Honduras

Dec. 24 (UPI) — Nasry Asfura, with backing by U.S. President Donald Trump, on Wednesday was declared the winner of Honduras’ presidential election that took place one month ago and included fraud allegations.

The 67-year-old right-wing candidate received 40.27% of the vote, with center-right Salvador Nasralla getting 39.53%. The margin was 28,000 votes out of 3.7 million for the election on Nov. 30.

Naralla, 72, served as vice president in the current Liberty and Refoundation, or Libre, but joined the right-wing Liberal Party in his fourth bid for president. Nasralla is a sportscaster and host of the long-running game show on television.

Asfura, nicknamed Tito and Papi, is a construction magnate and former mayor of Tegucigalpa, the capital, from 2014 to 2022.

“Honduras, we now have the official declaration from the CNE [electoral council],” he posted on X. “I recognise the great work carried out by the councillors and the entire team that ran the election. Honduras: I am ready to govern. I will not let you down. God bless Honduras.

His four-year term will begin Jan. 27.

The electoral council declared him the winner before finishing an audit.

There was a review of all tally sheets under “special scrutiny” last week to recount ballots flagged as Inconsistent.”

The electoral council comprised 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 finished third, Rixi Moncada, with 19.2%.

Only two councillors declared him the winner. The representative linked to the president’s party alleged that an “electoral coup” was underway and filed a complaint with the public prosecutor’s office.

Nasralla, refusing to concede, alleged fraud in the counting process, including “forgery of public documents,” claiming “the data from the original tally sheets were altered.” He made the allegations in a series of posts on X.

The results could be challenged in court.

“I have not found proof of widespread or large-scale fraud,” Hector Corrales, the director of the Honduran research institute NODO, who worked for the European Union’s electoral observer mission, said Tuesday.

But there already were doubts about the election integrity, he said.

“That will have an impact on the government’s credibility,” Corrales said. “And that is going to ruin his administration if he doesn’t know how to handle it.”

The top two candidates were different politically than the leftist Libre party, focusing on concerns about crime and corruption.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X: The people of Honduras have spoken: Nasry Asfura is Honduras’ next president. The United States congratulates president-elect Asfura and looks forward to working with his administration to advance prosperity and security in our hemisphere.”

Like Asfura, Nasralla also tried to appeal to Trump. His wife was seen wearing a MAGA hat.

A few days before the election, Trump publicly backed Asfura, and the United States would only support the next government if he won. He called the other leading candidates communists or allies of Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolas Maduro.

On the day before the election, Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was sentenced to 45 years in U.S. prison for allegedly creating a “cocaine superhighway to the United States.”

He was president for eight years until Jan. 27, 2022.

Asfura says he is ready to govern after narrow vote as the US urges ‘all parties to respect the confirmed results’.

Nasry Asfura, a conservative candidate backed by United States President Donald Trump, has won the closely contested presidential elections in Honduras, the country’s election council has said.

The final results, announced on Wednesday – more than 20 days after the vote took place – are likely to lead to challenges in the Central American nation.

According to the electoral authority, known as the CNE, Asfura won 40.3 percent of the vote, edging out centre-right Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla, who received 39.5 percent.

In a brief social media post, Asfura thanked the CNE on Wednesday. “Honduras: I am prepared to govern. I will not fail you,” he wrote.

Trump had come out strongly in support of Asfura, attacking Nasralla and left-wing candidate Rixi Moncada, who ended up garnering less than 20 percent of the votes.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was quick to congratulate Asfura on Wednesday, saying that Washington looks forward to working with him.

“The people of Honduras have spoken: Nasry Asfura is Honduras’ next president,” Rubio wrote in a social media post.

In a separate statement, Rubio urged “all parties to respect the confirmed results” of the elections.

Earlier this month, Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez – a member of Asfura’s National Party – who was serving a lengthy prison sentence in the US for drug trafficking.

Asfura, the former mayor of Honduras’s capital, Tegucigalpa, is of Palestinian descent. But his National Party is staunchly pro-Israel.

Under Hernandez in 2021, Honduras became only the fourth country to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem in breach of international law. Asfura has also aligned himself with Trump and other right-wing leaders in the Americas, including Argentina’s Javier Milei.

The Argentinian president hailed Honduras’s election results on Wednesday, calling it a victory against “narcosocialism”, although the National Party’s Hernandez is a convicted drug trafficker.

“The Honduran people expressed themselves with courage at the ballot boxes and chose to end years of authoritarianism and decay,” Milei wrote in a social media post.

“From Argentina, we celebrate the triumph of freedom and reaffirm our commitment to democracy, the popular will, and the unrestricted respect for institutions in the region.”

Asfura’s victory marks another win for right-wing candidates in Latin America over the past year. Chile and Bolivia have also elected ultraconservative presidents in 2025, and last year, El Salvador’s right-wing leader Nayib Bukele comfortably won re-election.

The results appear to reverse the “Pink Tide” – the wave of left-wing leaders who rose to power in the region in the early 2020s.

The rise of right-wing governments in the region coincides with a US pressure campaign against Venezuela’s left-wing President Nicolas Maduro.

Trump has imposed an oil blockade on Venezuela and amassed US troops and military assets near the country.

Statement comes as regional body says no evidence of fraud in November vote that Trump-backed candidate Asfura leads.

The head of Honduras’s National Electoral Council (CNE) has decried acts preventing the ongoing recount of the Central American country’s presidential election, as a regional body said there was no reason to suspect fraud in the November 30 vote.

Ana Paola Hall’s statement on Monday came amid ongoing protests and unrest over the unresolved election. Nasry Asfura, a right-wing businessman publicly supported by US President Donald Trump, has held a razor-thin lead over his top opponent, Salvador Nasralla.

At least 99 percent of votes have already been counted, but CNE has said that nearly 2,800 ballots will need to be re-examined through a special recount.

In a post on X, Hall said disturbances seen in the country’s capital, Tegucigalpa, have “prevented the necessary conditions for the special recount to begin”.

Observers have said infighting at the CNE, which is run by three officials each representing one of the major political parties, has delayed reaching the final results.

Both Nasralla, a conservative, and outgoing left-wing President Xiomara Castro have alleged vote tampering, although several international missions have dismissed the claims.

On Monday, the Organization of American States (OAS), a regional body, said that despite a lack of expertise in overseeing the election, there was not “any evidence that would cast doubt on the results”.

The OAS mission “urgently calls on the electoral authorities to immediately begin the special recount and to explore all possible ways to obtain the official results as quickly as possible,” OAS official Eladio Loizaga said in a report he read to the group’s members.

“The current delay in processing and publishing the results is not justifiable,” he said in the report.

The OAS statement added that its mission of 101 observers from 19 countries “did not observe any malice or obvious manipulation of the electoral materials or computer systems”. The finding was in line with that of a parallel European Union mission.

The election in Honduras had been in turmoil even before polls opened, with several major parties, political figures, and foreign interference for months casting doubt on the election’s integrity.

The most prominent scandal involved an investigation by the attorney general into a member of Asfura’s National Party for allegedly discussing plans with a military officer to influence the vote.

The candidate for outgoing President Castro’s LIBRE party, Rixi Moncada, later told Reuters news agency that the alleged conspiracy proved the election was “the most rigged in history”.

Several candidates have also criticised the influence of Trump, who endorsed Asfura in the final stretch of the race and vowed to withhold US funding if his candidate did not win.

The US president also pardoned former Honduran President and National Party member Juan Orlando Hernandez, who had been convicted in the US of drug trafficking, two days before the vote.

Authorities in Honduras, a country of about 11 million, subsequently issued a fresh arrest warrant for Hernandez.