Official data in Honduras indicate that the leftist candidate Xiomara Castro will be the new president of the country by achieving an advantage over Nasry Asfura of almost 20 points with more than 51% of the minutes scrutinized. However, the conservative candidate has also been proclaimed the winner of the elections. Faced with a foreseeable turn to the left in the country, thousands of people celebrated in the streets of Tegucigalpa the provisional results of elections with a high turnout, which has exceeded 68%. According to official figures, Castro will obtain 53.6% of the votes compared to 33.8% for Asfura and 9.2% for the liberal candidate, Yani Rosenthal.

“Twelve years …”, Castro began by saying to his supporters, referring to the coup that removed her husband, Manuel Zelaya, from power in 2009. In his speech, Castro has said that he has no “enemies” and she has extended “her hand to the rest of the parties” in a message already made as a president in which she has even pointed out some lines of what will be her government, if victory is confirmed. Castro has affirmed that the people have put an end to “continuity” and “authoritarianism” and has announced a political reform for “a participatory and direct democracy” for a “just homeland”, rescuing his old promise of a Constituent Assembly. Castro assured that his victory means ending “corruption, drug trafficking and death squads.” In her few feminist references, she has assured that she will not fail “women” and that she will demand respect for them, “as well as what women want most: children and childhood.”

Honduras followed the vote count with the tension typical of important elections in which a country faces a change of model. Before the official results were known, the leftist candidate and the conservative were declared winners on all television and social networks shortly after the closing of the polling stations. Both proclamations announced a false equality that the official data were dismantling. In their strategy of trying to impose a narrative, the applicants border on surrealism when their teams declared themselves the winners at 11.00 (local time), alluding to “reliable” polls they had in their possession. At that time, the polls had only been open for a few hours.

Election day unfolded relatively calmly, although with specific complaints about the complex voting system, full of locks to prevent fraud, but which requires patience and for the internet and technology to work properly, something that is not always easy in many areas of Honduras. The turnout, above 68%, marks a record in the young Honduran democracy and gives legitimacy to the victory of Xiomara Castro.

On the opposite sidewalk, the National Party played to the distraction during the day despite the forcefulness of the result. Just a few minutes after 5:00 p.m., the official party published on its Twitter account: “We are winning, our mobilizers inform us that we have 1,225,000 registered nationalists who have voted for Daddy to order [como se conoce a Asfura]. Cachurecos, let’s take care and defend our votes! ”. Only half an hour later, the party of President Juan Orlando Hernández insisted on its position by publishing an image with Asfura’s face next to the phrase: “We won, we have a President.”

More than five million Hondurans, 70% of them under the age of 39, were called to the polls to elect a new president, 128 deputies and mayors in an atmosphere fraught with tension. The country of 10 million inhabitants chose between two antagonistic paths: Castro’s left and the conservative model of popular mayor Nasry Asfura. Castro leads a party close to Cuba and Venezuela, which proposes to legalize a minimum abortion and extend social programs. His proposal reflects the exhaustion of an exhausted country that daily expels its young people in massive caravans. For his part, the mayor of Tegucigalpa presented himself as a man close to the people who offers to modernize the country with public works as he has done with the capital. Until the last day his campaign combined the slogan of “work, work and work” with that of “homeland yes, communism no” in reference to Xiomara Castro.

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