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By Peter Schurmann and Manuel Ortiz

Hondurans will cast their vote for the Central American nations next president on Nov. 28. The election comes amid violence and socioeconomic conditions that rank as among the lowest in the Western Hemisphere, alongside Haiti.

For many, Honduras warrants the status of a failed state. Yet, there are those here who believe the coming elections offer the best and perhaps last chance for change.

These elections are an opportunity to recover the democratic process and to confront the multiple crises impacting the country, said Gustavo Irias, executive director of the Center for Democracy Studies (CESPAD), a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of Honduras marginalized communities. This is a chance for Honduras to recover its sense as a nation.

That sense of nationhood was shattered in 2009, when the Honduran military ousted former president Manuel Zelaya. Since then, Honduras has remained under the control of the National Party, currently led by President Juan Orlando Hernndez, now finishing his second term under a cloud of suspicion, given his potentiallinks to drug traffickers.

The candidates seeking to replace him include National Party favorite and current Tegucigalpa Mayor Nasry Asfura, or Papi as he is known, and the Libre Partys Xiomara Castro, wife of ousted former president Zelaya. She has promised to curb the excesses of the free-market policies embraced by her opponent and is forging closer ties to China.

On Twitter, President Hernndez said when his administration began, there was no social justice, and those most in need were not helped. He claims he created something comprehensive and sustainable and that Honduras is no longer neglected.

Yet, violence, corruption and poverty are endemic here. As of 2019, 15 percent of Honduranslive on less than $2 per day, conditions likely worsened by COVID-19 and the impact of hurricanes Eta and Iota last year. Projections are more than half the country fell below the poverty line in 2020, according to the World Bank.

Such conditions are fueling an exodus of migrants from the country, with data from this year showing 168,546 separate reports of Hondurans detained by immigration officials in the United States and Mexico, according toa June report from the Migration Policy Institute. The report noted one-in-five Hondurans express a desire to leave the country, with reasons ranging from food insecurity to fear of assault and unemployment.

For some in the capital, the coming elections offer little hope for improvement.

Nothing is going to change, said Victor Manuel Mayorga, a public employee who says he has not been able to retire because the government stole the states pension funds. At 79, Mayorga is part of a tiny minority of senior citizens in a country where the median age is just 24. Many young people have died in the violence of the last four decades.

Sitting in the citys central plaza talking soccer with friends, he notes the lack of education and health care, and accuses officials of all political stripes of abandoning the country. I believe in democracy, but in Honduras it is broken. Its been broken since the coup.

However, not everyone despairs.

Csar Nahn Aquino, 44, is an auto mechanic from the town of Yoritos, about 125 miles north of Tegucigalpa. The town made headlines two years ago when residents successfully banded together to eject a mining company that had attempted to set up operations in the region.

A member of the Tolupn indigenous community, he ran a transportation company in San Pedro Sula before the COVID-19 pandemic, which he says eviscerated his business. Now he is back in his hometown, a largely agricultural region known for coffee, avocados and cattle ranching.

Were asking for the basics, to get rid of corrupt elections, transparency and reactivate the local economy, so it benefits people in the community, said Aquino, a supporter of local mayoral candidate Freddy Murio.

Murio is a formerly undocumented migrant who spent 12 years working construction in New York before returning to his hometown two years ago.

We have to start with our municipality before we can begin to change the country, Aquino said.

Back in the capital, officials acknowledge no single election will solve the challenges confronting Honduras. They say it is important to protect the integrity of the vote and secure the democratic process. Both are key to repairing the ongoing damage caused by the coup in 2009.

The only opportunity for the country to build a democratic foundation is through the coming elections, said Rixi Moncada, a lawyer and part of a three-person rotating chair with the newly created National Electoral Council, or CNE as its known by its Spanish acronym.

