Honduras\u2019s president, Xiomara Castro, has alleged that an \u201celectoral coup\u201d is under way in the country\u2019s presidential election, which she says has been marked by \u201cinterference from the president of the United States, Donald Trump\u201d.<\/p>\n
The leftist president also said that \u201cthe Honduran people must never accept elections marked by interference, manipulation and blackmail \u2026 Sovereignty is not negotiable, democracy is not surrendered.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since Hondurans went to the polls on 30 November, the vote count has dragged on, with repeated interruptions and outages on the electoral council\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
Two rightwing candidates have been neck and neck ever since and, with 99.4% of tally sheets counted in the preliminary results, Nasry \u201cTito\u201d Asfura is ahead with 40.52%, followed closely by Salvador Nasralla on 39.48% \u2013 a margin of only 42,000 votes.<\/p>\n
A construction magnate and former mayor of the capital, Tegucigalpa, Asfura received open backing from Trump, who said the US would support the next government only if he won.<\/p>\n
On the eve of the vote, the US president also announced a pardon for the former president and Asfura ally Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison for allegedly creating \u201ca cocaine superhighway to the United States\u201d. He was released last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n At a press conference on Tuesday, Honduras\u2019s president \u201ccondemned\u201d Trump\u2019s \u201cinterference \u2026 when he threatened the Honduran people that if they voted for a brave and patriotic candidate of the Liberal party, Rixi Moncada, there would be consequences\u201d.<\/p>\n A former finance minister under Castro, Moncada was chosen by the president to run in her place, as Honduras\u2019s constitution does not allow re-election.<\/p>\n Before the vote, Trump had claimed Moncada was a communist and that her victory would hand the country to the Venezuelan dictator Nicol\u00e1s Maduro \u2013 the target of an escalating US military buildup<\/a> \u2013 \u201cand his narco-terrorists\u201d.<\/p>\n Moncada is in third place in the preliminary count, with 19.29%.<\/p>\n President Castro said that Trump\u2019s statements \u201cviolated the most sacred principle of our constitution. Sovereignty resides in the people, exclusively in the Honduran people.\u201d<\/p>\n She also referred to Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s release: \u201cConservatives in Washington have decided to ally themselves with drug trafficking and organised crime.\u201d<\/p>\n After a lengthy investigation that had key developments under Trump\u2019s first administration, Hern\u00e1ndez was convicted in the US<\/a> last year. He governed Honduras from 2014 to 2022, and Manhattan prosecutors alleged that, under his government, the country served as a crucial transit point for cocaine entering the US from South American countries including Colombia and Venezuela.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Global Dispatch<\/p>\n Get a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features, opinion and photography, curated by our global development team<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n On Monday, the Honduran attorney general, Johel Zelaya \u2013 an ally of Castro\u2019s government \u2013 ordered the immediate execution of an international arrest warrant for Hern\u00e1ndez, whose whereabouts have been unknown since his release from a federal prison in West Virginia last week.<\/p>\n Still speaking about the current elections, Honduras\u2019s president said on Tuesday that the vote had been marked by \u201cthreats, coercion, manipulation of the TREP [the results transmission system] and the adulteration of the popular will\u201d, although she presented no evidence.<\/p>\n She added: \u201cThese actions constitute an ongoing electoral coup that we will denounce before the United Nations, the European Union, CELAC [Community of Latin American and Caribbean States], the OAS [Organisation of American States] and other international bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n The runner-up, Nasralla, claimed a \u201cmonumental fraud\u201d was under way and demanded a recount \u201ctally sheet by tally sheet\u201d.<\/p>\n Shortly afterwards, the president of the electoral council, Ana Paola Hall, said: \u201cI cannot tamper with the results, neither to help nor to harm anyone \u2013 and you know something, even if I could, I still wouldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite Asfura\u2019s lead in the preliminary count, roughly 14.5% of the tally sheets, containing thousands of votes, showed \u201cinconsistencies\u201d and must be reviewed. The electoral council has until 30 December to announce the official result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Honduras\u2019s president, Xiomara Castro, has alleged that an \u201celectoral coup\u201d is under way in the country\u2019s presidential election,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-623135","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115692475744533413","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}