Hernández Alvarado, Juan
Orlando,
1968–, Honduran political leader, president of Honduras
(2014–21). A member of the conservative National party,
Hernández spent 16 years in the Honduran legislature before serving
as congressional president (2010–13). In 2013 he was elected
president of Honduras. He emphasized fighting crime and police corruption in
his first term, but he was forced to admit to having taken campaign
contributions from companies benefitting from social security corruption,
claiming ignorance of the origins of the funds. Hernández was
reelected in 2017 following a 2015 supreme court decision that voided the
constitution's single-term limit for presidents. However, his main opponent,
Salvador Nasralla of the Anti-Corruption party, was leading when vote-count
reporting stopped after more than 50% of the vote was counted; that lead
eroded after counting resumed, and Hernández ultimately was declared
the winner by a small margin. He has been accused of links to drug
traffickers; his younger brother was convicted of drug charges in the United
States in 2019. Hernández did not run for reelection in 2021, being
replaced by Nasfry Asfura as the leader of the Nationalist Party, who tried
to distance himself from his predecessor's corrupt rule. Nonetheless, the
leader of the opposing Libre Party, Xiomara Castro, garnered a majority of
the votes, becoming Honduras' first female president.
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