The right-wing candidate supported by donald trump, Nasry Asfuraleads by a slight margin this Monday the presidential elections in Honduras, marked by the threat of the US president to cut aid to the country if the businessman does not win.
Asfura, 67 years old and former mayor of Tegucigalpa, obtains 40.5% of the votes and leads by one and a half points the also right-wing Salvador Nasrallaaccording to partial results of Sunday’s elections released by the National Electoral Council (CNE).
More than 20 points behind is leftist lawyer Rixi Moncada, 60, a candidate for the ruling Libre party, who had said she would only acknowledge the total count, which can take days.
Just eight hours after the polls closed 42.65% of the electoral records had been scrutinized.
On the eve of the elections, Trump warned that Washington would not “waste” resources in the impoverished Central American country if the candidate of the National Party (PN), known to Hondurans as “Papi a la Orden” was not elected.
Nasralla, a 72-year-old television presenter and candidate for the Liberal Party, said he was confident that the result “will change.”
“It is impossible to determine the winner with the data we have,” said political analyst Carlos Cálix.
In the elections of this country with a history of fraud and coups d’état, Hondurans had to decide whether to renew confidence in their first left-wing government or follow in the footsteps of Bolivia and Argentina, whose president Javier Milei He also supported Asfura.
“Let (the winner) try to think of the country away from his own benefits and (…) look at it beyond a bag of money to be looted,” Michelle Pineda, a 38-year-old merchant, told AFP.
Almost 6.5 million Hondurans were called to elect the replacement of Xiomara Castro in a single round, as well as deputies and mayors for four years. The electoral authority has not yet given a participation figure.
After a campaign with early complaints of fraud, the day took place calmly, according to the OAS observer mission. The United States said this Sunday it will follow the elections “closely.”
The shadow of Venezuela
Asfura is seeking the presidency for the second time after losing in 2021 against Castro, and Nasralla for the third time.
Breaking in at the end of the campaign, Trump said that “Tito” Asfura is the “only friend of freedom”and that if Honduras lost it would be under the control of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and “his narcoterrorists.”
He described Moncada as a “communist”, and Nasralla as “almost communist” for having been part of the government, with which he later broke.
Trump went further on Friday by announcing that he will pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who governed with the PN from 2014 to 2022, and since 2024 has been serving 45 years in prison in the United States for drug trafficking.
The leftist denounced this Sunday that the pardon for the “drug lord” was “processed” by local elites, while Asfura assured that it had “nothing to do with the elections.”
The polarization that marked these elections is a consequence of the 2009 coup against the president Manuel ZelayaCastro’s husband and who was overthrown by the right when approaching Venezuela.
The challenges: poverty and security
Pleasing Washington, Asfura and Nasralla promised to move closer to Taiwan after Castro reestablished relations with China in 2023.
Busy attacking each other, the candidates barely addressed the anxieties of Hondurans.
“We need more security. There are no jobs and people are looking for opportunities in other countries,” complained Fren uancis Rodas, a 29-year-old housewife, in a neighborhood of the capital.
Honduras is a country ultra-dependent on the United States, with 60% of its 11 million inhabitants in poverty and 27% of its GDP fueled by remittances from migrants.
Manuel Orozco, an analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue, told AFP that the next government’s great challenge is employment, with informality at 70 percent.
In one of the most violent countries on the continent and whose institutions have been infiltrated by drug trafficking, the elections took place under a partial state of emergency imposed by Castro in 2022.
Valeria Vásquez, from Control Risks, also cited the challenge of correcting the “weakness” of politicized institutions and the control that the government has over the prosecutor’s office and the armed forces.
