Two days away, US President Donald Trump seeks to influence in favor of the conservative candidate, Nasry Tito Asfura. Through a comment published on his social network, Truth, the president has conditioned financial support to the country on Asfura winning the presidential elections on Sunday. Otherwise, he has written, he will withdraw any support. A kind of blackmail that he already used in the Argentine elections last October. And not only that: Trump has promised to pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández (from the same party as Asfura), who is serving time in a US prison after being sentenced to 45 years in prison for his ties to drug trafficking.
“I will grant a total and complete pardon to former President Juan Orlando Hernández, who, according to many people whom I deeply respect, has been treated very harshly and unfairly. This cannot be allowed, especially now, after the electoral victory of Tito Asfura, when Honduras is heading towards great political and financial success,” the Republican president emphasized in his message.
Juan Orlando Hernández, known as JOH, was president of Honduras between 2014 and 2022 for the conservative National Party. During that time he was a strong ally of the United States in the fight against drug trafficking. But last year, after a trial in a Manhattan court, he was sentenced to 45 years in prison for associating for more than a decade with drug traffickers who paid him bribes to ensure that more than 400 tons of cocaine reached the United States. Three years earlier, his brother Juan Antonio Hernández had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the same crime. The Manhattan prosecutor’s office had accused JOH of receiving a million dollars from the Mexican kingpin Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán.
The political bomb dropped by Trump this Friday threatens to shake the election campaign. Honduras votes on Sunday to elect president, mayors and deputies in the midst of a deep political crisis, with extreme polarization, accusations of corruption and links to drug trafficking. The country’s president, Xiamara Castro, of the Freedom and Refoundation Party, has declared a controversial state of exception to avoid violent acts during the elections. The country experiences frequent episodes of violence carried out by gangs linked to drug trafficking.
The presidential elections are very close, with maximum equality between the candidates, according to the polls. And the climate is high tension, with gross accusations and insults between the candidates.
“And Tito Asfura wins the presidency of Honduras, the United States will give him great support, since it has a lot of confidence in him, in his policies and in what he will do for the great Honduran people. If he does not win, the United States will not waste its money, because a wrong leader can only bring catastrophic consequences to any country, no matter which one it is,” Trump wrote on the platform created by him to express his opinions. Washington has traditionally maintained interest in the Central American country, given its strategic location.
in just 48 hours. Last Wednesday he already published another statement in Truth in which he assured that he could work with the conservative candidate – a construction businessman and former mayor of Tegucigalpa – to combat “drug trafficking.” The Republican president harshly attacked the other two candidates with options, whom he accused of being “communists” even though they do not define themselves as such: the candidate of the leftist Free Party and former Minister of Defense, Rixi Moncada; and the television presenter and candidate of the Liberal Party, Salvador Nasralla.
It is not the first time that Trump has tried to influence an election. linked to the victory of the ultra Javier Milei party in the legislative elections. The United States offered Milei to avoid the depreciation of the peso and calm the markets. The support of the occupant of the Oval Office was decisive, according to analysts, in turning around the elections, which had been complicated for Milei and which he ended up winning.
Honduras has a complex political history, with a succession of elections in which there have been accusations of irregularities. The country has traditionally been governed by conservative parties, but has experienced times of reform and periods of left-wing government. In 2009, President Manuel Zalaya was ousted following a military coup.
