Security key issue in Honduras elections

Tegucigalpa, Nov 25: Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández, who has governed the country since January 2014, has expressed hope that on Sunday voters would re-elect him for another four-year term.
Mr Hernández is the first presidential candidate in Honduras’s recent history to run for re-election as an incumbent. A BBC report said that an incumbent running for re-election in the country would not raise eyebrows in most other countries but it has caused consternation among some in Honduras. That is because until recently, the Honduras constitution limited Presidents to a single term in office, the BBC report added. But in 2015, the country's supreme court lifted the ban on Presidents serving a second term. The decision proved controversial, with many in the opposition saying the supreme court did not have the power to overturn an article of the constitution. It particularly rankled with the supporters of Manuel Zelaya, the former president who was forced into exile by the military in 2009 after he proposed holding a referendum on whether to scrap the ban on presidents running a second time. Critics of President Hernández said it was unfair that he should "get away" with changing the constitution when the sheer proposal of a vote on the issue had cost Mr Zelaya his job just a few years earlier. Despite vociferous protests, Mr Hernández said he planned to seek re-election and in March his National Party chose him as their candidate in the party's primary. Opinion polls gathered earlier this year suggested he was the frontrunner despite the controversy about his candidacy not abating. Eight other candidates are standing against President Hernández. UNI