The CNE, responsible for delivering the final vote tally once the polls close, was created following widespread irregularities and violence that marked elections in 2017. Along with the National Registry of Persons and the Clean Politics Unit tasked with monitoring campaign finance in a nation where drug money and politics areinextricably intertwined these three institutions are responsible for ensuring election integrity.

Moncada, a former member of the Zelaya administration, admits it is no easy task.

No one is prepared for the criminality, she says, referring to the ongoing political violence she sees as an extension of the 2009 coup, including the recent murder ofNery Reyes, mayoral candidate and member of the opposition Libre Party, who was killed in October. No one has been arrested for the murder.

We are prepared for the process, she said.

The story Honduras Elections A Test for Democracy In a Failed State is published in collaboration with Ethnic Media Services.

Edited by Melanie Slone and Fern Siegel

The post Elections In Honduras Are A Test For Democracy In A Hard-Hit Nation appeared first on Zenger News.

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Elections In Honduras Are A Test For Democracy In A Hard-Hit Nation - Birmingham Times

Books by and about Chinese President Xi Jinping fill a display at the Museum of the Communist Party of China in Beijing on November 11, 2021.

Noel Celis | AFP | Getty Images

BEIJING A top Chinese official issued a rare criticism of the U.S. and Western democracy during a high-profile political press conference Friday.

The night before, Chinese President Xi Jinping joined the ranks of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping and became the country's third leader to oversee the adoption of a "historical resolution" at the close of a widely-watched meeting of the Chinese Communist Party, the sixth plenum of the party's Central Committee.

Mao led China for decades after the founding of the Chinese Communist Party a century ago. Deng spearheaded sweeping economic reforms four decades ago that reduced the state's role in the economy and allowed foreign businesses into China.

Chinese officials at Friday's press conference emphasized how the country would now follow Xi and his vision for a strong CCP-dominated system.

And for more than five minutes, Jiang Jinquan, director of the policy research office of the party's central committee, criticized the U.S. and Western countries for trying to impose their idea of democracy on China.

The electoral democracy of Western countries are actually democracy ruled by the capital, and they are a game of the rich, not real democracy.

Jiang Jinquan

director, policy research office of the CCP's central committee

"Democracy is not an exclusive patent of Western countries and even less should it be defined or dictated by Western countries," Jiang said in Mandarin, according to an official translation.

"The electoral democracy of Western countries are actually democracy ruled by the capital, and they are a game of the rich, not real democracy," he said.

While China's foreign diplomats and propaganda arms have made similar criticisms in the past, Jiang's remarks stood out due to the high-profile political context of the press event, and their specific mention of the U.S.

The U.S. plan to hold a "Summit for Democracy" in December is "an attempt to revitalize Western democracy," Jiang said. "To convene such a summit against [a] backdrop of loads of problems in Western democracy, ... the intention is nothing but bashing other countries and dividing the world."

He also pointed to public opinion polls showing widespread worries in the U.S. about American democracy, compared with overwhelming Chinese confidence in their own government.

A Pew Research study released Nov. 1 found that 72% of Americans say U.S. democracy used to be a good example for others to follow, but has not been recently. A study led by York University professor Cary Wu found local satisfaction with how the Chinese government handled the coronavirus pandemic.

"The Chinese constantly attack democracies as being not truly representative of the people but rather a cover for elites to keep control," said Scott Kennedy is senior advisor and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Certainly there are a lot of Americans disenchanted with our political system," Kennedy said, without referring to a specific poll. "The irony is that Americans are free to criticize their government. In China, expressing such an opinion could make you a dissident and get you locked up."

While criticizing Western political systems, Chinese officials on Friday promoted their country's own agenda and emphasized new models under Xi.

"Xi is using the past to serve the present and claim the future, by constructing a historical narrative that justifies his personal leadership and policy preferences as he looks to secure a norm-defying third term as leader at the 20th Party Congress next fall," Neil Thomas, analyst for China and Northeast Asia at Eurasia Group, wrote in a note.

