"Outgoing President Juan Orlando Hernandez, in power since 2014, repurposed the courts and electoral council to tilt the playing field against opponents. The feared Military Police harassed government critics and killed dozens of opposition protesters. And according to testimony from the drug-trafficking trial of Hernandez’s brother—now serving a life sentence in U.S. federal prison—cartels penetrated all levels of public office.... For countries like Honduras, the dilemma isn’t so much building democratic institutions as rebuilding them—often under the shadow of entrenched corruption and organized crime. Moreover, elected autocrats know how to linger. Even after losing office, they tend to keep control of political parties, which they use to sabotage institution-building and thwart justice, while appearing to play by democratic rules... Just a day after the election, Hernandez published an executive decree that turned virtually the entire appointed executive bureaucracy into permanent career positions—a bid to keep his party plugged into power that, although unlikely to succeed, is sure to generate confusion...Meanwhile, the National Party’s delegation in Congress... Before election day, the National Party bloc also altered Honduras’ law on money laundering, enabling judges to dismiss charges against 10 suspects in corruption cases tied to the Hernandez administration."