The swearing-in ceremony of Xiomara Castro, first woman to become President of Honduras, began at the National Stadium in Tegucigalpa. | Photo: EFE
Tegucigalpa, January 27 (RHC)-- Xiomara Castro was sworn in on Thursday as the new president of Honduras. The ceremony was held at the National Stadium in Tegucigalpa. Together with the President, Vice President Salvador Nasralla and presidential appointee Doris Guitiérres were sworn in.
During her first speech to the nation, Xiomara Castro said that "the presidency of the Republic has never been occupied by a woman. It has taken 200 years since independence was proclaimed. We are now breaking the chains. We are breaking traditions."
The new President announced that she would give figures on the social crisis of the country and would offer her government proposals to work on in the next few days. She commented that she received the country in bankruptcy. "The country must know what they (the previous administrations) did with the money and where are the 20 million dollars they took out in loans," she said.
"My government will not continue the vortex of looting. We must uproot the corruption of the 12 years of dictatorship. We have the right to re-found ourselves on sovereign values, not on usury and agiotage," she affirmed. "We have the duty to restore the economic system on the basis of transparency, efficiency, production, and social justice in the distribution of wealth and national income."
On the debt, she commented that it is practically impossible to meet debt maturities. "The only way is a comprehensive restructuring process through an agreement with private and public creditors," she said.
The head of state argued that most of the budget goes to salaries and wages. "This was not the lost decade like the 1980s, but the corrupted decade," she said. "Having economic resources available for investment in people is one of my fundamental missions in my mandate. The transversal axis of the next budget that I will send to the National Congress will be transparency and anti-corruption."
"The problem goes beyond energy," the Honduran president said, regarding the situation of the Empresa Nacional de Energía Eléctrica (ENEE). "ENEE is a stain left by the dictatorship. The options presented to me by the financial agencies is to contract more debt, but not to save ENEE, but to save the company's suppliers."
"In this act I deliver to the National Congress the national project that repeals the Law of the ZEDES (the Special Economic Development Zones (ZEDE)", he specified.
"No more death squads. No more silence in the face of femicides. No more hired killings. No more drug trafficking or organized crime."
Several world leaders participated in the inauguration, among them, the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, the Vice President of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
