Nasry Asfura, 67 years old and former mayor of Tegucigalpa, has 40.5% of the votes and surpasses another right-wing candidate, Salvador Nasralla, by 1.5 points, according to partial election results
The right-wing candidate supported by Nasry Asfura, leads by a narrow margin in the counting of votes in the presidential election in marked by the threat from the President of the United States to cut aid to the country if the businessman is not elected.
Asfura, 67 years old and former mayor of Tegucigalpa, has 40.5% of the votes and surpasses another right-wing candidate, Salvador Nasralla, by 1.5 points, according to partial results from Sunday’s elections released by the National Electoral Council (CNE).
More than 20 points behind is left-wing lawyer Rixi Moncada, 60, candidate for the ruling Livre party, who had stated that she would only recognize the result of the full count, which could take several days.
Eight hours after the end of voting, only 42.65% of the ballots were counted. On the eve of the election, Trump warned that Washington will not “waste” resources in the impoverished Central American country if the National Party (PN) candidate, known to Hondurans as “Papi a la orden”, is not elected.
Nasralla, a 72-year-old television presenter and Liberal Party candidate, said he believes the result “will change”. “It is impossible to determine the winner with the data we have,” said political analyst Carlos Cálix.
In the elections in the country with a history of electoral fraud and coups d’état, Hondurans must decide whether to renew confidence in their first left-wing government or whether they intend to follow in the footsteps of Bolivia and Argentina, whose president, Javier Milei, also announced support for Asfura.
Almost 6.5 million Hondurans were registered to choose who will succeed President Xiomara Castro in a single-round vote, which also defines deputies and mayors for four-year terms. The CNE did not disclose the participation rate.
After a campaign marked by early allegations of fraud, voting day passed calmly, according to the observer mission of the Organization of American States (OAS). The United States government stated that it is following the elections “closely”.
In the shadow of Venezuela
Asfura is running for president for the second time, after his 2021 defeat to Castro, and Nasralla is in his third candidacy. Trump entered the campaign in the final stretch and said that “Tito” Asfura is the “only true friend of freedom”. The American president said that a defeat for his candidate would leave Honduras under the control of the president of the Nicolás Maduro, and “his narco-terrorists”.
She called Moncada a “communist” who idolizes Fidel Castro, while Nasralla, a former ally of the Livre party, was classified as “almost communist” for having joined the current government, with which he broke.
Trump went even further on Friday by announcing that he will grant a pardon to former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who governed with the PN from 2014 to 2022. He was sentenced in 2024 to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking in the
The left-wing candidate denounced, on Sunday, that the pardon for this “drug kingpin” was “processed” by local political and economic elites. Asfura stated that the issue “has no relation to the elections”.
The polarization that marked the electoral campaign is a sequel to the 2009 coup d’état against President Manuel Zelaya, husband of Xiomara Castro, who was deposed by the right when he approached Venezuela.
The challenges: poverty and security
In a nod to Washington, Asfura and Nasralla intend to get closer to Taiwan, after Xiomara Castro reestablished relations with the in 2023. Concerned about the exchange of attacks, the candidates did little to address the concerns of Hondurans during the campaign: poverty, gang violence, corruption and drug trafficking.
Honduras is a country extremely dependent on the United States, with 60% of its 11 million inhabitants living in poverty and 27% of its GDP fueled by migrant remittances. Manuel Orozco, an analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue, told AFP that the next government’s biggest challenge is employment, as informality is currently around 70%.
In one of the most violent countries on the continent, with institutions infiltrated by drug trafficking, the elections took place under a partial state of exception imposed by Castro in 2022. Valeria Vásquez, from Control Risks, also cited the challenge of remedying the “fragility” of politicized institutions and the control that the government exercises over the Public Ministry and the Armed Forces.
*With information from AFP
