the elections Generals that Honduras The elections will be held on Sunday, November 30, finding the country in one of the most tense pre-election scenarios since the 2009 coup. The process, in which 6,522,577 Hondurans will elect the president, deputies, mayors and representatives in the Central American Parliament, is beset by institutional disputes within the National Electoral Council (CNE), conflicts with the armed forces, and an environment of high mistrust among citizens. To add more doubts to the prevailing state of uncertainty, just two days before the opening of the polls, the scene was hit by a political earthquake with a continental impact.
In a surprise message posted on Black Friday on his Truth Social website, just one day after he expressed his support for the Honduran candidate, the US President said: Donald Trump It was announced that it would grantpardon “Full and complete” by the former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH) who was sentenced in the United States to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking. The announcement directly challenges the March 2024 ruling of the Southern District Court of New York, which found Hernandez guilty of conspiring to introduce more than 500 tons of cocaine into the North American country and receiving bribes from “Chapo” Guzmán.
Trump’s decision not only contradicts the evidence of his own judicial system, but it politically energizes the National Party at the most sensitive moment of the election campaign. The party structure that ruled Honduras between 2010 and 2022, and whose legitimacy crisis allowed Xiomara Castro He came to power under the popular slogan “Get out inside”– Now he receives an unexpected symbolic endorsement from Washington. This gesture reshapes the political table: it deepens polarization in a scenario presented by all three, and gives the National Party a narrative of “unjust oppression” that can move undecided people in a very closed electoral context. However, deepening polarization may also favor a government that Trump describes as communist.
Authoritarians don’t like this
The practice of professional and critical journalism is an essential pillar of democracy. This is why it bothers those who believe they are the bearers of the truth.
Trump is using the attack in Washington to toughen his anti-immigrant policy
During the election campaign, electoral preferences focused on three of the five candidates Rexy Moncada (LIBRE), former Minister of Defense and central figure in Xiomara Castro’s government; Nasri Asfoura (National Party), former mayor of the central region, W Salvador Nasrallah (Liberal Party), media personality and three-time candidate, returns to competition after a break from the ruling party.
In a country where family ties to the US diaspora are crucial to opinion formation and whose GDP relies heavily on remittances, the US president’s intervention has the potential to spread into homes, community networks and the country’s regional structures. The intervention is not simple: it modifies perceptions, changes the electoral climate, and raises doubts about the independence of the process that should be governed solely by the will of the Honduran people.
All this is happening while the National Electoral Council faces its own internal crisis. The lack of a logistical provider to transport electoral materials led to clashes with the armed forces. The controversy over the Transmission of Preliminary Results (TREP) system, and the mutual accusations between advisors, deepened the state of mistrust. In addition, there are leaked audio recordings that supposedly involve party and military leaders in destabilizing plans. It is a set of events that shows an electoral institution that is fragile and highly vulnerable to external and internal pressures.
In this climate, the presidential contest is heading toward a technical tie with a great deal of uncertainty, with each candidate claiming to have victorious prospects. This dynamic increases the risk of a narrative dispute over victory emerging on Sunday night, in an environment where institutional trust is eroding and foreign interference adds an additional factor of tension.
In the face of this situation, the basic statement must be firmly affirmed: the only sovereign authority is that of the Honduran people, who will appear at the ballot boxes through their electoral institutions, as the various international observation missions present in the country have warned. The normalization of external interference poses a direct threat to the democratic self-determination of Honduras and all of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The immediate challenge is to prevent interference, combined with institutional fragility, from opening the door to a post-election crisis. In these crucial hours, Honduras needs its institutions to operate independently, citizens to defend their sovereign right to make decisions without external pressure, and political forces to respect the popular will. What is at stake goes beyond elections: it is the country’s democratic stability.
* Dolores Gandolfo She is Director of the Electoral Observatory of the Permanent Conference of Political Parties in Latin America and the Caribbean (Copal), member of the Observatory on Political Reforms in Latin America and the Caribbean (IIJ-UNAM), the Latin American Advisory Board of the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT) and the Network of Political Scientists. She directs the Higher Diploma in Comparative Electoral Systems at the National University of Tres de Febrero (UNTREF), holds a PhD in Political Science from the National University of General San Martín (Argentina), a Master’s in Public Policy from Georgetown University, and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the University of Salvador.
CD