To Pamela Cruz. Peninsula 360 Press [P360P]
Tegucigalpa, Honduras. – Xiomara! Xiomara! Xiomara! was heard over and over again among car horns, shouts, hugs, and music. On Monday night and early morning, the streets of various cities and departments of Honduras were painted red, an unstoppable red tide that showed that, after a long day of elections, the preliminary results indicate that the country will have its first female president in history.
And it seems that the third time is the charm. According to data from the National Electoral Council of Honduras (CNE), 51.45 percent of the votes have been counted, and the presidential candidate of the Liberty and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), Xiomara Castro, is leading with 53.61 percent of the votes.
Nearly 20 points behind, the candidate of the National Party of Honduras, Nasry Juan Asfura Zablah "Papi", follows him, who, despite the support of the current government, has not been able to catch up with the left-wing candidate and only has 33.87 percent of the votes.
Xiomara Castro has swept the polling stations that were set up throughout the country, which reflects the population's weariness with the National Party and a candidate who would give permanence to a project that has permeated the country after the 2009 coup d'état.
The CNE has detailed that 5,182,425 voters were eligible to vote, of which there was a participation of 68.9 percent.
Who is Xiomara Castro?
The virtual president of Honduras is originally from the country's capital, Tegucigalpa, where she was born on September 30, 1959, and began her political career by leading protests in the streets to have her husband, Manuel Zelaya, restored to power, after he was overthrown on June 28, 2009.
However, Xiomara has a career as a business administrator, has 4 children, 5 grandchildren, and 44 years of marriage to Manuel "Mel" Zelaya.
Xiomara belonged to the conservative Liberal Party, under whose banner her husband was president of Honduras ‒2006-2009‒ and she was the nation's first lady. However, after her husband's overthrow, Castro gained more strength and followers, which made her become the presidential candidate of the newly founded LIBRE Party ‒2011‒, for the general elections of November 2013.
In that case, his first attempt was unsuccessful: he lost to the conservative candidate of the National Party, Juan Orlando Hernández. In 2017, he tried again under the same banner of the LIBRE party, but he lost again, against the same candidate, who was reelected in an election that has been branded nationally and internationally as fraudulent.
On January 27, 2022, Juan Orlando Hernández will have to hand over the presidential chair to Xiomara Castro, the first woman to be president in the country's history, one whose party is left-wing and who seeks to change, at all costs, "the obsolete and exhausted system that oppresses us," she said in her government plan.
For the 2021 elections, Castro presented himself with the offer of the “construction” of a “socialist and democratic State”, highlighting “the protection of the rights of the sovereign people and nature”, according to his Government plan.
The first of the three designated vice presidents of Xiomara Castro is Salvador Alejandro Cesar Nasralla Salum, with whom she formed the Opposition Alliance against the Dictatorship, which after failing and entering into confrontations, reunited, with the difference that, on this occasion, it was Nasralla who gave up his candidacy for the Salvador Party of Honduras.
Castro's other two appointees are: Doris Alejandrina Gutiérrez, a Honduran lawyer and politician, and doctor Renato Florentino Pineda.
The outlook for Xiomara
Castro's virtual victory was a testament to Hondurans' frustration and weariness with widespread poverty, crime, violence, corruption at all levels of government and the continued failure of elected leaders to address these problems.
It is worth remembering that, in 2019, 48 percent of Hondurans were below the poverty line, while 70 percent were underemployed.
The situation has worsened over the past two years, as Hondurans' difficulties have been aggravated by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and hurricanes Eta and Iota.
These natural phenomena hit the country hard in November 2020, causing damages of 1.9 billion dollars and affecting four million Hondurans. Thus, the combination of these two situations caused the Honduran economy to contract by 9.0 percent in 2020.
Problems such as crime and insecurity are issues that will undoubtedly have to be addressed upon reaching the presidential chair. The homicide rate in Honduras during 2020, despite improving compared to 2019, was 37.6 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in the region.
Corruption and drug trafficking have also plagued power, as the nation's current president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, has been publicly named as a co-conspirator in a drug trafficking case in a US court, which resulted in the conviction of his brother Tony Hernandez.
Furthermore, President Hernández's predecessor, Pepe Lobo, the former president's wife and son, as well as current presidential candidate Yani Rosenthal, have all been convicted or credibly charged with ties to drug trafficking or money laundering.
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