US President Donald Trump tried to influence the outcome of the elections that took place on Sunday in Honduras by supporting the conservative candidate Nasri. Titus A bird from the National Party. The statements of the president, who called him a “communist” (a word that echoes fear in some sectors, such as businessmen in such a conservative country) of two other aspirants – Rexy Moncada, governor of Libre, and Salvador Nasrallah, of the Liberal Party – added more noise to a very polarized process, with accusations of rigging the three candidates, who according to opinion polls came to the vote with equal chances of winning.
Additionally, Trump announced today that he intends to pardon former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, known as JOH, who is serving a 45-year prison sentence for his ties to drug trafficking. Hernandez is a reviled figure in Honduras, where, in addition to his ties to drug trafficking, he is a sign of government mismanagement, mismanagement of the health crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and lack of health care. Nearly $200 million for Social Security. But Asfoura rode alongside Trump and did not hesitate to present himself as a candidate for Washington. On the social network X, where you can call by your nickname, My door to orderposts a montage alongside the New York mogul. “A pardon is the power of the President of the United States. For the family, a pardon leaves behind their grief and allows them to regain the peace and happiness they deserve,” Asfoura justified Trump’s decision regarding JOH.
Another representative of conservative extremism in America, who has publicly shown his support for Asvora, is Javier Miley, who with the same red It remains to be seen this Sunday whether this support gives enough oxygen to the NDP aspirant, as the polls are now on the table due to Nasrallah and Moncada.
“The people of Honduras, especially after the 2009 coup, increasingly reject intervention in the United States,” says Lucia Vigil, electoral monitoring coordinator at the Center for the Study of Democracy. “Sometimes they think that when the United States gives a winning candidate, that is why everyone should vote, but now there is a rejection and many believe that if the United States supports a candidate, voting for the rival candidate can be excluded.” (Seisbad).
Who will inherit Honduras as the next president?
Trump’s messages have been packed into more campaigns, as all three candidates try to capitalize on the Republican’s words. Nasrallah sent a message to the country last night, wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan “JOH Não Más.” He recalled the links with drug trafficking of the former mandate and reinforced his rhetoric as a candidate for change and against elite corruption that has plagued this Central American country. The competitions give him a slight advantage over his main rival Rexy Moncada.
But for all the noise coming from Washington, what is going on in these elections is the continuation of the governmental model of President Xiomara Castro’s government or a more conservative shift, represented by both Nasrallah and Asfoura. Castro broke with a decade of conservative governments closely tied to the interests of business elites (in Honduras the “Diez Families” are said to control the country) and increased social spending and public investment during his term. “Under the administration, the economy grew moderately and poverty and inequality declined, although both remain high,” said a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a progressive organization based in Washington.
This organization also highlights Castro’s pragmatism. “Although opposition figures and some US Republicans called them ‘communists,’ the Castro government maintained the International Monetary Fund (IMF) program during its term and received praise from the IMF for its prudent fiscal management,” the report said. Castro also managed to re-include Honduras into the so-called Cuenta del Desafío del Milenio, an initiative created by the EE UU in 2024 to reduce extreme poverty in the world.
In addition to poverty and corruption, one of the president’s upstanding mayors faced the high level of crime bleeding the country, and was forced to take controversial actions all the time. Honduras will vote on Sunday on a state of exception imposed by Castro to try to control areas protected from gang violence that control large areas and advance uninterrupted by organized crime. This measure, similar to that taken by Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, raised alarms from human rights organizations because of the broad powers that the state granted to the military: suspension of constitutional guarantees such as freedom of movement and association, registrations and arrests without a judicial order with the aim of facilitating the investigation of crimes. “The homicide rate has also fallen to its lowest level in modern history, but violence continues. Human rights groups have criticized Castro for maintaining a state of emergency for so long in some parts of Honduras and for continuing the militarized policing policy of his predecessor,” the ECHR report highlights.
Sunday’s elections will be monitored by more than 43 national and 25 international organizations, including a large group of observers from the Organization of American States, which has asked electoral authorities to ensure conditions for fair elections, following complaints of fraud by the three main candidates. Moncada and his team showed a lack of confidence in the so-called TREP, the system for transmitting preliminary results, which must present the first results of the votes before midday on Sunday. El Ejercito, which Castro gave more responsibilities in these elections – including transportation security and the protection of results records – informed him that no other result would be recognized except the result of the records presented by the Electoral Council, a decision that is generating tension among opponents.
It is in this context of uncertainty that governmental decisions will be made in the coming years in Honduras, a country of 11 million people plagued by poverty, natural disasters such as the infernal Hurricane Iota, verbal violence, and rampant corruption. Moreover, the small country of 112,000 square kilometers is one of the most vulnerable to climate change and the most dangerous for environmentalists. The topic of climate change, ignored for years this Sunday, aspires to take over the Central American country.