I REPORTED from inside Honduras during the US-backed coup in 2009, and it’s looking awfully like the groundwork for a second coup is being prepared.

The signs are ominous: the unexplained halting of the vote count after left alliance candidate Salvador Nasralla took an early and irreversible lead, the intimidation of journalists, the torture and murder of social movement activists and the convoys of military trucks captured on film streaming towards the capital.

Right-wing president Juan Orlando Hernandez, whose administration and family are implicated in drug smuggling and money laundering, has refused to concede defeat.