Since Xi rose to the top of central government power in 2012, he has promoted his own state-centric political ideology, commonly known as "Xi Thought."

The official report on this week's "historical resolution" cemented Xi's political leadership by calling him the "principal founder of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era."

Economic development has been "front and center" for the CCP, said Han Wenxiu, executive vice minister at the finance and economic affairs office of the party's central committee. He referred to a meeting held in 1978, just as Deng was beginning to allow foreign businesses into China.

"As socialism with Chinese characteristics enters a new era, development has been given new meanings," Han said.

"We should cast aside the old development path," he said, noting that high-quality development is now more important like recognizing that "green and lush mountains are invaluable assets." Han maintained that Beijing would still like to "open up" and remain part of the global economy.

Many foreign investors and businesses have been caught off-guard this year by Beijing's crackdown on internet technology companies, after-school tutoring businesses and real estate developers.

Tech giants have subsequently tried to show they are in line with Beijing's effort to pursue "common prosperity," and focus on moderate wealth for all, rather than for just a few. That means addressing social problems such as high living costs and an impending labor shortage from a rapidly aging population.

Xi's view is that "ideological challenges are threats to national security," the Economist Intelligence Unit said in a statement. That will "indicate more assertive efforts to shape 'ideological education' across the country, in ways that may adopt an anti-Western tone. Economic reform, however, was barely mentioned, suggesting that the current tilt toward [regulatory] intervention will continue."

Chinese officials on Friday did not directly respond to questions on how policy goals might be affected by slowing economic growth.

Han from the economic affairs office said "entrepreneurs have multiple ways and means to contribute to common prosperity, the most basic of which is to operate lawfully and honestly." Han said stealing from the rich to help the poor in a "Robinhood" approach of forcing donations "would run counter to the original notion of common prosperity."

He also said that the "right way to contribute to common prosperity" includes paying taxes, performing "social responsibilities," and treating employees and customers well.

Correction: This story has been updated with the correct spelling for the name of Jiang Jinquan, the director at the policy research office of the CCP's Central Committee.

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China slams U.S. democracy as a 'game of the rich,' at an event promoting Xi's growing power - CNBC

(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Over 100 people spoke in opposition to the Utah Legislatures Redistricting Committee's only public hearing for the map proposals, Capitol's House Building, Room 30, Nov. 8, 2021.

By Kael Weston | Special to The Tribune

| Nov. 15, 2021, 6:10 p.m.

It is the smell of Fallujah where the biggest battle of the Iraq War happened in 2004 that has stayed with me most after all these years.

The decay of human flesh under bombed-out buildings filled the air, almost everywhere, that cold winter half a world away. I was the U.S. State Department representative charged with rebuilding the political process in Iraqs war-ravaged city of mosques. Mine was a job of epic proportions. Marine tanks were parked under damaged minarets and numerous platoons of Marine infantry teenagers, really patrolled dangerous streets as I sought out Iraqi local leaders to work with us, the American Occupiers, one long day at a time.

Now back home in Utah years later, if the rot of democracy had a smell, it would have filled the Utah Capitols House Building Room #30 Monday night across six hours. Along with hundreds of other Utahns, I attended the Utah Legislative Redistricting Committees only public meeting on their proposed political maps that will frame our state politics for the next ten years.

What I witnessed was democratic decay at its worst and happening in real time. Utahn after Utahn stood up, spoke out, in person and online, about the need to respect the will of the people when it comes to political mapmaking. There were teachers in the room. Activists. Environmentalists. A lot of Democrats but also quite a few Republicans. Old. Young. People of color and plenty of middle-aged white guys.

The theme was common: Listen to us, listen to the people. Respect the will of Utahns. And, sure as hell, do not gerrymander Utahs congressional map by politically cracking Salt Lake County into four pieces as their map did. Utahs largest county has been chopped three ways for the last decade. I know firsthand because I was the Democratic Party nominee in Utahs 2nd Congressional District in 2020, a vast area that covered 14 counties, almost half the state, from Farmington to Big Water (pop. 562), Tooele to Torrey, and St. George to the Avenues.

