Trump favourite to win Honduras election locked in tie

The man Donald Trump hopes will be the next leader of Honduras is tied neck and neck with a rival, according to the latest election results.

Just days after Mr Trump stunned many observers by pardoning a former Honduran president convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 45 years in a US jail, his party’s presidential candidate, Nasry “Tito” Asfura, is locked in a virtual tie with centrist Salvador Nasralla.

A third candidate, Rixi Moncada, of the ruling Liberty and Refoundation Party, or LIBRE, was trailing the others.

Initial results suggested Mr Asfura and Mr Nasralla were stuck at 40 per cent, with Ms Moncada at 19 per cent.

According to a social media post by Ana Paola Hall, head of the National Electoral Council, Mr Asfura, 67, led 72-year-old Mr Nasralla by just 515 votes, making it a “technical tie” following the partial tally of Sunday’s election.

Ms Hall wrote: “Thanks to the Honduran people for going to the polls and helping us safeguard the electoral process.

“Today, one day after the elections, we wake up in a country with peace, without acts of violence, and that is a victory for all of us who love Honduras.”

She said that as things currently stood, a difference of 515 votes separated the two leading candidates.

“In the face of this technical tie, we must remain calm [and] have patience,” she added, announcing a manual recount.

The race has been marred by allegations of voter fraud, with experts worrying that more than one candidate could declare victory.

Mr Asfura’s lead has narrowed significantly since the first preliminary results were released on Sunday evening.

Mr Trump responded to the changing margin by saying it appeared Honduras was “trying to change the results of their Presidential Election,” alleging that the country’s election commission prematurely stopped counting votes.

“If they do there will be hell to pay! The people of Honduras voted in overwhelming numbers on November 30th,” he said on his Truth Social platform.

The presidential race is seen as a referendum on political and social divisions that have worsened during the four-year tenure of outgoing president Xiomara Castro, the nation’s only Left-wing leader to finish a term in office.

Corruption and violence are rife in the deeply impoverished country, which has seen hundreds of thousands of its nationals migrate north to the US.

Honduras has been under a state of exception since Dec 2022, declared by Ms Castro to fight drug traffickers and gangs. Under the edict, some constitutional rights have been suspended, and the military and police have been granted increased powers.

The US president said recently Mr Asfura, a former mayor of Tegucigalpa and a member of the right-wing National Party (PN), was the “the only real friend of freedom in Honduras”.

He wrote in a Truth Social post that Mr Asfura’s opponents were not to be trusted, alleging that Ms Moncada was a “communist” aligned with Nicolas Maduro and Cuba.

He also said Mr Nasralla, a television host and member of the centre-leaning Liberal Party, “cannot be trusted”.

Mr Trump also said: “Tito and I can work together to fight the narco-communists, and bring needed aid to the people of Honduras.”

If Mr Asfura were to win power, he would be a powerful ally for Mr Trump as he seeks to assert dominance in Latin America, reduce Chinese influence and challenge drug cartels.

Honduras, along with Guatemala and El Salvador, is part of the Northern Triangle, a trio of countries notorious for a high volume of drug, human and arms trafficking.

As Mr Trump tries to stem the flow of migrants and narcotics to the US, Mr Asfura’s win would give him a partner in all three of those nations who would co-operate with him on security matters.

Trump’s surprising pardon

While the US has frequently meddled in the internal politics of Latin America, from Chile to Guatemala, Mr Trump’s decision to involve himself in Honduras, a nation with a population of just 10 million, surprised many.

During his first term, many Hondurans were part of so-called “caravans” that wound their way north through central America to the US’s Southern border, seeking to enter.

Given Mr Trump has made the fight against illegal drugs entering the country a key part of his second term – green-lighting as commander-in-chief more than 20 deadly strikes on vessels said to be carrying such materials, his pardoning last week of former president Juan Orlando Hernandez stunned a number of experts.

The 57-year-old was convicted last year on drug trafficking and firearms charges and sentenced to 45 years in jail.

His brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, a former congressman, is currently serving a life sentence in the US for manufacturing and smuggling 185,000 kilograms of cocaine.

Asked about the decision to pardon the former president, Mr Trump said: “I was told – I was asked by Honduras, many of the people of Honduras, they said it was a Biden set-up.”

He added: “They basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country, and they said it was a Biden administration set-up, and I looked at the facts and I agree with them.”