Thursday 25 / April / 2024
Tegucigalpa: A flamboyant TV host took a surprise lead in the Honduran presidential election, initial results on Monday showed, upsetting forecasts of a win for the country's incumbent leader who is a close ally of the United States.
With 57 per cent of ballot boxes counted, Salvador Nasralla was ahead with an almost 5 point margin at 45 per cent, according to the first official results, released nearly 10 hours after Sunday's voting ended.
"I am the new president-elect of Honduras," Nasralla, 64, wrote on Twitter after the results were announced. Earlier, during the long wait for results, he and President Juan Orlando Hernandez had held competing events claiming victory.
Nasralla, who heads the left-right Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship coalition and has the backing of ousted former president Manuel Zelaya, had 45.17 per cent of the vote.
The National Party's Hernandez had 40.21 per cent, according to the country's election tribunal. With Hernandez not yet conceding defeat, a close result could lead to tensions in a poor Central American country that has suffered years of brutal gang crime and drug wars.
After the results were announced, Hernandez reiterated in a brief statement that he had won, and urged supporters to wait for fresh vote counts to come in from rural areas, where he enjoys greater support.
Longtime favourite Hernandez, 49, has been credited with lowering a sky-high murder rate, accelerating economic growth and cutting the deficit since he took office in 2014. But he has also been hurt by accusations of ties to drug and graft-stained financing and claims by opponents he is plotting a power grab.
A victory for Nasralla would be a blow for the United States, which sees Hernandez as a reliable ally in tackling drug trafficking, gangs and migration. The United States has longstanding military ties to Honduras and few ideological allies among the current crop of Central American presidents.
Relations with Nasralla are not so established, although he travelled to the United States in September. He said at the time he had explained to U.S. lawmakers whom he met the true reality of the situation in Honduras, accusing the Hernandez government of trying to rig the election. A U.S. official said he did not think Hernandez would now be able to catch Nasralla in the vote count, despite the fact that many votes were still to be counted in rural regions.
He called this "a real stress test for Honduras' democratic institutions and the leadership and character of its political figures." "This could drag on for weeks," the official said.
Hernandez's attempt to clinch a second term was divisive in Honduras, which is still dealing with the fallout from a 2009 coup. Zelaya, a leftist ally of late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, was ousted after proposing a referendum on lifting term limits.
Hernandez's own re-election bid was made possible by a contentious 2015 decision by the Supreme Court. Zelaya was at Nasralla's side on Monday morning. As coordinator and, many believe, the true power in the Alliance, Zelaya would be a major beneficiary if Nasralla wins. Zelaya lost power amid concerns he was plotting to adopt socialist policies in Honduras, a country where a conservative business class wields enormous power.
The United States wrestled with how to handle the coup, and Zelaya remains a bogeyman for U.S. officials and many of Honduras' elite. "We won," Zelaya wrote on Twitter. Campaigning on an anti-corruption ticket, Nasralla has not suggested he would scale back security cooperation with Washington, but U.S. officials instinctively distrust his ties to Zelaya.
"Now he can back up his anti-corruption positions. Or not," the same U.S. official said, noting the U.S. government expects to work "cooperatively in a number of ways" with Nasralla.
The son of a wealthy landowner, Zelaya nearly returned to political prominence in the 2013 election, when his wife, Xiomara Castro, lost out to Hernandez. With his big black moustache and penchant for cowboy hats, Zelaya is a larger than life personality whose supporters fete him for having boosted minimum wages. Nasralla is one of the country's best known faces as the host of game shows. With his booming voice and finely coiffed hair, he looked poised to be the latest entertainment star in the Americas to breach the upper echelons of political power.
In Guatemala, former TV comedian Jimmy Morales won the presidency in 2015, but his support has eroded after he clashed with a U.S.-backed anti-graft body probing his family.