Redrock. Alfalfa. And, yes, skyscrapers much of the gerrymandered base, in other words, of Utahs disenfranchised and often demoralized Democrats.

In 2018, over a half a million Utahns, a majority, passed Proposition 4, which prioritized transparency, fairness and keeping communities of interest together in the redistricting process. Despite being politically neutered later on by the Legislature, Utahs Independent Electoral Commission and staff, and the nonpartisan group Better Boundaries, worked hard this past year, out in the open. The end product was good maps. Good choices for legislators.

None of this work was taken into account. Supermajority Republican legislators instead did their own thing. The entire evening smelled to high heaven, or rather all the way to electoral hell if youre a Democrat or member of a minority community in the most urban and diverse parts of the state.

I had done my democratic due diligence before this week. Across the last two months, I attended six legislative redistricting committee hearings, putting in over 500 miles in my old truck, joining legislators for their hearings in Rose Park, Richfield, Moab, Price, Summit County and in Clearfield.

In Rose Park, community leaders showed how cohesive their area was and should be a working class post-WWII suburb of Salt Lake (where my sister lived for several years in the 90s) with compact streets named after different varieties of rose bushes. At Richfield High, several rural county commissioners said the Legislatures job was, and this is a verbatim quote, to protect Chris Stewart. In Moab, a Monticello resident conveyed an outright us vs. them mentality toward Moabites. She urged visiting legislators to basically put a big red stockade wall between her self-described idyllic rural community and the loud and un-Utah, in her view at least, booming tourist mecca up the road.

In Price, a teacher described how Utah remains a tale of two states, with poverty and educational challenges unique to the post-coal area. In Summit, the volume was at its highest as residents described their own three-way political split, when their community of interest pointed most toward Salt Lake City not in the direction of Duchesne. In Clearfield, the subdued meeting was followed by a Mexican meal in town where a big Ford truck was parked out front with two Trump 2024 flags affixed behind the cab with tinted windows.

I left Mondays meeting not only deeply disappointed but even more deeply concerned about the future of our Beehive State and country. This redistricting process seems only to have further divided Utahn from Utahn, neighbor from neighbor, American from American. More incivility. More apathy (my vote does not matter logic and truth?). And likely more political violence, whether in months or years the next decade is a long time for political insults to go from simmer back to boil. January 6th as preview, not rear view.

The small politics on display in House Rm. 30 was a disservice to our state and our people. The dying of a democracy is not preordained, but it sure has a velocity of its own and in one downward spiral direction unless those of us who care enough refuse to concede.

So, what is to be done?

The next time we will get our say in a big way will be on the ballots in 2022, 2024 and beyond. Lets make our lists and check them twice. The deep rot of our democracy is painful to see, but we cannot look away, especially now.

We must not give up on our country or on our Utah neighbors, whatever their politics, and whichever part of the newest gerrymandered congressional district we will soon share.

Kael Weston, author, teacher, former State Department official and Rotarian, was the Democratic Party nominee in 2020 in Utahs 2nd Congressional District.

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Kael Weston: Legislature leaves the stench of rotting democracy in the air - Salt Lake Tribune

From December 9-10, the US government will host the first two Democracy Summits, where leaders of state, civil society, and the private sector will meet virtually to discuss challenges and threats to democracy. However, Guatemalas participation in the aforementioned event is uncertain.

According to a column by journalist Anders Oppenheimer in Miami HeraldThere are eight countries not invited by President Joe Bidens government, including Guatemala, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti.

Oppenheimer says that according to information from US officials, Argentina and Mexico appear as guests, who are de facto allies of the dictatorships of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Among the issues that will be discussed at the summit will be the general mistrust and the inability of governments to achieve equitable economic and political progress. Likewise, it will analyze how inequality and corruption are eroding democracy along with the advancement of authoritarian leaders who attack journalists and human rights defenders.

