Leftist candidate takes surprise lead in Honduras vote

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Early results from Honduras’ presidential election Monday showed the leftist challenger with a surprise lead over the incumbent, an outcome that could set the Central American country on a new path if it holds.

David Matamoros, president of the electoral court, announced around 2 a.m. that with 57 percent of the vote counted, Salvador Nasralla was polling at 45.7 percent to President Juan Orlando Hernandez’s 40.2 percent.

After announcing the partial results, the country’s electoral court went silent Monday, leaving many to worry whether attempts were being made to change the outcome.

Julio Navarro, a sociologist and political analyst in Tegucigalpa, criticized the electoral court. “It keeps failing us,” he said. “Last night it promised official results early and didn’t give them to us until dawn and still hasn’t offered more information.”

Amid the information vacuum, both candidates claimed victory.

Nasralla called for his supporters to celebrate in front of the electoral court’s offices, while Reynaldo Sanchez, president of the ruling National Party, sent a recorded message to party members saying it was time “to prepare our people to defend the triumph in the streets.”

Nasralla, a 64-year-old sportscaster and one of the country’s best-known television personalities, is making his second bid for the presidency. He is running as the candidate of an alliance formed with former President Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted by a military coup in 2009.

The alliance has campaigned on eradicating corruption and bringing in a new economic model, but has offered few details beyond its interest in moving away from privatization and other policies.

Honduras already has an anti-corruption mission backed by the Organization of American States, which has worked for more than a year to help strengthen the country’s crime fighting institutions. But Nasralla has said he wants a body more akin to that of Guaon temala, where a United Nations-supported commission has worked for more than a decade to prosecute corruption that has reached the president’s office.

Nasralla also vowed during the campaign to continue extraditing drug traffickers.

Hernandez, however, built his support largely a drop in violence — the homicide rate was once among the world’s worst. Honduras’ National Autonomous University says the rate has fell to 59 homicides per 100,000 people, from a dizzying high of 91.6 in 2011.