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- Author, Drafting*
- Author title, BBC News World
Presidential candidate Salvador Nasralla, who is in tough competition with candidate Nesry Asfura, denounced a “fraud” in the vote counting of Honduras’ elections that has continued for nine days without a winner being declared.
The Liberal Party centrist pointed this out in a publication
“This is fraud. They are manipulating the system,” Nasralla wrote. “Our people who are working on emergencies right now feel helpless,” he added.
By midday on Tuesday, the vote count was over 98%, with a margin of 40.53% in favor of Asfura versus 39.21% for Nasralla, a difference of just over 42,000 votes in favor of the Honduras National Party candidate.
Meanwhile, the official candidate who came a distant third, Rixi Moncada, has asked for the vote to be canceled and accused US President Donald Trump, who expressed his support for Asfura, of interfering in the elections.
Nasralla said that some records from the departments of Cortés and Atlántida, where he made favorable margins, were not entered into the system due to the “falls” registered, which is why he assumed that a “theft” had taken place.
“I am calling for a single count only in the minutes that have already been added up by the bodies that have a pattern of fraud, where biometrics were not used and they wrote the minutes at will,” he added, pointing to cases of inconsistencies in the minutes that would favor the National Party candidate.
“There is still a lot of fabric to cut before we accept the results,” he said.
Although the count was particularly slow, the CNE rejected any tampering with its system. The law gives you 30 days to choose a winner.
The elections took place on November 30th.
“Technical problems”
Frustration over the lack of a final result grew in the Central American country last week, as counting was stopped several times, sometimes for entire days.
CNE officials blamed “technical issues” for the delays.
They have also warned that thousands of voting records with “inconsistencies” still need to be reviewed.
image source, Getty Images
This year’s presidential election campaign was marked by Trump’s support of Nasry “Tito” Asfura.
Just days before the election, the US president endorsed the right-wing former mayor of Tegucigalpa, saying: “Tito and I can work together to fight the drug communists.”
In an apparent reference to US aid to Honduras, Trump added that he would provide significant support to the country if Asfura won; Otherwise, “the United States will not waste money, because a false leader can only bring disastrous results.”
And two days before the November 30 election, Trump also surprisingly pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison in the US for drug trafficking and belongs to the same party as Asfura.
image source, Getty Images
Meanwhile, tensions have risen in Honduras as the result has placed candidates in first place at different points in time.
Trump accused the CNE of “trying to change the result” when the Liberal Party centrist overtook Asfura on the first day of counting.
“If they do, they will pay dearly,” the US president said, without providing evidence of fraud.
Since Asfura took the lead, it has been his two rivals who have complained about irregularities.
Rixi Moncada’s Libre party called for the “total annulment” of the elections and urged its supporters to take to the streets to protest against US interference.
With information from Vanessa Buschschlüter from BBC News
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