trouble lurking everywhere

disclaimer: kids, please don't try this at home. if you are writing some sort of report about Honduran current events, please don't use this as a source. i'm just a gringa living in Honduras.

I am surprised that it is only Monday night. Honduras narrowly missed a constitutional-sized disaster that put at stake a few things like democracy, balance of power and justice. I witnessed the atrocity that is public health care here, up close. Some things at my job are a bit crazy right now and my husband is out of town for work all week.

Allow me to explain...

Every 7 years, the Honduran congress elects a new Supreme Court. There is a process including a committee that I don't know all the details about, but, they basically start with a list of 90, then choose 45 and then vote to get it down to 15. There has been discussion about the re-election of Supreme Court Judges, but from what I understand, they can only be re-elected if the sub-committee includes them on the list of 45. This year's list of 45 did not include any re-electees. The National Congress was set to elect the 15 new judges from the list of 45. In order to uphold the constitution, they had to elect only from the list of 45 and do it by midnight last night. The first danger was that there was rumor that they wanted to re-elect 2 judges who were not on the list of 45. The congress was set to convene last night at 5 PM. The senators from the Liberales party did not show up until after 10. There were protesters outside and around the country calling for justice, calling for the Congress to uphold the constitution, calling for the congress to choose justice instead of corruption. What was at stake? For some white collar criminals (former presidents and other very high government officials), a jail sentence if certain judges were to form the new Supreme Court. For the Honduran people, stability, democracy and a balance of power between the three government branches. Many were gathered last night wondering what would happen. Would the Congress fail to elect a Supreme Court? Would Honduras enter into a string of consequences set-of by breaking the constitution (including postponing this year's elections)? What in the world is going on when this kind of thing can come so close to happening? We were relieved to hear on the radio as we drove home, that the Liberales had shown up and that a list of 15 had been chosen from the list of 45.