Honduras is in a deep political crisis after the elections, marked by the delay in the official announcement of the results, the minimal difference in votes between the leading candidates and an environment of great mistrust fueled by allegations of fraud and technical irregularities. This situation revives the spirit of the 2017 crisis and reveals the country’s institutional fragility.
In the November 30 general election, 6.5 million Hondurans were called to elect president, vice president, deputy president and mayor. Despite high participation, the process stalled in the review phase and plunged the country into days of uncertainty.
The preliminary results, with nearly 99% of the minutes counted, show an extremely close presidential race. Nasry Asfura (National Party, right) leads by a very narrow margin over Salvador Nasralla (Liberal Party), with a difference of only 40,000 votes. The problem is that there is no ballot: you win with a difference of one vote.
Authoritarians don’t like that
The practice of professional and critical journalism is a mainstay of democracy. That is why it bothers those who believe that they are the owners of the truth.
Rixi Moncada (Free Party, ruling party), despite being the candidate of outgoing President Xiomara Castro, was relegated to third place in what her party interpreted as a punitive vote.
The lack of an official statement from the National Electoral Council (CNE), as well as the demand for a “special audit” and a “vote by vote” recount, are keeping the country paralyzed. The European Union and Latin American countries called for the process to be respected and the recount to be speeded up.
The current crisis is the result of the convergence of systemic failure and deep political division. The main focus of distrust is in the Provisional Election Results Transmission (TREP) system, which is managed by the government.
The system suffered from constant failures and called into question “maintenance” during the count, causing delays and raising suspicions of manipulation. Candidates such as Salvador Nasralla have denounced “three flaws” in the system, including the existence of a number of “zero votes greater than the difference between the leaders” and discrepancies between the fingerprint and the information recorded over thousands of minutes.
The contest took place in an environment of deep polarization and mistrust of electoral institutions that has dragged on since the contentious 2017 process, when the OAS proposed a repeat election.
The ruling Libre party called for “the total annulment of the elections,” accusing “the system of electoral terrorism” and called for mobilization.
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