The main presidential elections in recent Honduran history may have the first woman as the winner. Xiomara Castro de Zelaya (Libertad y Refundación), 62, from the left, has 53.6% of the votes, with about 51.1% of this Sunday’s (28) vote counted. Honduran opposition leader, she is the wife of former president Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009), deposed in a coup d’état.
The ruling Nasry Asfura is in second place in the dispute, with 33.87% of the votes, and the businessman Yani Rosenthal comes in third, with just over 9%. As there is no second round in the Central American country, whoever gets the most votes at the end of the count will command Honduras until January 2026.
During polling time, independent journalists shared on social media reports of confusion at election centers and heavy policing in the streets, which raised fears that a repression similar to the one adopted by the state in 2017 would be repeated. That year, 23 Hondurans died amid protests against the election of the current president, right-wing Juan Orlando Hernández.
Although only half of the votes have been counted, the main candidate has claimed victory and promoted events with supporters in the capital Tegucigalpa. Xiomara held a speech Sunday night in which he claimed to have won and pledged to promote a government of reconciliation. “I reach out to my opponents because I have no enemies, I will call for dialogue with all sectors of Honduras.”
Venezuela’s dictator Nicolás Maduro, an ally of Xiomara and Manuel Zelaya, echoed the words of victory. The Venezuelan congratulated the candidate on a social network and said that, after 12 years of the coup d’état, “the people returned to the path of hope, giving a historic victory to the elected president, Xiomara.”
The president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Kelvin Aguirre, criticized the stance and said that no candidate could be declared the winner “until the last minutes are processed”. According to the organ, the election had the participation of 68% of the more than 5.1 million qualified to vote — the country has just over 9 million inhabitants.
So far, the CNE has not released preliminary results of the election of 128 deputies to Congress — if the ruling National Party maintains control of the Legislature, Xiomara would have difficulty ensuring governability. 298 mayors were also chosen.
In addition to facing domestic problems such as recurring allegations of corruption in positions of power and the presence of drug trafficking, the next president of Honduras will have a mission to deal with chronic poverty — surveys suggest that more than 50% of the Honduran population lives below the line. poverty.
There is also a responsibility to foster opportunities in the national territory, especially for the younger population, who have been emigrating en masse. The unemployment rate rose more than 5 percentage points in 2020, reaching 10.9%, largely due to the coronavirus pandemic that killed 10,400 people in the country.
During Sunday’s speech, Xiomara reiterated that she is committed to “assure young people that here in their homeland they will find what they need to generate opportunities and well-being for their family.” One of the main destinations for migration from Honduras, which, alongside Guatemala and El Salvador, makes up the so-called Northern Triangle, is the United States.
Hondurans are second only to Mexicans as the main nationality trying to illegally enter the South American border. At least 309,000 of them were detained by agents on the US-Mexico border during fiscal year 2021, when 1.7 million were detained in the region, a record number.
For this reason, the governability that the future president of Honduras will be able to ensure has also been a point of concern for Washington. A senior US State Department official told reporters last week that the election outcome “is an important moment not just for Hondurans, but also for Central America and the entire hemisphere,” according to reports by The Washington newspaper. Post.
Xiomara also consolidated her favoritism in the final stretch of the campaign with an agenda that includes the legalization of abortion in cases of rape —today the procedure is prohibited in the country in any case— and same-sex marriage.
The one elected to lead Honduras will also have to deal with the high numbers of murders of environmental activists in the country that, historically, leads the world ranking of social leaders murders. The best known name is Berta Cáceres, winner of the Goldma Environmental Award who died in 2016 in the middle of a dispute with a hydroelectric plant. In 2020, 17 activists were murdered in the country, according to monitoring by the NGO Global Witness.
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