Tegucigalpa: In a slow, heart-stopping examination, Honduras determines Who will be your next boss? After a close election that now has only one confirmation: The left will leave power With the official nominee Rexy Moncada (Partido Libre) is a distant third Two conservative candidates compete for the first-place vote in a country where there is no runoff.
Candidate Nasri Asfoura, With the support of the US President Donald Trump -And the same for the Argentinian Javier Miley-And his competitor Salvador NasrallahThe Liberals on Monday continued a close fight by less than half a point in an election in which several candidates appealed to the specter of fraud.
Tito Asfoura, from the National Party, leads Nasrallah by only 0.2% of the votes. After 56% of voting records were sorted according to the slow preliminary results National Electoral Council (CNE).
As the audit progressed slowly, Nasrallah, the famous 72-year-old TV presenter running for the Liberal Party, has become closer to the Trump-backed businessman. Now less than 5,000 votes separate them. The first received 40% of the votes and the second 39.8%.
Moncada, from the ruling left-wing Freedom and Reconstruction Party, came in third place with 19.18%. The 60-year-old leftist lawyer Moncada had said this It will only recognize the total number, Which can take days.
Once voting is over, the National Electoral Council will end A maximum of 30 days for the official announcement of the elections.
this monday, Nasrallah said that he hopes to be at the head of the counting process when the results of some governorates appear..
“It is impossible to determine a winner with the data we have.” said political analyst Carlos Calix.
In elections in this country with a history of fraud and coups, Hondurans decided whether to renew confidence in their first left-wing government, led by xiomara castro, Or they followed in the footsteps of Bolivia and Argentina, where Miley also backed a bird.
Nearly 6.5 million Hondurans were called to elect a replacement for Castro in one round, as well as 128 deputies and 298 mayors and vice mayors for four-year terms. The electoral body has not yet announced the participation number.
On the eve of the elections held on Sunday, Trump warned against this Washington will not “waste” resources in Honduras if Asfara is not the winner Hondurans know him as “Papi a la Orden”.
Asfoura, a 67-year-old construction businessman and former mayor of Tegucigalpa, presented himself as a pragmatic politician, highlighting popular infrastructure projects in the capital.
After a Campaign with early fraud complaints, The day passed quietly, according to the monitoring mission of the Organization of American States. The United States said on Sunday that it would follow the elections “closely.”
Nasrallah, a 72-year-old sports commentator, has campaigned with several parties over the years. He even joined the candidacy of current President Xiomara Castro four years ago. However, he continued to present himself as an outsider, and his main campaign theme continued to be rooting out corruption.
Asfoura is seeking the presidency for the second time after losing in 2021 to Castro, and Nasrallah for the third time.
The first CNE report was released more than an hour and a half late and about five hours after polls closed.
Moncada, who denounced the possibility of fraud during the election campaign like Nasrallah, asked his followers through his account on the social networking site:On the fight Until obtaining 100% final results from the records of the presidency, municipalities, and prosecutors.” He added that on Monday, he will announce his position on the preliminary results of the National Elections Commission in a press conference.
Storming at the end of the campaign, Trump said that Tito is “the only friend of freedom.” What if Honduras loses? It will remain under the control of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his “narco-terrorists.”
He described Moncada as a “communist”, and Nasrallah as a “semi-communist” because he was part of the government, from which he later broke.
Trump went further on Friday by announcing this Pardoning former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez He ruled the National Party from 2014 to 2022, and since 2024 he has been serving a prison sentence 45 years in prison in the United States for drug trafficking.
On Sunday, the leftist denounced that the pardon of the “drug lord” was “handled” by the local elites, while Asfoura stressed that the matter “has nothing to do with the elections.”
The polarization that characterized this election is a result of what happened 2009 coup against President Manuel Zelaya, Castro’s husband, who was overthrown by the right when he approached Venezuela.
To please Washington, Asfoura and Nasrallah promised to move closer to Taiwan after Castro restored relations with China in 2023.
Busy attacking each other, the candidates were barely addressing the concerns of Hondurans.
“We need more security,” complained Vrin Oansis Rodas, a 29-year-old housewife, in a neighborhood of the capital. “There are no jobs and people are looking for opportunities in other countries.”
Honduras is a country highly dependent on the United States, with 60% of its 11 million population suffering from poverty, and 27% of its gross domestic product dependent on remittances from migrants.
Manuel Orozco, an analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue, told AFP that the big challenge facing the next government is employment, as the proportion of informal workers reaches 70%.
in One of the most violent countries on the continent whose institutions have been infiltrated by drug trafficking, elections will be held under Castro’s partial state of exception in 2022.
Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press