In Guatemala, the summit is preceded by some events of particular importance to the international community. Among them are the inclusion of Attorney General Consuelo Porras on Engels List (of corrupt actors), the persecution of journalists who have criticized the government and its allies in various state institutions, including the Public Prosecution Office.

For the United States, the Summit will provide an opportunity to listen, learn, and engage with a broad range of actors whose support and commitment are essential to global democratic renewal, a statement from the State Department read.

For its part, the Social Communication Secretariat at the Presidency of the Republic reported that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not received any official invitation, so it cannot issue any position.

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Guatemala will be excluded from the summit where the challenges of democracy will be discussed - Prensa Libre - Amico Hoops

The public debate on the threat to democracy typically focuses on the dangers from the right. At a time when an ousted US president refuses to acknowledge his defeat, this seems only too justified. But in their activist enthusiasm, progressive circles tend to overlook the inconvenient truth that alarming authoritarian tendencies have also taken hold on their side of the political spectrum. A few weeks ago, The Economist dedicated its cover to the threat from the illiberal left. So far, however, the progressive response has largely consisted of eye-rolling indignation as opposed to reflected self-criticism.

This is unfortunate given that democratic ideals of liberty and freedom lie at the centre of a perfect storm with classical opponents of liberalism and a new generation of adversaries establishing unconventional new coalitions.

The unique restrictions of fundamental freedoms in the wake of the pandemic, for example, have only rarely been called into question by progressives. In most Western democracies reflexes have replaced reflection as the fight against the pandemic has essentially followed Chinas authoritarian example. To the extent that Covid-19 measures were rejected by the extreme right, the progressive camp has resorted to discrediting even the slightest criticism as political recklessness.

By and large progressive voices caught up in the war against the virus did not seem particularly bothered by historically unprecedented curfews, quarantine regimes, border closures, and the elimination of privacy. Instead of calling for a measured response, progressives decided to stifle dissent under the guise of follow the science, frequently replacing discourse with paternalistic grandstanding and groupthink.

The principle of better safe than sorry is an unsuitable guideline for defending the values of liberal democracy.

The objective, of course, was to shield the politics of the pandemic against criticism. But recruiting science for the ever-escalating culture wars of the West did not result in the rationalisation of politics but rather in the politicisation and moralisation of science. Technocracy with its supposed rational self-evidence does not lead to a sacrosanct realm of quiet truth but to a democratic fall from grace and a public revolt against the ostensible absence of alternatives.

At present, it does not seem that the political left will be a leading voice in the growing chorus against sweeping, often arbitrary, and blindly indiscriminate measures of keeping us all safe in these unprecedented times. Isnt it ironic that social circles who until recently viewed the presentation of passports at international borders as an anachronistic imposition now enthusiastically welcome vaccination cards for daily errands?

This, however, is anything but a minor nuisance. After all, instances of state overreach tend to evolve into an insipid permanence. To this day, millions of international travellers scan their footwear on account of one madman who attempted to bring down a plane in 2001. And the exceptional police prerogatives introduced in the wake of 9/11 just celebrated their 20 years anniversary.

Despite this precedent, progressives do not seem overly concerned with defending personal autonomy against the stifling mix of virtue-signalling safety theatrics, rigid health bureaucracies, and Big Covid-Business. The principle of better safe than sorry, however, is an unsuitable guideline for defending the values of liberal democracy. An abundance of caution is in effect also an absence of liberty.

To make matters worse, the current great awokening of parts of the activist left has accelerated the shift away from freedom. Woke progressives are increasingly embracing essentialist group identities. Ambiguous notions of racial equity threaten to replace equality of opportunity with an anti-liberal equality of outcome. In this process, justice for individuals is routinely being replaced with justice for groups.

