Hondurans are electing a president this Sunday in a tightly contested vote held under pressure from United States President Donald Trump, who urged voters to back right-wing candidate Nasry Asfura and threatened to cut aid to the country if he loses. On the eve of the vote, Trump warned that if the 67-year-old former mayor and businessman does not win, Washington “will not waste” money on the impoverished Central American nation.
The general elections, which began at 13:00 GMT, will decide whether this country with a history of electoral fraud and coups turns the page on its first left-wing government and follows in the footsteps of Bolivia and Argentina, whose president Javier Milei has also endorsed Asfura.
“I vote for whoever I want, not for what Trump has said, because the truth is I live off my work, not off politicians,” said Esmeralda Rodríguez, 56, who sells fruit in a market in Tegucigalpa. After a fierce campaign that eroded voters’ trust with early accusations of fraud, some 6.5 million Hondurans are eligible to choose the successor to Xiomara Castro in a single round, as well as deputies and mayors for four-year terms.
Asfura, from the National Party (PN), is neck and neck with 60-year-old left-wing lawyer Rixi Moncada, of the ruling Libre party, and with 72-year-old television star Salvador Nasralla, representing the right-leaning Liberal Party (PL). The three accuse each other of planning fraud, prompting the president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Ana Paola Hall, to appeal on Sunday “not to fan any flame of confrontation or violence.”
Moncada has announced that she will not recognize the CNE’s preliminary results, but only the count of the 19,167 tally sheets, a process that could take days. The United States has warned that it will act with “firmness” if there is fraud, and both the OAS and the European Union have deployed observers.
Narcoterrorists
In the midst of rising tensions, Trump barged into the campaign on Wednesday to warn that if “Tito” Asfura – as he is popularly known – does not win, Honduras will fall under the control of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and “his narco-terrorists.”
Trump calls Asfura the “only true friend of freedom.” He labeled Moncada a “communist” who idolizes Fidel Castro, and Nasralla – a former ally of the Libre party – a “near communist” who is not to be trusted. He said he could not work with any of them.
Raising the stakes for Asfura and going against the grain of his own anti-drug operations in the Caribbean, Trump further stoked tensions on Friday by announcing that he will pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, the ex-PN leader who was sentenced in 2024 to 45 years in prison in the United States for drug trafficking.
Asfura, who is seeking the presidency for a second time after losing to Castro in 2021, told AFP he has “no ties” to Hernández and that Trump’s backing could bring economic and migration “benefits” to the country. In a clear nod to Washington, Asfura and Nasralla – a three-time presidential candidate – both want to move closer to Taiwan, after Castro restored relations with China in 2023.
Poverty and Violence
The elections are being held amid deep polarization stemming from the 2009 coup d’état that toppled President Manuel Zelaya, Castro’s husband. Moncada calls her rivals “coup-plotting oligarchs”, while they also brand her a “communist” ally of Venezuela. Focused on attacking each other, the candidates barely addressed Hondurans’ most pressing concerns: poverty, gang violence, corruption and drug trafficking.
Trump’s threat to cut aid is no small matter in a country that is ultra-dependent on the United States, with 60% of its 11 million inhabitants living in poverty and 27% of its GDP fueled by remittances sent by migrants. Érika Reyes, a 33-year-old shopkeeper, hopes Trump’s support for Asfura will help migrants: “That he stops persecuting them, gives them work and opens the doors to them.”
In one of the most violent countries on the continent, Hondurans will vote under a partial state of emergency imposed by Castro in 2022. Drug trafficking no longer uses the country only as a bridge, but also as a producer of cocaine. Ballot boxes, guarded by the military, will remain open for 10 hours, and the CNE expects to release the first results later tonight.
