The ex-presidential hopeful called on people to gather around the location of the event to prevent the president from assuming his "fraudulent" new term.Salvador Nasralla, the former Honduran presidential candidate for the Opposition Alliance against the Dictatorship, said Friday that the "last chance" to prevent current President Juan Orlando Hernandez from acquiring a new term was Saturday, when he is expected to be sworn-in, because his re-election was carried out with "fraud".The new Honduran Congress held its first session Thursday, which the opposition protested and said was also void because the elections were fraudulent. Thousands of supporters of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez packed the National Stadium in the capital Tegucigalpa on Saturday as he took the oath to begin his second term in office. At the event, in which he vowed to “comply with and enforce the Constitution and law,” the 49-year-old Hernandez said he was “committed to developing a process of reconciliation among all Hondurans.” Hernandez takes on his new mandate in the impoverished Central American country of nine million with diminished legitimacy due to the controversial election. "This is how the dictator oppresses his people," said opposition presidential candidate Salvador Nasralla, who says the election was stolen and he was the true winner of the vote. The 1982 constitution bars presidents from seeking a new term and conservative politicians deposed a leftist president in 2009 for allegedly even considering re-election. Read more: Opinion: Honduras crisis was long in the making

Tear gas used on protesters

On Saturday, soldiers and police deployed tear gas to block thousands of demonstrators from reaching the national stadium to protest the inauguration. Political scientist Juan Ramon Medrano has said that the Honduran government “is showing signs of dictatorship.”

“In Honduras there is a political crisis” that the United States and the Organization of American States regional bloc “do not measure with the same yardstick as they measure Venezuela,” he said.
President Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado takes oath of his second presidential term amid protests led by Salvador Nasralla, former candidate for the Alliance of Opposition against the Dictatorship.