Hondurans have now gone two weeks without knowing who their next president will be, as the country waits for a special count that will determine the winner between conservative Nasry Asfura, backed by Donald Trump, and right-wing Salvador Nasralla. Asfura, a 67-year-old businessman, leads by less than two percentage points over Nasralla, a 72-year-old television presenter who alleges fraud in favor of his opponent in the November 30 elections.
However, the OAS electoral mission found no signs that cast doubt on the results, according to a report presented Monday to the organization’s Permanent Council in Washington. The delay in delivering final results is not justifiable, said former Paraguayan foreign minister and mission chief Eladio Loizaga as he read the report.
In response to fraud accusations echoed by the governing left, the National Electoral Council (CNE) announced it would scrutinize tally sheets with inconsistencies after a vote count that was interrupted several times by computer failures.
But the process, which will be audited by the parties, has not yet begun because the Liberal Party, Nasralla’s party, is demanding a recount of the entire vote. Libre, the leftist party in a distant third place, claims the TV host won. “They are exerting illegal pressure on the CNE, demanding recounts outside the law,” electoral councilor Cossette López wrote Monday.
Despina Manos, the European Union’s representative to the OAS, said Monday that European observers have not found any irregularities affecting the preliminary results.
The Americans are the ones in charge
Nasralla, a former ally of the current government and whom Trump considers “almost communist,” says the CNE only wants to review 39% of the problematic tally sheets. He demands that all of them be counted because, he says, they represent twelve times Asfura’s advantage.
He also wants a full recount of the entire election afterward. Aside from small protests, no violence has been reported. The left called for a “peaceful” march Monday afternoon toward the CNE. The credibility of Honduras’s electoral authority is often questioned because its top officials represent the country’s three main parties.
The CNE has until December 30 to declare the new leader of the 11-million-person country, battered by violence and poverty. Some citizens, like taxi driver Sergio Canales, believe the outcome is already decided. “Ever since Trump said he was with Asfura, we already knew he was going to win. The Americans are the ones in charge,” siad the 53-year-old in Tegucigalpa.
“I just hope they at least stop crime, especially extortion,” he added, referring to one of the crimes hitting Hondurans hardest and linked to violent gangs. Trump, intent on consolidating a right-wing bloc in Latin America, has warned of “serious consequences” for Honduras if the results that currently favor Asfura are changed.
Everyone knows who won
Trump’s intervention in the elections also included pardoning former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, from the same party as Asfura. Hernández had been serving a 45-year prison sentence in the United States for drug trafficking. While Trump says Hernández was the victim of an injustice, Honduran President Xiomara Castro insists he is a criminal.
For Castro, Trump’s “interference” and alleged irregularities such as coercion supposedly carried out by gangs to influence votes amount to an “electoral coup.” “No matter when they say who won, everyone already knows it’s Papi [Asfura’s nickname] who’s president,” Ana María Sánchez, 49, said at her street food stand in the capital.
The Armed Forces, which have a long history of coups, said they will guarantee the transfer of power on January 27. Still, leftist candidate Rixi Moncada insists she will not recognize the results of an election she says was not free because of “foreign interference.”
“They cheated us (…), but we will return to power,” says Elizabeth Sánchez, a 26-year-old pro-government supporter, speaking from a small camp set up by a small group of people outside the site where the scrutiny will take place.
