Trump-backed candidate Nasry Asfura winner of Honduras’ presidential vote : NPR

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Trump-backed candidate Nasri Asfura won the presidential election in Honduras, election authorities said Wednesday afternoon, capping a week-long vote count that has undermined confidence in the Central American country's fragile electoral system.

The elections continue Latin America's turn to the right and come just a week after Chile elected far-right politician José Antonio Casta as its next president.

Asfura, of the conservative National Party, received 40.27% of the vote in the Nov. 30 election, ahead of four-time candidate Salvador Nasrallah of the conservative Liberal Party, who finished with 39.53% of the vote.

Elected President of Honduras

The former mayor of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa won his second bid for the presidency after he and Nasrallah walked hand-in-hand during the week-long vote count, sparking international concern.

On Tuesday evening, a number of election commissions and candidates were already fighting and challenging the election results. Meanwhile, supporters at Asfura's campaign headquarters burst into applause.

“Honduras: I am ready to govern the country,” Asfura wrote in a post on X shortly after the results were published. “I won't let you down.”

The result was a rebuke of the current leftist leader and her ruling democratic socialist Freedom and Renaissance Party, known as LIBRE, whose candidate finished a distant third with 19.19% of the vote.

Trump takes center stage in Honduras

Secretary of State Marco Rubio congratulated Asfura on Wednesday, writing in a post on X: “The people of Honduras have spoken…(the Trump administration) looks forward to working with his administration to advance prosperity and security in our hemisphere.”

The European Union and some of Latin America's leading right-wing leaders, notably Argentine President Javier Miley, a Trump ally, also congratulated the politician.

Asfura ran as a pragmatic politician, pointing to his popular infrastructure projects in the capital. Trump endorsed the 67-year-old conservative just days before the vote, saying he was the only Honduran candidate the US administration would work with.

Nasrallah reiterated claims that Wednesday's election was fraudulent, saying the election authorities who announced the results had “betrayed the people of Honduras.”

On Tuesday night, he also addressed Trump in a post on X, writing: “Mr. President, the candidate you support in Honduras is complicit in silencing the voices of our citizens. If he is truly worthy of your support, if his hands are clean, if he has nothing to fear, then why doesn’t he allow every vote to be counted?”

He and Asfura's other opponents argued that Trump's last-minute support was an act of election interference that ultimately swayed the vote.

Chaotic elections

The unexpectedly tumultuous election was also marred by a sluggish vote count, fueling more finger-pointing.

The Central American country was stuck in limbo for more than three weeks due to delays in vote counting by election authorities and at one point was paralyzed after a special count of the final vote tallies was announced, heightening warnings from international leaders.

After expressing democratic concerns about the lack of results days earlier, Organization of American States Secretary-General Albert Rambin wrote in a post on X on Wednesday that the OAS “takes note” of the announced results and noted that it was “closely monitoring developments in Honduras.”

He also condemned the electoral authorities for announcing the results when the final 0.07% of the votes were counted by such a razor-thin electoral margin.

Shift to the right in Latin America

For incumbent progressive President Xiomara Castro, the election marked a political reckoning. She was elected in 2021 on a promise to reduce violence and root out corruption.

She was among a group of progressive Latin American leaders who were elected with a hopeful message of change about five years ago but have now been ousted for failing to implement their vision. Last week, Castro said she would accept the election results even after she said Trump's handling of the election amounted to an “electoral coup.”

But Eric Olson, an independent international observer of the Honduran election for the International Foundation of Seattle, and other observers said the opposition to Castro and her party was so categorical that they had little recourse to challenge the results.

“Very few people, even within LIBRE, believe they won the election. They will say there was fraud, that there was interference by Donald Trump, that we should overturn the election and vote again,” Olson said. “But they don't say, 'We won the election.' It's clear they didn't do that.”