Trump’s threats and the memory of the 2017 deaths shake up the count in Honduras amid accusations of fraud

The scrutiny has been progressing in fits and starts since the Preliminary Results Transmission System (TREP), the only mechanism for rapid vote dissemination that Hondurans can trust, stopped working. Only this Thursday did the count finally exceed the 85 percent threshold.

Two men are vying heads and tails for the presidency. The conservative Nasry Asfuraa former mayor of the capital known as Tito Asfura o Daddy on orderand the liberal Salvador Nasrallaa famous television host and sports commentator with one foot in the political arena. Two men, by the way, born in Tegucigalpa but of Palestinian origins.

Asfura began leading the count with a difference of 515 votes. Nasralla surpassed him on Wednesday. But this Thursday, when the centrist leader was savoring victory, Asfura recovered first place by surprise. The conservative candidate would obtain 41.20 percent of the votes, compared to 39.46 percent for Nasralla.

The difference exceeds 20,000 ballots. A margin so narrow that the CNE considers it “historic.” It seems difficult to reverse the trend at this point, but almost no one seems willing to bet given what we have seen. Nor is it any incentive that the presidency is decided in a single round.

The interference of Donald Trump in the process it did not make things easier. The president of the United States took sides 48 hours before the polls opened by calling for the vote for Asfura, and threatened to suspend economic aid to Honduras – not to continue “wasting money” in the country – in case the conservative candidate, a confessed admirer of Javier Miley y Nayib Bukele with a long political career, lost the elections.

Not content with that, Trump once again played the interventionist card in the middle of the slow recount. He raised the specter of electoral fraud when the difference in votes between his candidate and Nasralla began to narrow. “It seems that Honduras is trying to change the results of their presidential election. If they do, there will be serious consequences!” he wrote on his platform, Truth Social.

Many wonder what has been lost in Honduras. Hondurans are clear about it. Orlando J. Perezprofessor of Political Science at the University of North Texas, explains that the Republican president “has several interests at the same time: to show that he ‘contains’ the Cuba-Venezuela-Nicaragua axis, to reinforce his war on drugs discourse and to send a signal to his Hispanic electorate in the United States that he supports ‘tough’ right-wing governments in terms of security.”

But why close ranks with Daddy on order? “His link with the National Party is political and biographical: it was the Government of Juan Orlando Hernandeztoday pardoned by Trump, who aligned himself closely with Washington on security and migration, and Asfura is heir to that project,” Pérez responds.

“Presenting Asfura as ‘the only one with whom he can work’ not only favors the National Party, it also tries to set a precedent: allies who agree to Trump’s agenda on migration, the fight against drugs and Venezuela receive explicit electoral support and even judicial benefits, although the democratic quality of the partner is questionable,” adds the specialist in dialogue with EL ESPAÑOL.

It is still paradoxical because, as the Honduran lawyer points out in conversation with this newspaper, Gisselle Woloznyco-founder of the consulting firm CENTURIA, Asfura had tried in the last four years to distance herself from the legacy of Hernández, known as JOH, a polarizing figure on the national political scene. Trump blew up that strategy, but the White House occupant can still get his way.

The United States destabilizes, but Nasralla does not do his part to reduce tensions either. The liberal candidate denounces fraud. It says that “an algorithm changed the data” of the count in the early hours of Thursday. With nocturnality and treachery.

There is no proof, but there is no doubt either. Although it is true that the electoral authority recognizes that 17 percent of the minutes present inconsistencies, so they will be reviewed. We will have to wait.

The allegations of fraud revived, in any case, the electoral trauma that shook the country in the 2017 elections. “Then, a count plagued by irregularities and technical cuts ended with the quick recognition of Hernández despite the doubts of the OAS and a good part of the international community,” recalls Pérez.

“Today we once again have a very close result, a crash of the data transmission system and an open intervention from Washington, now personalized to Trump, questioning the process when its candidate was losing,” he adds.

The 2017 post-election crisis caused the death of 31 people in clashes with security forces, according to data from Amnesty International. The victims were the followers of Nasralla himself, then a candidate under the acronym of the Opposition Alliance against the Dictatorship, who lost the elections to Hernández who certified his re-election.

“The risk is not only that another election is ‘stolen’, but that it becomes normalized that the outcome of a close contest is decided by external pressures and imported narratives of fraud, rather than by Honduran rules and institutions,” warns the professor at the University of North Texas in this sense.

a pardon

Trump’s interference in the Honduran electoral process culminated on Monday with the release of Juan Orlando Hernández. In the early stages of the recount, US prison authorities confirmed that the former Honduran president had left the maximum security prison in Hazelton (West Virginia) where he was serving a 45-year prison sentence.

In March 2024, a New York court found him guilty of drug trafficking and weapons offenses. The US Justice proved proven that Hernández received bribes from no less than El Chapo Guzmánwithin the framework of a conspiracy to traffic more than 400 tons of cocaine across the United States border.

Hernández himself had asked the Republican president to pardon him through a letter in which he called him “your excellency.” Trump accepted, ensuring that Hernández had been treated “very harshly and unfairly” and that the Administration Joe Biden “he set a trap for him.” He accepted. And that, as the instruction revealed, JOH even said at one point that “they would put the drugs directly under the noses of the gringos.”

Hecatomb of the left

The former president Gabriel Zelayahusband and court advisor of the outgoing president Xiomara Castrowrote in

Zelaya – who suffered a riot for bringing Honduras closer to the orbit of Cuba and Venezuela – denounced, in passing, that “with the interference of Donald Trump and his pardon of JOH, the desperate bipartisanship imposes an electoral coup against Rixi.”

The former president’s statements do not soften the catastrophe of the ruling Libre party, the party he founded and coordinates. Xiomara Castro’s formation is relegated to third position. Your candidate, Rixi Moncadaremains “far from their expectations and the role that their political strength played in recent governments,” the analyst emphasizes. Daniel Zovatto. He would only obtain 19.30 percent of the votes.

The collapse of the left comes after four years of government in one of the most violent countries in the region, plagued by the violence of criminal gangs and corruption. Meanwhile, “the right is gaining ground with prospects of regaining not only power, but also old international alliances—such as the possible restoration of relations with Taiwan—and unexpected and intense support from Trump in Washington,” adds Zovatto.