President of Honduras claims vote manipulation and US interference

(Patria) - Honduran President Xiomara Castro has condemned what she called manipulation of the results of the recent general elections and accused US counterpart Donald Trump of interfering in the vote.

Final votes are still being counted after the presidential elections held on November 30, and suspicions of interference have been fueled by successive computer failures that halted the counting.

Conservative candidate Nasry Asfura (67), supported by Trump, had 40.53 percent of the votes on Monday, followed by right-wing candidate Salvador Nasralla with 39.16 percent, according to the National Electoral Council (CNE), AFP reported.

Nasralla also complained of alleged electoral corruption and described the results as a "theft" on Monday, claiming he was actually leading by twenty percent.
Both are significantly ahead of the candidate of the president's left-wing Libre party, Rixi Moncada.

Speaking at a rally, Castro said that people participated in the elections with "courage and determination." However, she said that the process was marked by "threats, coercion, manipulation of TREP" - the country's preliminary results system - and "falsification of the popular will".

Castro says Trump "interfered" in the elections by threatening Hondurans that there would be "consequences" if they voted for Moncada.

In the final stretch of the campaign, Trump expressed clear support for Asfura, calling him a "friend of freedom" and accusing Nasralla of only "pretending to be anti-communist".

Trump also unexpectedly pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was serving a forty-five-year prison sentence in the United States on charges of drug trafficking and aiding in the smuggling of hundreds of tons of cocaine.

Nasralla is demanding a recount of the votes "vote by vote" which, according to him, show a "pattern of fraud where biometric verification was not used, and the results were arbitrarily compiled".

More than a week after the elections, thousands of ballot records with "discrepancies" still need to be reviewed, election officials said.

Late Sunday, the Libre party demanded a "complete annulment" of the elections and called for protests and strikes, while urging officials not to cooperate with the government transition.

Request to Interpol

The Trump administration announced on Monday that the elections were fair and that there was "no credible evidence" to justify their annulment.
The Electoral Council has until December 30 to declare a winner, according to the law.

Amid uncertainty about who will succeed Castro, Honduran Attorney General Johel Zelaya requested on Tuesday that Interpol issue an arrest warrant for former President Hernandez. The warrant was issued in 2023, when Hernandez was already in custody in the US, for alleged money laundering and fraud.

On Tuesday, Hernandez's lawyer, Renato Stabile, rejected the prosecutor's request, linking it to a "desperate and shameful attempt" by the Honduran left to "stay in power," according to a statement to AFP in the United States.

The former president of Honduras, who is from the same party as Trump's favorite Asfura, has ruled out returning to Honduras because he fears for his life, according to his wife Ana Garcia.