Castro claims poll victory Honduras

Tegucigalpa -

Honduras’s tight presidential race took a jaw-dropping turn late on Sunday as the electoral board said a conservative was leading even as a leftist declared that she had won.

Conservative Juan Orlando Hernandez was leading in Honduras's presidential vote on Sunday, garnering 34.97 percent of the vote, the electoral board reported.

With 24 percent of ballots tallied, he was trailed by leftist Xiomara Castro, with 28.36 percent, the board said, stressing that no winner had been declared.

“We are not making a statement on who may win, nor have we declared a winner; still, these are real data,” council chief David Matamoros said.

Still, Castro, out on an unofficial limb, claimed victory for herself in what was expected to be a close finish in the poverty-stricken Central American nation.

“Today, we can say that we have won,” a rejoicing Castro told reporters.

And on her Twitter account, Castro said “based on exit polls that I have received from around the country, I can tell you... I am the president of Honduras”.

Her remarks, which could fuel tensions among the leading rivals, came minutes after another exit poll showed that Hernandez was leading her 33 percent to 27.

Matamoros earlier voiced hope the vote would “heal the wounds” of the 2009 coup d'etat that toppled Castro's husband, former president Manuel Zelaya.

Nine candidates in all were vying to succeed President Porfirio Lobo, who was elected after the coup in a controversial election boycotted by Zelaya's leftist allies.

Castro, with the Libre Party, could become the first female president of Honduras, the poorest country in the Americas after Haiti. An estimated 71 percent of the population lives in poverty.

Her main rival, speaker of the legislature Hernandez, is a supporter of the 2009 coup and a law-and-order conservative who has vowed to bring order by flooding the streets with soldiers.

The message from the ruling National Party candidate has resonance in this country of 8.5 million that records 20 murders a day - the highest rate in the world, according to UN figures.

Government institutions are so weak and the police so corrupt that Honduras is on the brink of becoming a failed state.

Gangs run whole neighbourhoods, extorting businesses as large as factories and as small as tortilla stands, while drug cartels use Honduras as a transfer point for shipping illegal drugs, especially cocaine, from South America to the United States.

Hernandez has promised to end violence by deploying 5 000 military police officers. Castro, in turn, has proposed a community police force to fight local crime and to deploy soldiers to the borders to halt drug trafficking.

Castro, who proposes “Honduran-style democratic socialism”, wants to rewrite the constitution and “re-found” the country - a move similar to the one that led to the coup that ousted her husband in 2009.

Hernandez claims that he can create more than 100 000 jobs by supporting Hong Kong-style “model cities” in Honduras.

Many Hondurans are ambivalent about his proposal to use soldiers to fight crime, because abuses attributed to the military during the coup period are still fresh in voters’ minds. - Sapa-AFP