Honduras quietly voted on Sunday to elect its next president. The recount now begins, with the first cut expected to take place at 11:00 p.m. local time – in complete tension caused by the three main parties, which throughout election day published exit results giving the winners to their candidates. “The report from the entire country is excellent,” Rexy Moncada, from the ruling Libre party, confirmed from his profile on the social network X. He added: “We are winners in the elections,” while his closest competitor, Salvador Nasrallah, from the Liberal Party, announced his victory in the process and confirmed that he would win “50% of the votes.” “I will become president. Practically everyone here is voting for me,” he said. The National Electoral Council will have the final say when the result of a recount of electoral records shows the decision of more than 6.5 million Hondurans summoned to vote.
Voters will decide on Sunday between continuity represented by the standard-bearer of Libre, the party founded by former President Manuel Zelaya and which led his wife Xiomara Castro to power, or a change to the right led by Nasrallah or Nasri Asfoura, the Conservative Party candidate who, in the days before the elections, received the support of American Donald Trump. It will be known tonight whether Trump’s messages had the effect the Republican expected among voters. Trump also promised to pardon former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison in the United States for his ties to drug trafficking. Argentine President Javier Miley also extended his support to Asfoura.
The day passed without major incident, although in a climate of maximum polarization and tension due to the omnipresent military presence, as Honduras remains under a state of emergency, a controversial measure taken by President Castro to fight the violence that is bleeding the Central American country. Castro also assigned the military a function not assigned to them by law: ensuring the transmission and preservation of records of results. Gen. Roosevelt Hernandez, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Honduran Armed Forces, said Friday that he will recognize the new presidential powers only when the National Electoral Council publishes the official result of the tally. The military will not be interested in the data produced by the preliminary results system, called TREP, which raises great suspicions from the ruling party.
The polls opened at 7 a.m., and early, the three candidates showed up to their polling stations with a call for the active participation of voters, who must also elect the 128 members of parliament and the authorities of the country’s 298 municipalities. President Xiomara Castro spoke at noon with her husband, former President Manuel Zelaya. “We have already begun the process of rebuilding the country, and that is what is important,” Castro told the press after casting his vote. The president added, “These elections are very important for our democracy. What the people deserve is peace and tranquility, freely attending the polls and being able to vote.”
During the morning, there was widespread participation in the voting centers visited by this newspaper in Tegucigalpa. Jair Rico, 22, served as secretary of the ruling Liberal Party in this voting council, and was responsible for ensuring the correct delivery of electoral bags and ensuring that everything passed without incident, including the counting of votes. Regarding the devices that capture the fingerprints of people registered to vote, Rico said, “Initially, we experienced some small interruptions in the biometric system, as the National Electoral Council system was a little slow, because they were entering data from everywhere, everywhere, but it can be resolved.” “Participation was smooth, and people came more in the morning,” he commented.
Nicolas Carrasco was one of those voters. He went with his wife to this center feeling relieved because the morning was passing calmly after a highly polarized election campaign and constant attacks from the candidates for prime minister. He said: “Instead of devoting themselves to presenting proposals, they insulted each other and highlighted everything bad and ugly.” Carrasco went to vote with one thing in mind: the rampant corruption ravaging this Central American country. “The people wanted to create CICIH, and that was one of our priorities, because there is a lot of corruption, and everything is very polluted,” he said, referring to the International Anti-Corruption Commission, which is moving at a slow pace. It was a promise that President Castro left unfulfilled. In fact, the president resigned on Sunday after the vote: “I want to be very clear with the media. Everything I had in my hand for CICIH to come to our country, we brought here.”
International observers highlighted the calmness with which the operation developed. The Organization of American States’ observation mission deployed 101 observers in 18 provinces in the country to provide full coverage of Election Day, without recording serious incidents, while the head of the European Union’s electoral observation mission, Francisco Assis, described the elections as a “civil celebration.” The Network for the Defense of Democracy, a Honduran organization, documented 4,427 incidents, including some ballot boxes that were not installed, as well as checks for damaged or incomplete electoral materials. Problems with the biometric system’s hardware have also been reported. Their representatives denounced that the army in some voting centers requested their credentials from observers, which is not within their authority.
Honduras is also voting under a state of emergency imposed by President Castro as an extreme measure to combat the violence ravaging the country, where gangs and drug trafficking networks exercise widespread control. Human rights organizations and local observers have asked the government to relax this rule, because they fear that the presence of the army at polling stations will persuade voters. At Peru’s school in Tegucigalpa, Luis Fuentes, an election observer from the Network for the Defense of Democracy, reprimanded the military at a checkpoint set up at the entrance to the polling station for not allowing voters to enter the building. “I’ve observed five presidential elections and there was never a military checkpoint to enter the school,” Fuentes said. “The classrooms where voting takes place are empty, but people are outside, in the sun, because the military has been stationed there. That doesn’t seem right to me. It’s counterproductive.” The army allowed voters to enter, but the observer said their presence was intimidating voters. He explained: “A lot has been said about these elections, and you must be careful, and use gloves to handle them cleanly, and that there are no misunderstandings, and the presence of the army generates this type of problem.”