Former US President-Endorsed Contender Asfura Proclaimed New President of Honduras
Former President Trump-endorsed candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura was announced as the victor of Honduras’s presidential election following a vote count that dragged on for nearly four weeks and was clouded by fraud allegations and accusations of meddling from the US president.
The rightwing Asfura, 67, a construction magnate and ex-mayor of the capital, Tegucigalpa, secured 40.27% of the vote, compared to 39.53% for the centre-right Salvador Nasralla, a difference of just 28,000 votes.
The election authority proclaimed a winner before completing the review of all vote records under a “special scrutiny” launched last week to re-tally votes flagged as “inconsistent”. The move was decried by defeated candidates and deplored by the OAS, which deployed an observation mission to the poll held on 30 November.
Asfura has already declared himself president-elect. “Honduras, we now have the official declaration from the CNE [supreme electoral tribunal]. I recognise the tremendous effort undertaken by the councillors and the entire team that ran the election. My fellow citizens: I am ready to govern. I will not fail you. God bless Honduras,” he wrote.
Nasralla declined to accept defeat and posted a number of messages claiming manipulation in the tallying procedure, including “tampering with official records”, asserting that “the data from the initial count sheets were changed”.
The election board is composed of three councillors: one aligned with Asfura’s party, one with Nasralla’s, and one with the party of the leftist president, Xiomara Castro, whose candidate came in third place. Asfura’s victory was declared only by the first two councillors.
The representative associated with the president’s party refused to recognise the result, claimed that an “stolen election” was under way and lodged a legal challenge with the attorney general, opening the possibility that the result will be contested in the judiciary.
In its statement, the council declared: “By the sovereign choice of the Honduran people, expressed freely at the ballot box, the plenary session of the CNE declares Nasry Juan Asfura Zablah constitutional president of the Republic of Honduras for the four-year term starting 27 January 2026 and ending on 27 January 2030.”
The declaration prior to the conclusion of the recount was the latest in a series of controversies that characterized the Central American country’s election campaign, starting with what many saw as blatant meddling by the American head of state.
Shortly prior to the election, Trump openly endorsed Asfura, stated the US would support the next government only if he was victorious, and criticized the other main contenders, labeling them communists or associates of Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro.
On the night of the election, the American leader also granted clemency for the former Honduran president and Asfura ally Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been given 45 years in prison for reportedly establishing “a major drug trafficking route to the United States”.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, offered congratulations to Asfura on social media. “The people of Honduras have spoken: Nasry Asfura is Honduras’ next president,” said Rubio. “The United States congratulates president-elect Asfura and anticipates working with his administration to promote economic growth and security in our hemisphere.”
