Conservative opposition candidate Nasry Asfura was officially declared the winner of the presidential elections in Honduras on Wednesday evening. International news agencies report this based on the Honduran electoral commission.
Two right-wing opposition candidates both fluctuated around 40 percent of the vote for a long time. The elections were already held on November 30, but because Asfura (Partido Nacional, PN) and the center-right Salvador Nasralla of the Partido Liberal were too close to each other, the formal results were delayed for almost a month. Hundreds of thousands of ballots that were not included after the November 30 election had to be counted manually. Asfura ultimately received 40.3 percent of the votes, Nasralla 39.5 percent.
Trump ‘Interference’
Asfura, former mayor of the capital Tegucigalpa, received public support from the American Donald Trump just days before the elections. Outgoing left-wing Honduran President Xiomara Castro had accused the US president of meddling in her country’s elections. She talked about manipulating the results. She also said Trump had “threatened” Hondurans to prevent them from voting for left-wing candidate Rixi Moncada. In the Truth Social in which Trump expressed his support for Asfura, he also threatened to turn off the American money tap if Hondurans chose another president.
At the same time, Trump pardoned Asfura’s party colleague and former president Juán Orlando Hernández, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison in the US for smuggling at least 400 tons of cocaine. The evidence in the controversial lawsuit against Hernández was extensive, but Trump said his conservative kindred spirit had been “improperly treated” by federal prosecutors.
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