Hondurans Demand Resignation of President

Hondurans will take to the streets Wednesday morning to protest an alleged big scam by the Honduran Institute of Social Security (IHSS), which involves businesspeople, politicians, government ministers and the country's president, Juan Orlando Hernandez.

The left-wing Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre) called for the protests, which will include a march to the National Congress in the capital, Tegucigalpa.

They also demand that President Hernandez be questioned and explain his involvement in a funding scam that saw the transfer of large sums of money from the IHSS to the ruling National Party (PN) in the last political campaign.

Other opposition parties have also called on the government to clarify why the large checks from IHSS were made to various PN politicians' accounts during the campaign.

The director of the IHSS has denied the accusations, while the PN released a statement Monday denouncing the charges as a conspiracy against the government. Behind the plot are “political sectors that failed to gain the favor of the electorate at the polls, and failed to direct the destiny of the nation,” says the letter.

Meanwhile, the Central Committee of the National Party, announced Tuesday that it is willing to research the veracity of the corruption claims and the whereabouts of the IHSS checks issued on the campaign trail last year.

This is not the first time that PN politicians have been linked to the IHSS payment scam. In September 2014, police in Honduras arrested the former minister of labor, Carlos Montes, accusing him of bribery and streamlining illegal payments to companies where he was a member of the Honduran Institute of Social Security. According to the prosecution, the amounts exceeded US$500 million.

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