In a warehouse the size of two basketball courts, hundreds of people are manually reviewing the votes that will decide the winner of Honduras’s presidential election, unfolding like a suspense thriller. Wearing latex gloves, electoral officials and party delegates have been examining every ballot since Thursday as if it were forensic work, following the election held on November 30.
Their work will determine whether the next president will be conservative businessman Nasry Asfura, 67, backed by U.S. President Donald Trump, or the also right-wing Salvador Nasralla, a 72-year-old television presenter. Asfura is ahead by only a few thousand votes. His opponent, who is narrowing the gap, says another half-million votes are still in play.
The recount was jolted on Friday by a new intervention from the Trump administration, which revoked the visa of electoral magistrate Mario Morazán and denied one to electoral council member Marlon Ochoa for allegedly “obstructing” the process. Both are considered close to the government of leftist President Xiomara Castro, who says Trump’s “interference” is part of a plot to manipulate the popular will.
The United States also restricted entry to another unidentified person. Trump had already shaken the election by pardoning former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, a fellow party member of Asfura’s, who had been serving a 45-year prison sentence in the United States for drug trafficking.
There will be a president
The officials and party delegates carrying out the recount are under constant surveillance via closed-circuit television and protected outside by soldiers. There are few people nearby. “We don’t trust the authorities because they’re carrying out the usual frauds, the Honduras-style elections are back,” says Carlos Castillo, 53, a supporter of the governing Libre party (left), whose candidate, Rixi Moncada, finished third.
With no access for the press, the review of nearly 2,800 tally sheets with “inconsistencies” is being broadcast on the National Electoral Council’s (CNE) YouTube channel. The CNE has been criticized because the preliminary count was interrupted several times by computer failures.
Those shortcomings, combined with the narrow margin between Asfura and Nasralla, fraud allegations, and Trump’s intervention, have heightened tensions, with protests leaving about ten people injured and conspiracy theories spreading. But the tension began to ease after the “special scrutiny,” which had been bogged down by demands from Nasralla’s Liberal Party and the ruling Libre party for a recount of all votes.
“Everything’s calm now because there will be a president. Before, we thought there wouldn’t be, but now they’re counting,” Sandra Suazo, a 68-year-old lawyer, said outside the facility in Tegucigalpa. The CNE has until December 30 to announce the winner, but the agency’s co-director of Political Training, Bladimir Bastida, estimates the recount could be finished within hours.
However, an official proclamation would not be immediate, because Nasralla insists that once this audit is completed, “the inconsistencies throughout the entire process must be reviewed,” which he says involve some 8,000 ballot boxes.
Fallout
Regardless of how the story ends, the damage has already been done for some merchants who were counting on the Christmas season, as customers have dwindled due to uncertainty and fears of a violent outbreak. At an open-air market in Kennedy, the city’s largest neighborhood and about 600 meters from the electoral facility, Sandra Reyes, 31, says she invested $1,000 in secondhand merchandise from the United States, but business so far has been a failure.
“I haven’t sold anything. You invest to earn, but because of these politicians I’m afraid I’ll be stuck with the product. People seem scared to spend,” she says. Frustration also surrounds Norman Sierra, 56, a used-car seller, who has not been able to go out and show his vehicles to potential buyers. “It’s scary because there could be protests and they’ll get stoned,” he says.
