Today, the Honduran Congress celebrates a month without having been able to appoint the attorney general and his deputy because the ruling party and the opposition do not gather the 86 votes of the 128 deputies needed for the election.
Oscar Chinchilla and Daniel Sibrián, attorney general and deputy attorney general, ended their five-year term on August 31. On September 1st the substitutes had to take over.
The deputies have to choose from a list of five candidates, previously selected by a board, after evaluating their resumes and interviewing thirteen candidates.
In the session of August 31, the opposition parties, which have a majority in Congress, managed to add 72 votes and the ruling party Libertad y Refundación (Libre, left) reached only 52.
Throughout the month, Congress suspended sessions, and commissions from both parties met occasionally trying to reach an agreement to adjust the 86 votes needed, but the attempts failed, the AFP news agency reported.
The head of the National Party (PN, right) bench, Thomas Zambrano, maintains that the opposition will not vote for prosecutors “tailored to Libre” who could unleash “political persecution” against the leaders of his political group, the same that brought Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2018/2018-2022) to power, today imprisoned in New York accused of drug trafficking.
On the contrary, Carlos Zelaya, vice president of Congress and deputy of the ruling party led by President Xiomara Castro, assured that his party “cannot support a candidacy that will continue giving impunity to everything that happened in this country” in the Hernández governments.
He assured that the candidates presented by the opposition “have been accompanying Chinchilla and Sibrián for 20 years” because they are part of the prosecutor’s office.
“The leaders of the political parties must agree and reach a consensus and end the dilemma surrounding the election of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general,” the president of the Supreme Court of Justice, Rebeca, pleaded before the press. Obando.
Source: Ambito
