A historic day in unexpectedly unusual circumstances.
For the first time in its 100 years of history as a republic, a woman takes the reins of Honduras this Thursday.
And it does so, moreover, with a left-wing party and a moderately progressive agenda in a profoundly conservative nation.
The time has come day for Xiomara Castro: the former first lady assumes the government after an overwhelming victory in the November elections.
But what seemed in past months that it would be a day to remember in the region has been clouded by recent events that have caused the Castro government to enter into crisis before taking power.
A fraction of his own party decided last week to separate from the official position and appointed a president of Congress that was not the one previously agreed upon with the president.
And it is that in the race towards the elections, the Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre), of Castro, and the Salvador Party of Honduras (PSH), of Salvador Nasralla, made a pact that established that the latter would not present himself as a candidate for president if Libre guaranteed him the vice presidency and the possibility of electing the board of directors of Congress.
For that position, they had previously agreed on the appointment of deputy Luis Redondo, from the PSH.
However, as a result of an internal division within Libre, 20 deputies broke the pact and elected Jorge Cálix, from Libre, as leader of the Congress.
The seat of the legislature was the scene then of blows, shouts and discussions that led to two swearing-in sessions and two parallel congresses a few days after the inauguration.
- How Latin America and the Caribbean entered the White House’s radar as a crisis
- “The betrayal was consummated”: shouts, blows and scenes of chaos in the Honduran Congress after a split in the party of the elected president, Xiomara Castro
Regardless of how the situation is resolved, experts consulted by BBC Mundo agree that the crisis prior to the inauguration is a worrying announcement of the arduous task that awaits Castro at the head of one of the poorest and most violent nations on the continent.
At BBC Mundo we tell you about some of its main challenges.
one. A Divided Congress
The November elections that brought Xiomara Castro to power marked an unusual level of popular participation; however, they did not guarantee him a simple majority in Congress.
Now, with the congressmen of his party divided, the task of governing and passing a legislative agenda can be made more complicated for the president, regardless of who leads Congress.
“Honduras is a country with enormous challenges, with gang violence, with vulnerability to climatic disasters, such as hurricanes… And also with serious problems of corruption and drug trafficking,” Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin American Program at the Wilson Center, an independent analysis center in Washington, DC, tells BBC Mundo .
“And these types of problems are difficult to tackle in any circumstance. But especially hard when you don’t have a majority in Congress and you are going to face resistance from entrenched powers that have no interest in advancing in these areas”, he adds.
For the sociologist Eugenio Sosa, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Honduras, the division within the party itself of the president would also lead to giving more strength to the opposition within Congress and more margin to stop Castro’s agenda.
“This division of Libre, regardless of how it is resolved, gives the parties of opposition a lot of veto power, which will limit the approval of legislation that many of us are waiting for and that was promised during the campaign, such as the fight against impunity”, Sosa tells BBC Mundo.
two. A country in crisis
Castro, from 62 years old and wife of the ousted president Manuel Zelaya, comes to power at a difficult time for the Central American nation , marked by the coronavirus pandemic, growing violence and one of the highest levels of poverty in the continent.
According to data from the NGO Social Forum on Foreign Debt and Development of Honduras (Fosdeh), near 71% of the almost 10 Millions of the country’s inhabitants live in poverty and almost half of them in extreme poverty.
According to the organization, four out of every 10 inhabitants lack the resources to even buy a plate of food a day.
The nation also has a high homicide rate of almost 20 For each 100.000 population.
“For more than a decade we have had governments that deepened the serious structural problems that Honduras already had: poverty, social exclusion, employment. We have almost 4 million young people, mostly of labor force age, with serious employment problems”, recalls Sosa.
The country has also experienced numerous natural disasters in recent years, such as intense rains, droughts or hurricanes, which have led thousands of people to emigrate in large caravans to the United States.
But Sosa assures that one of the issues that most concern the country are what he calls “impunity in the face of corruption” and the existence of “major democratic setbacks”.
“Xiomara is inheriting the country in a very great condition of poverty , in a condition of very strong corruption, with a very weakened institutional framework and with an almost total mistrust of the citizenry”, he says.
“Also a country with a lot of disrespect for the Rule of Law, a Court Supreme Court with a lot of bias in the application of the Law and a Public Ministry that is very inoperative and incapable of making an investigation site on issues such as corruption or organized crime”, he adds.
