34 The Americas The EconomistJanuary 27th 201812 candidates may wantLula’s name on the
ballot. Mr Bolsonaro portrays himself, im-
plausibly, asthe only man who can van-
quish him. “The chances of both are predi-
cated on meeting each other in the second
round,” says Mr Garman.
That is because a less divisive candidate
would probably beat either of them. Plen-
ty of people may be thinking of offering
themselves for that role, including Geraldo
Alckmin, the governor of São Paulo state,
Henrique Meirelles, the finance minister,
and Luciano Huck, a television star. None
has so far made much impression on vot-
ers. Whether he is on or off the ballot, the
passions that Lula stirs up will dominate
the elections. “We won’t give up on him,”
says Danielle, a primary-school teacher
who travelled overnight to Porto Alegre ex-
pecting a negative ruling by the court. “He
lost the battle but hasn’t lost the war.” 7A
NSELMO VILLARREAL was cycling
past a protest in Sabá in northern Hon-
duras on January 20th when he was shot,
apparently by a member of the security
forces. Mr Villarreal was the 32nd person to
have died in protests against the re-election
on November 26th of Juan Orlando Her-
nández as president of Honduras. In the
country’slast upheaval, a coup in 2009
against the then-president, Manuel Zelaya,
20 people died.
The post-election death toll may rise be-
fore Mr Hernández’s inauguration, sched-
uled for January 27th in Tegucigalpa, the
capital. But resistance isweaker than it
looks. The opposition Alliance coalition
had called for a nationwide strike, road-
blocks, a shutdown of international air-
ports and a vaguely defined boycott. So far
little of that is happening. Demonstrations
on January 20th in Tegucigalpa and San Pe-
dro Sula, the second-biggest city, drew few-
er than 1,000 people each. That is a far cry
from the tens of thousands who came out
a week after the elections.
That is not because Mr Hernández has
convinced Hondurans that he won fairly.
His main rival, Salvador Nasralla, a sports
broadcaster, led early in the vote count.
Only after a glitch interrupted the publica-
tion of resultsby the electoral commission
did Mr Hernández pull ahead, eventually
winning by 1.5 percentage points. That
looked fishy. Election monitors sent by the
Organisation of American States (OAS) ob-
served widespread “irregularities and defi-ciencies”. Its secretary-general, Luis Alma-
gro, proposed a fresh election. Many
observers thought Mr Hernández’s candi-
dacy was itself illegitimate. It happened
only because in 2015 the biddable supreme
court ruled invalid the term limit written
into the constitution.
Outside Honduras, almost no one is lis-
tening. The European Union, which also
sent monitors, described the election as
“well organised”. The Trump administra-
tion soon recognised Mr Hernández’s vic-
tory. The United States regards Mr Hernán-
dez, a tough-on-crime conservative, as an
ally in its fight against drug-trafficking and
migration from Central America. Some
500 American troops are stationed at the
Soto Cano air base in central Honduras.
Mostother countriesin the Americas,
including Argentina, Brazil, Canada and
Mexico, also backed Mr Hernández. They
dislike in general the idea of outsiders in-
fluencing countries’ domestic politics. “No
government...wants to have their election
process challenged in the international
arena,” says an official at a Honduran
NGO. That is especially true of the seven
that are holding national elections in 2018,
among them Brazil, Mexico and Colombia.
Some Latin American leaders regard Mr
Nasralla as a flaky leftist. The main except-
ions to the regional rush to endorse Mr
Hernández are the left-wing governments
of Venezuela and Bolivia.
Within Honduras, the opposition is not
trying very hard to overturn his victory.
Though he has called on supporters to
strike, Mr Nasralla has been presenting his
Sunday-morning sports show on televi-
sion. He appeared to concede defeat after
the United States backed Mr Hernández,
though without accepting the election re-
sult as fair. With Mr Nasralla’s retreat his
most prominent ally, Mr Zelaya, has public-
ly resumed his earlier role as de facto
leader ofthe opposition.
Tegucigalpa isbuzzing with rumours
that he has struck a private deal with Mr
Hernández. Mr Zelaya is thought to be
planning a presidential run in 2021. That
cause might be better served by amassing
influence and money with Mr Hernán-
dez’s help rather than by leading protests.
The president could give Mr Zelaya a say in
picking appointees to such important jobs
as chief prosecutor. He could allow Mr Ze-
laya’s Libre party, a constituent of the Alli-
ance, to gain control of congressional com-
mittees that allocate money. In return, Mr
Zelaya would wind down the protests and
let Mr Hernández govern.
Mr Almagro has been the loudest dis-
senter, for good reason. He led internation-
al condemnation of Venezuela’s drift to-
wards dictatorship; to bless Mr
Hernández’s dubious victorywould open
him to charges that he is applying a double
standard. The president’s friends accuse
Mr Almagro of seeking publicity to run forUruguay’s presidency in 2019.
His obdurate stand may have made
trouble forMACCIH, an anti-corruption
agency in Honduras set up by the OAS. On
January18th congresspassed a budget that,
in effect, grants congressmen elected since
2005 three years of immunity from charges
of stealing public money. It hobbles
MACCIH, whose mandate expires in 2020.
On January 22nd Mr Almagro appeared
to give up the fight, saying the OASwould
work “with the elected authorities”. Per-
haps he was being prudent. But his surren-
der leaves the country’s battered democra-
cy almost defenceless. 7HondurasA tarnished
presidency
Juan Orlando Hernández has little
legitimacy, but few real foesHernández, tough on crime and on votersM
ONTEGO BAY, Jamaica’s tourist capi-
tal, is also a hub for call centres. Many
work for American companies. But they
have less respectable step-siblings: people
who scam gullible Americans and brawl
with each other over the proceeds. The
worlds of scamming and tourism collided
on January 18th, when the government de-
clared a state of emergency in St James, the
parish whose capital is Montego Bay.
Its murder rate is three times Jamaica’s
and 50 times that of New York City. Last
year 335 people died violently in a district
with a population of 185,000. Britain and
Canada have told touriststo limit their
movements outside gated resorts.
One cause of the mayhem is scams in
which callers, using skills honed at St
James’s call centres and contact lists pur-
loined from them, ring up mainly elderlyJamaica’s lottery scammersBad vybz
A state of emergency in a Caribbean
tourist hubРЕЛИЗ
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