Leaving behind universalist ideals, however, undermines the principles of democratic equality, regardless of whether this assault is orchestrated by the right or the left. While the dangers of far-right ideologies of exclusion are with good reason widely discussed, the increasing anti-universalist tribalism in parts of the left is frequently glossed over as irrelevant or a right-wing illusion.

Considering liberty a finite commodity linked with the emission of CO2 has its own intricate pitfalls.

The German political scientist Jan-Werner Mller is a case in point. What is the matter with a liberalism that bashes a supposedly radical left minority in times when authoritarians in China, India and Brazil are expanding their power?, Mller asks in a recent essay. Certainly, drawing attention to authoritarian regimes is justified. But an equally pertinent question also deserves to be asked: What is the matter with a liberalism that fails to respond to legitimate criticism with self-reflection but rather with incensed finger-pointing? Have the proponents of woke not recently coined the term whataboutism to describe the practice of avoiding uncomfortable discussions by changing the topic?

Even with regards to freedom of expression, parts of the left are giving up on previously held principles. Surveys in numerous Western countries demonstrate that large parts of the public now shy away from openly articulating political opinions. In the United States, a recent survey by the libertarian Cato Institute reveals that given the prevailing political climate, 62 per cent of Americans refrain from expressing their views. In Germany in 2021, just 45 per cent of citizens responded that they feel like they can speak their mind freely.

But this trend does not affect the right and left in equal measure. In Germany, by far the least amount of pressure to adapt is perceived by supporters of the Greens. And in the US, the Cato-survey shows that only the very liberal group is confident to express their opinion openly at any time. The progressive camp may still believe in the ideal of liberty, but it is evidently not particularly successful in effectively communicating this professed tolerance to the opposing political spectrum. All great political action begins by saying what is, declared Ferdinand Lassalle in 1862. Parts of the left would be well-advised to revive this insight.

A similar process of shying away from liberty is notable in the climate crisis. Certainly, swift political action to protect the climate is necessary. There is no freedom on a planet on fire. But here too, important parts of the progressive camp have come to consider liberty a liability rather than a strength. There is widespread suspicion in activist circles that democratic processes will not be capable of dealing with the magnitude of the task at hand. This may or may not be true. But uncritically embracing states of emergencies as now declared by thousands of cities around the globe circumventing parliamentary work via the judicial process, and calling for massive restrictions on civil liberties is almost certain to produce negative outcomes in the long run.

In a time when liberty is threatened by enemies and appropriated by false friends, progressives must not to silently abandon this ideal but reclaim, redefine, and rediscover it.

Considering liberty a finite commodity linked with the emission of CO2 has its own intricate pitfalls. What is supposedly required is an act of wilful self-disempowerment in which a virtuous superego delegates individual responsibility to the community. This attempt to relieve the individual from accountability through the enforced regulation of climate-neutral behaviour on the state-level is reminiscent of what Theodor Adorno calls the authoritarian character. As such, it is the exact opposite of self-empowerment and individual responsibility long celebrated by the left. The idea that liberty is now primarily a function of what must not be done, echoes Orwellian euphemisms in which 2 and 2 equals 5 and war is just another word for peace.

In matters related to Covid-19, identity politics, and the climate crisis, important parts of the left are turning their backs on long celebrated ideals of liberty and freedom. And conspicuously, liberty seems to be losing its appeal precisely to the extent that progressive forces are gaining social and cultural hegemony.

In her essay The Freedom to Be Free, Hannah Arendt expresses hope that freedom in a political sense will not vanish again for God knows how many centuries. Arendts passionate call for freedom resonates through the ages. In a time when liberty is threatened by enemies and appropriated by false friends, progressives must not to silently abandon this ideal but reclaim, redefine, and rediscover it.

The text is a slightly edited excerpt from the recently published book: Vom Ende der Freiheit. Wie ein gesellschaftliches Ideal aufs Spiel gesetzt wird.

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The lure of progressive authoritarianism Democracy and society - IPS Journal