Hernández, of Partido Nacional, as president.

The counting of votes is being carried out with the suspension of individual liberties through a curfew imposed by the president who seeks reelection. Nevertheless, the measure has not had any effect on the population, who are witnessing how their will expressed in the ballots is being taken away and they are massively responding with street actions and night protests called by the Convergence against Dictatorship.

Reelection in Honduras is explicitly prohibited in the Constitution, but Hernandez sought reelection with the complicity of extremely influential international actors, such as the US and the European Union, who have remained silent in the months before the election and even now amid irregularities, said Carlos Humberto Reyes in the interview with Real World Radio.

Reyes is the president of Beverage Workers Union (STIBYS) in Honduras and a reference for the International Union of Food and Agricultural Workers (IUF).

“Throughout history, Honduras has had the role of gendarme of the US in Central America”, said Reyes. The beverage unionist has been a reference for the National Popular Resistance Front of Honduras, which was created after the coup d´Etat by Roberto Micheletti that ousted José Manuel Zelaya in June 2009.

Eight years later, Reyes says that even with rigged electoral results and with the massive mobilizations carried out this weekend, it is clear that the huge majority of the population do not support Hernández. Therefore his permanence would be an omen of widespread repression that would end up in “massacres”, thus worsening the crisis of violence against human rights defenders in the country.