Tough Road Ahead For Honduras' New President Castro

Once Xiomara Castro's expected election victory is confirmed, making her Honduras's first woman president, she will immediately face a daunting panorama of challenges

Tegucigalpa, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Nov, 2021 ) :Once Xiomara Castro's expected election victory is confirmed, making her Honduras's first woman president, she will immediately face a daunting panorama of challenges.

With more than half of the votes counted, experts say Castro's 20 percentage point lead is "irreversible." Here AFP looks at the toughest obstacles Castro is likely to face when taking office as head of a country wracked by gang violence, drug trafficking, corruption and widespread poverty.

- Dismantling corruption According to Transparency International, Honduras is 157th out of 180 countries in its corruption perception index, making it one of the most graft-tainted places in the world.

Under outgoing President Juan Orlando Hernandez, the anti-corruption fight in Honduras suffered several blows in 2020.

Firstly a regional anti-corruption commission was disbanded, then congress passed a new criminal code to lower graft sentences, and finally a special appeals court dismissed charges against almost two dozen people accused of embezzling $12 million of public money.

Earlier this year a new penal code -- dubbed the impunity law -- came into effect that makes it tougher to try people for corruption.

The first task for Castro will be to reverse "all those laws and legislative reforms that previously allowed the current government to protect corrupt officials," said Victor Meza, the director of the Honduran Documentation Center NGO that promotes democracy.

It is a battle that she cannot win on her own, though.

"The issue of corruption and impunity is so strong that it needs outside actors to be able to" dismantle it, said Gustavo Irias, executive director of the Center for Democracy Studies.