3. Lack of reliability in government
According to data from Latinbarometro, less than 20% of the population of Honduras trusts the government, which will mean that Castro faces the complicated task of restoring the image of citizenship in its leaders.
“In the last 12 For years, trust in the government has been destroyed because we have had profoundly authoritarian mandates, with a lot of corruption and with strong allegations of links to drug trafficking,” recalls Sosa.
Currently, a son of former President Porfirio Lobo is in prison in the United States, as is the brother of outgoing President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), sentenced to life imprisonment.
The same JOH, who was re-elected in 675 although this is prohibited by the Constitution of the country, he runs the risk of being prosecuted in the United States for drug trafficking, after having been mentioned on several occasions during the trial of his brother ( the president outgoing party denies the charges against him).
According to Sosa, in this sense a fact in favor of Castro is that, with these precedents, he reaches the presidency with a high level of popular acceptance.
However, Arnson points out that the lack of a majority in Congress may cause the initial levels of acceptance to be diluted if the president does not achieve the mechanisms legislative to promote laws that impact people’s daily lives.
“It will depend on what it is capable of doing. People are fed up with corruption and fed up with insecurity. And if there are some high-level initiatives from the beginning to combat corruption, that could go a long way to restoring the credibility of government authorities,” he says.
However, Sosa recalls that for Therefore, the president will have to continue demonstrating that she is the one who governs and not “her husband’s shadow”.
“One of the criticisms made by the opposition is that it would be her husband who would be command from the shadows. But Xiomara during the campaign showed a lot of autonomy and although I believe that Zelaya will continue to be a voice within the party, that she will not be someone who will disappear, she has also demonstrated her leadership capacity and I hope she continues to do so, “he says.
4. International relations
One of the points that most attracted the attention of analysts inside and outside of Honduras is what would happen with the arrival of a new leftist government and regional and international partners.
And it is that during Zelaya’s term, his government distanced itself from the US and approached others of an authoritarian nature such as Venezuela and Cuba, which generated concern among local political and economic elites.
During his campaign, Castro also seemed to advocate distancing himself from Washington and even promised to establish relations with China and break diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
However, then she retracted and the Taiwanese vice president will be at the inauguration this Thursday along with the US vice president, Kamala Harris.
“The fact that she retracted is a strong signal. In other words, it is an important sign of his desire to have a positive relationship with the United States”, considers Arnson.
Sosa believes that this change in his international vision suggests that Castro seeks to adopt policies that separate it from the traditional “Latin American radical left”.
“It seems to want to seek a government that establishes open relations, that wants to govern and do what that it is possible and not to generate policies or lines of doing things that may resemble the ways in which they were done in the past and that scared some groups here a lot”, he considers.
According to According to the Wilson Center expert, the potential rapprochement occurs at a decisive moment for Central America, given the discrepancies between the Biden government and Guatemala, a traditional regional ally of Washington.
“Honduras is taking the place of Guatemala as a privileged interlocutor with the United States government. And in that sense, Castro has a lot to gain. But his ability to make progress in all the important areas is really a big question mark given the divisions in Congress,” he says.
5. Wide expectations in civil and human rights
Although in his campaign he advocated the defense of women’s rights and even referred to sexual minorities, one One of Castro’s challenges now as president, according to the experts consulted, is how far he can go.
Or how far the president wants to go.
And it is that In Honduras, sexual and reproductive rights, such as abortion, can put women in jail and homosexual people lack the right to marry and are socially discriminated against.
Given these circumstances, the most progressive groups in society expect Castro to initiate substantial reforms.
“Libertad y Refundación n has had a lot of support from women’s groups with a feminist ideology that demand the participation of women, that demand the freedom to make use of their body, that demand the freedom of sexual and reproductive rights”, recalls Sosa.
“But when one reads the program and the action plan, they raise respect for women’s rights and sexual diversity in a very general way. Issues such as abortion or same-sex marriage are not really on the table and I doubt very much that they are,” he says.
The expert recalls that Castro is Catholic, which may limit her to assuming positions that contradict the powerful Honduran Church
Arnson insists that, although there may be political will, the president will continue to hit the same wall she even faced before officially becoming president: Congress.
“She would have said that these types of changes were likely before what has just happened in the last few days in Congress. Now the divisions are very real and they are not going away anytime soon.
“Her schedule of hers is compromised with this recent fight early in the Legislature. I think overall the divisions in Congress that were highlighted this week make the overall situation that much more challenging,” she opines.
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