Advantage, the old guard

JUAN ORLANDO HERNÁNDEZ, a right-winger who invokes God’s help to govern Latin America’s most violent country, appeared headed for victory in Honduras’s presidential elections, according to preliminary results on November 24th. But his main rival, the wife of a former left-wing president deposed in a 2009 coup, insists she has won and called out her supporters to contest the results.

After a partial count of results at almost 55% of the voting booths, Mr Hernández (pictured) was ahead with 34.3%, almost six points in front of Xiomara Castro with 28.7%. His victory would mean the National Party, whose members orchestrated the coup against Ms Castro’s husband, Manuel Zelaya, and are part of a pro-military old guard terrified of Venezuela-style socialism, continues in office. That would please rightists across Latin America.

But his ability to govern will by no means be as clear-cut as the margin of victory suggests. With the backing of only a third of the electorate, he will face strong opposition in Congress from Ms Castro’s new Libre party, the Liberal Party that she abandoned after the coup, and a new anti-corruption party that polled almost one-sixth of the vote.

The National Party itself is so discredited that Mr Hernández swiftly sought to distance himself from the outgoing president, Porfirio Lobo, who has mishandled the economy and presided over an explosion in Honduras’s murder rate. It was the worst in the world last year, and many elderly Hondurans, lining up to vote on November 24th, said that they had never known the country in a worse state.

The wild card in the next few days will be Ms Castro. She appeared to be stirring up trouble on Sunday night when, minutes before the first preliminary results were issued by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, she declared herself president (not even president-elect). Later, she complained of massive fraud and called a rally of her supporters on November 25th. Her followers still talk about the coup as if it were an open wound, and if she suggests she has been robbed of victory, they could get restless. Many harbour fears that a new militarised police force, fervently backed by Mr Hernández, could be used to suppress post-electoral protests.

That said, both the United States embassy in Tegucigalpa and European Union observers indicated the official results were trustworthy. What is more, Hondurans have a history of long-suffering passivity: when their neighbours were all caught up in civil wars in the 1980s, they were almost comatose. A consolation prize for Ms Castro’s supporters is that Congress now has a plurality that it never had before. But for Mr Hernández that plurality could make fixing a state that has almost run out of money a particularly thankless task. No wonder he asks for God’s help.

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