President of Honduras
The President of Honduras () officially known as the President of the Republic of Honduras (Spanish: "Presidente de la República de Honduras"), is the head of state and head of government of Honduras, and the Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. According to the 1982 Constitution of Honduras, the Government of Honduras consists of three branches: Executive, Legislative and Judicial. The President is the head of the Executive branch, their primary duty being to "Execute and enforce the Constitution, treaties and conventions, laws and other legal dispositions." The President is directly elected for a four year term.
Erick Martínez Ávila
President Manuel Zelaya was forced from office in a coup on June 28, 2009. President Porfirio Lobo Sosa had lost to Zelaya in 2005 and ran again and won in the November 2009 elections that followed the coup. Initially, the United States criticized the Honduran military's role in deposing the nation's democratically elected leader. However, it sent signs of support for the newly elected President Lobo after his election and the US continued to send military and security aid for drug enforcement and crime. The US broke off assistance for four months to the Hondurans in their fight against drug trafficking after the Honduran Air Force shot down several airplanes in a violation of international law in July 2012. Impunity in Honduras, especially in the high visibility cases of journalists and lawyers, is one factor behind members of the US Congress applying pressure on the US administration to withhold $50 million in aid unless Honduras was able to show an improvement in its human rights situation. According to a report in "The Nation", 10,000 civilian complaints against the abuse of power have gone uninvestigated since the 2009 coup.