Trump-Backed Contender Asfura Proclaimed Incoming President of Honduras

Donald Trump-backed candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura was announced as the winner of Honduras’s race for the presidency following a ballot tally that dragged on for nearly four weeks and was overshadowed by fraud allegations and accusations of meddling from the American leader.

The rightwing Asfura, 67, a building tycoon and former mayor of the capital, Tegucigalpa, obtained 40.27% of the vote, against 39.53% for the centre-right Salvador Nasralla, a margin of just 28,000 votes.

The election authority proclaimed a winner before completing the review of all tally sheets under a “special scrutiny” initiated last week to recount votes flagged as “irregular”. The decision was decried by defeated candidates and deplored by the OAS, which deployed an monitoring team to the poll held on 30 November.

Asfura has already declared himself the elected president. “Honduras, we now have the formal proclamation from the CNE [electoral council]. I acknowledge the great work undertaken by the members and the entire team that ran the election. Honduras: I am ready to govern. I will not fail you. God bless Honduras,” he wrote.

Nasralla declined to accept defeat and published a number of messages claiming manipulation in the tallying procedure, including “forgery of public documents”, claiming that “the figures from the original tally sheets were altered”.

The election board is composed of three councillors: one affiliated with Asfura’s party, one with Nasralla’s, and one with the party of the progressive president, Xiomara Castro, whose nominee finished third. Asfura’s victory was declared only by the first two councillors.

The representative associated with the president’s party rejected the result, claimed that an “electoral coup” was taking place and filed a complaint with the public prosecutor’s office, raising the prospect that the result will be contested in court.

In its announcement, the council said: “By the sovereign choice of the Honduran people, expressed sovereignly at the polls, 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 before the end of the recount was the latest in a series of controversies that marked the Central American country’s presidential race, starting with what many saw as open interference by the US president.

Days before the vote, Trump publicly backed Asfura, said the US would support the next government only if he was victorious, and criticized the other leading candidates, calling them socialists or associates of Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro.

On the eve of the election, the US president also announced a pardon for the former Honduran president and Asfura ally Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been given 45 years in prison for reportedly creating “a major drug trafficking route to the United States”.

The American top diplomat, Marco Rubio, offered congratulations to Asfura on social media. “The people of Honduras have spoken: Nasry Asfura is Honduras’ incoming leader,” stated Rubio. “The United States congratulates president-elect Asfura and anticipates collaborating with his administration to advance economic growth and safety in our hemisphere.”