The nation's leader, Xiomara Castro, has claimed that an “electoral coup” is under way in the country’s presidential election, which she contends has been characterized by “meddling from the president of the United States, Donald Trump”.
A Call for National Integrity and Democratic Values
The leftist president further stated that “The citizens of Honduras must never accept elections tainted by meddling, coercion, and undue influence … National integrity is not negotiable, self-rule is not surrendered.”
Prolonged Vote Count and Tight Contest
Since Hondurans cast their ballots on 30 November, the election results has faced delays, with repeated interruptions and outages on the election authority's website.
A pair of conservative candidates have been in a tight race ever since, and, with the vast majority of ballot reports processed in the preliminary results, Nasry “Tito” Asfura is ahead with over forty percent, trailed narrowly by Salvador Nasralla on 39.48% – a difference of only 42,000 votes.
American Support and a Controversial Pardon
A building tycoon and former mayor of the capital city, Tegucigalpa, Asfura garnered explicit support from Trump, who said the US would support the next government only if he was victorious.
Just before the vote, the US president also revealed a pardon for the former president and Asfura associate Juan Orlando Hernández, who was given a prison term to four and a half decades in prison for allegedly creating “a cocaine superhighway to the United States”. He was freed recently.
Condemnation of External Intimidation
At a press conference on Tuesday, Honduras’s president “condemned” Trump’s “meddling … when he intimidated the Honduran people that if they elected a brave and patriotic candidate of the Liberal party, Rixi Moncada, there would be repercussions”.
A former finance minister under Castro, Moncada was picked by the president to run in her place, as Honduras’s charter does not allow a consecutive term.
Prior to the vote, Trump had asserted Moncada was a leftist radical and that her victory would deliver the nation to the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro – the target of an growing US military buildup – “and his narco-terrorists”.
Moncada is in the third position in the preliminary count, with just over nineteen percent.
President Castro said that Trump’s statements “violated the most sacred principle of our founding document. Sovereignty belongs to the people, solely in the Honduran people.”
She also mentioned Hernández’s release: “Conservatives in Washington have decided to ally themselves with drug trafficking and criminal syndicates.”
Legal Measures and Allegations of Fraud
On Monday, the Honduran top prosecutor, Johel Zelaya – an supporter of Castro’s government – directed the prompt issuance of an international arrest warrant for Hernández, whose whereabouts have been unclear since his release.
Continuing her remarks about the ongoing elections, Honduras’s president said on Tuesday that the vote had been characterized by “threats, pressure, tampering of the results transmission system and the corruption of the people's choice”, although she offered no proof.
She continued: “These actions represent an active vote-rigging operation that we will expose before the United Nations, the European Union, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Organization of American States and other global organizations.”
Demands for a New Tally and Formal Statement
The runner-up, Nasralla, claimed a “monumental fraud” was occurring and called for a recount “tally sheet by ballot record”.
Shortly afterwards, the president of the election authority, Ana Paola Hall, said: “I cannot tamper with the results, neither to help nor to harm anyone – and frankly, even if I could, I would not.”
In spite of Asfura’s lead in the preliminary count, approximately a significant portion of the vote records, containing numerous votes, displayed “anomalies” and must be reviewed. The electoral council has until 30 December to declare the official result.
