Honduras voted calmly this Sunday to elect its next president. A recount of votes now begins – a first cut is expected at 9:00 p.m. local time – in full tension caused by the three main parties, which throughout the election day have published exit results. Rixi Moncada, from the ruling Libre party, assured from his profile on the social network X that “the report from the entire country is excellent.” “We are winning the elections,” he added, while his closest rival, Salvador Nasralla, of the Liberal Party, declared himself victorious in the process and assured that he would triumph with “50% of the votes.” “I’m going to be president. Practically everyone here votes for me,” he said. It will be the National Electoral Council that will have the last word when showing the result of the recount of the electoral records that show the decision of the more than 6.5 million Hondurans called to vote.
Voters decide this Sunday between the continuity represented by the standard-bearer of Libre, the party founded by former president Manuel Zelaya and which led his wife, Xiomara Castro, to take office, or a change to the right led by Nasralla or Nasry Asfura, the candidate of the Conservative Party who, in the days before the election, received the support of the American Donald Trump. Tonight it will be known whether Trump’s messages had the effect that the Republican expected among the electorate. Trump has also been sentenced to 45 years in prison in the United States for his ties to drug trafficking. Argentine President Javier Milei has also given his support to Asfura.
The day took place without major incidents, although in a climate of maximum polarization and tension due to the omnipresent presence of the military, since Honduras remains under a state of emergency, a controversial measure taken by President Castro to fight against the violence that is bleeding the Central American country. Castro also assigned the military a function that the law does not attribute to them: ensuring the transmission and safeguarding of the results records. General Roosevelt Hernández, chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Honduran Armed Forces, stated on Friday that he will only recognize the new presidential authorities when the National Electoral Council publishes the official result of the total of the minutes. The military will not pay attention to the data produced by the preliminary results system, called TREP, which is highly questioned by the ruling party.
The vote receiving boards opened at seven in the morning and, early on, the three candidates attended their voting centers with the call for active participation of the electorate, which must also elect the 128 members of parliament and the authorities of the 298 municipalities of the country. President Xiomara Castro voted at noon with her husband, former president Manuel Zelaya. “We have already begun a refoundation process in the country and that is what is important,” Castro told the press after casting his vote. “These elections are so important for our democracy. What the people deserve is peace and tranquility, attending the polls freely and being able to vote,” added the president.
During the morning, there was a massive participation in voting centers visited by this newspaper in Tegucigalpa. Jair Rico, 22, worked as a custodian for the ruling Libre party at this voting board, in charge of ensuring the correct delivery of the electoral suitcases and ensuring that everything passed without incident, including the counting of the votes. “At the beginning, we had some small interruptions with the biometric system, since the National Electoral Council system was a little slow, because they were entering data from everywhere, everywhere, but it could be resolved,” Rico said in relation to the devices that capture the fingerprints of people registered to vote. “Participation has been fluid, people come more in the morning,” he commented.
Nicolás Carrasco was one of those voters. He went with his wife to this center with the relief that the morning was passing calmly after a very polarized electoral campaign and constant attacks from candidates to preside over the Government. “The candidates, instead of dedicating themselves to making proposals, also insulted each other, brought out everything bad and ugly,” he said. Carrasco went to the vote with one concern on his mind: the rampant corruption that eats away at this Central American country. “The people wanted the CICIH to be established, it was one of our priorities, because there is a lot of corruption, everything is very contaminated,” he stated in reference to the international anti-corruption commission, which is moving at a snail’s pace. It was a promise that President Castro leaves unfinished. In fact, the president resigned this Sunday after voting: “I want to be very clear with the media. Everything that was in my hands for the CICIH to come to our country, we brought here,” she said.
International observers have highlighted the tranquility with which the process has been developed. The Observation Mission of the Organization of American States (OAS) deployed 101 observers in the 18 departments of the country to provide complete coverage of the election day, without registering serious incidents, while the head of the Electoral Observation Mission of the European Union (EOM-EU), Francisco Assis, has described the election as a “civic celebration.” The Democracy Defense Network, a Honduran organization, has documented 4,427 incidents, among which they have mentioned some ballot boxes that were not installed, in addition to verifying damaged or incomplete electoral material. He has also reported problems with the biometric system devices. Their representatives denounced that in some voting centers the military demanded their credentials from the observers, which is not within their powers.
that President Castro has imposed as an extreme measure to combat the violence that ravages the country, where gangs and drug trafficking networks exercise extensive control. Human rights organizations and local observers had asked the Government to relax the rule, because they fear that the presence of the military at voting stations would persuade the electorate. At the Peru school in Tegucigalpa, Luis Fuentes, an electoral observer from the Network for the Defense of Democracy, reprimanded the military at a checkpoint installed at the entrance to this voting center for not allowing voters to enter the premises. “I have observed five presidential elections and there has never been a military checkpoint to enter a school. The classrooms where voting is done are empty, but people are outside, under the sun, because the military has placed itself there. That does not seem right to me, it is counterproductive,” said Fuentes. The military allowed voters to enter, but the observer said their presence intimidated voters. “So much has been said in these elections that you have to be careful, use gloves to handle them cleanly, that there are no misunderstandings and the presence of the military generates this type of problems,” he explained.
