Supporters packed into Nasry Asfura’s campaign headquarters erupted in cheers on Wednesday afternoon, 24 December, when electoral authorities declared him the winner of Honduras’ presidential election. The count had dragged on for more than three weeks. At one point it was paralyzed after a special count of final tallies was ordered.
Asfura, a 67-year-old former mayor of Tegucigalpa and the conservative National Party candidate, took 40.27% of the vote in the 30 November election. Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party, a four-time candidate, got 39.53%. Middle East Eye put the difference at 0.74 percent. Asfura had run for president once before. Libre, the governing party of outgoing President Xiomara Castro, finished a distant third with 19.19%.
“Honduras: I am prepared to govern,” Asfura wrote on X after the results came out. “I will not let you down.”
Trump’s role
US President Donald Trump endorsed Asfura just days before the vote and said he was the only Honduran candidate his administration would work with. Middle East Eye reported that Trump also threatened to cut off all aid to Honduras if Asfura lost. Asfura had campaigned as a pragmatic politician and pointed to popular infrastructure projects in the capital.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio congratulated him on Wednesday. “We look forward to working with his incoming administration to advance our bilateral and regional security cooperation, end illegal immigration to the United States, and strengthen the economic ties between our two countries,” he said. The European Union and several right-leaning Latin American leaders, among them Argentina’s Javier Milei, also sent congratulations.
Fraud claims
Nasralla kept insisting the vote was fraudulent. He said the officials who announced the results had “betrayed the Honduran people.” The night before, he had written to Trump on X: “Mr. President, your endorsed candidate in Honduras is complicit in silencing the votes of our citizens.” The president of the Honduran Congress also rejected the results, and Nasralla and other critics argued that the late endorsement from Trump amounted to election interference that swung the outcome.
The Organization of American States said it “takes note” of the results. It also criticized the authorities for announcing a winner while the last .07% of votes were still being counted in such a close race. Some 15 percent of the vote had to be counted by hand, Reuters reported.
Castro, elected in 2021 on promises to cut violence and root out corruption, had earlier called Trump’s actions an “electoral coup.” She said last week she would accept the outcome. Eric Olson, an independent observer with the Seattle International Foundation, said the rejection of her party was so definitive that it had little room to contest the results. “Very few people, even within LIBRE, believe they won the election,” he said.
The result came a week after Chile elected the far-right José Antonio Kast, continuing a rightward turn in Latin America. Asfura has said he will stand against Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and resist China’s growing footprint in the region.
Sources
- Trump-backed candidate Nasry Asfura wins Honduras presidential election
- Trump-backed candidate Nasry Asfura declared winner of Honduras' presidential vote
- Trump-backed candidate of Palestinian origin wins Honduras presidential election
Sources
- Trump-backed candidate Nasry Asfura wins Honduras presidential…
- Trump-backed candidate Nasry Asfura declared winner of Honduras…
