Conservative Nasry Asfura was proclaimed president-elect of Honduras this Wednesday after weeks of delay. The presidential election took place on November 30, but only one winner was declared after a prolonged and chaotic vote that plunged the Central American country into a climate of institutional uncertainty, reports O Globo.
According to the National Electoral Council (CNE), with 99.9% of the ballots counted, Asfura, candidate of the National Party and publicly supported by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, obtained approximately 40.2% of the votes. Liberal Salvador Nasralla came in second with around 39.5%, while ruling FREE Party candidate Rixi Moncada finished a distant third.
The minimal difference between the first two, coupled with flaws in the counting system, led to the need for a manual recount of about 15% of voting records – or nearly 3,000 documents – in a process known as “special audit”. This recalculation, vote by vote, should have started on December 13, but experienced successive delays, interruptions and logistical obstacles attributed to the difficulty of parties in registering their representatives and to recurring “technical problems”.
According to the newspaper, the winner was announced without consensus between the three members of the CNE, a body made up of representatives of the main political forces in the country. The decision was made with the approval of two councilors – liberal Ana Paola Hall, council president, and conservative Cossette López – and an alternate. The third councilor, Marlon Ochoa, linked to the ruling FREE party, rejected the decision and did not participate in the official announcement.
According to the newspaper, the electoral process was also marked by strong external interference. Donald Trump declared his explicit support for Asfura even before the vote, calling him “the only true friend of freedom in Honduras” and asking for votes for the conservative candidate. During the investigation, Trump spoke out again, denouncing fraud without presenting evidence and warning that there would be “hell” if the preliminary results were changed.
In addition, the US president threatened to suspend US financial support for Honduras if Asfura did not win the elections and pardoned former President Juan Orlando Hernández, also a member of the National Party, who was serving a 45-year prison sentence in the United States for drug and arms trafficking.
In the home stretch of the standoff, the United States has increased the tone of its diplomatic pressure. Through the Office of Western Hemisphere Affairs, Washington warned that there would be “consequences” if election officials did not complete the process and declare the winner. The statement said the actions of parties and candidates that obstructed the work of the CNE were “deeply worrying” and stressed that the Honduran people “waited too long” for a transparent and credible result.
After confirming the result, Asfura declared himself ready to govern. In a publication on Network X, he thanked the CNE and declared: “Honduras, I am ready to govern. I will not disappoint you.” The message, however, did not dispel accusations of illegitimacy or end the political debate surrounding one of the most turbulent elections in the country’s recent history.
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