24 days after the presidential election in Honduras, the country’s National Electoral Council declared conservative Nasry Asfura the winner on Wednesday (24).
However, the lengthy process of reviewing the vote did not ease acceptance of the result, in an election marked by allegations of fraud – and strained, moreover, by the explicit interference of United States President Donald Trump in favor of Asfura’s candidacy.
The National Party candidate was declared elected with 40.3% of the valid votes, while the poll reached 99.2% of the votes. His main opponent, also conservative Salvador Nasralla, of the Liberal Party, obtained 39.5%. Rixi Moncada, former defense minister in the current left-wing government of President Xiomara Castro, received 19.2%.
Honduran Congress President Luis Redondo of the ruling Free Party said there were irregularities in the electoral process and that he would not accept the result. Nasralla and the left plan to present formal challenges.
If the CNE decides on a new revision, the two right-wing parties will tend to examine it vote by vote, given the gap of only 0.8 percentage points.
Overthrowing the left in the elections and electing Asfura were Trump’s notorious goals. The Republican threatened to cut American aid to Honduras in the event of a victory for Moncada, whom he described as a “communist” and accused of having participated in a government close to Venezuela; Nasralla, considered “almost communist”, did not satisfy him either.
Asfura’s promise to reproduce the harsh security policy of Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, pleases Trump: organized crime motivates the immigration of Hondurans to the United States as much as the poverty situation of 60% of the country’s population.
Another sign of interference, the Republican even pardoned the former President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022), sentenced to 45 years in prison in the United States for cocaine trafficking, in order to strengthen Asfura’s campaign.
By contradicting his policy of combating drug trafficking with such a gesture, Trump indicates that he has no limits when it comes to expanding the spaces of power of the populist right in Latin America.
In Honduras, this helped make elections even more turbulent in an unstable democracy. Such uproar continues to serve as a warning and calls for caution in upcoming elections in the region, including in Brazil and Colombia in 2026.
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