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- Author, Drafting
- Author title, BBC News World
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Reading time: 2 minutes
The conservative candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura, publicly supported by Donald Trump, was declared the winner of the Honduran presidential election this Wednesday after more than three weeks of controversial testing.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) announced the result on Wednesday afternoon, ending a process that has been plagued by technical lapses and allegations of fraud since Hondurans voted on November 30.
With 40.27% of the vote, the National Party candidate narrowly beat Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party, who received 39.39% according to the final result, denouncing fraud and rejecting the result.
The candidate from the ruling left-wing LIBRE party was relegated to third place with 19.19% of the vote, interpreted as a major setback for the outgoing government of Xiomara Castro.
After the official results were published, Asfura posted a message on the social network X in which he assured his readiness to govern and promised not to disappoint citizens. At his campaign headquarters, supporters celebrated the announcement, while complaints were still heard from opposition sectors.
Nasry Asfura, former mayor of Tegucigalpa, won the presidency in his second attempt after a campaign in which he presented himself as a pragmatic manager and endorsed several infrastructure projects developed during his municipal administration.
“I recognize the great work of the consultants and the entire team that carried out the elections. Honduras: I am ready to govern. I will not let you down. God bless Honduras!”, posted the winner on the social network X.
Nasralla, in turn, rejected the result and reiterated the fraud allegations he had made in recent weeks.
“The National Party’s money goes against the will of 8 million Hondurans,” he denounced in X.
The losing candidate asserted that there were irregularities in the counting of “10,000 ballot boxes equivalent to 2 million votes” and wondered if the observation missions of the European Union and the Organization of American States “did not see this fraud.”
The election in Honduras reinforces the recent rightward trend in Latin America, just a week after Chile elected conservative José Antonio Kast.
In Honduras, tensions were exacerbated by the slowness of the count, which came to a standstill after calls for a special final count count, keeping the country on tenterhooks for weeks and increasing allegations of manipulation.
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