Honduras president alleges ‘electoral coup’ under way amid Trump ‘interference’

Honduras’s president, Xiomara Castro, has alleged that an “electoral coup” is under way in the country’s presidential election, which she says has been marked by “interference from the president of the United States, Donald Trump”.The leftist president also said that “the Honduran people must never accept elections marked by interference, manipulation and blackmail … Sovereignty is not negotiable, democracy is not surrendered.”Since Hondurans went to the polls on 30 November, the vote count has dragged on, with repeated interruptions and outages on the electoral council’s website.Two rightwing candidates have been neck and neck ever since and, with 99.4% of tally sheets counted in the preliminary results, Nasry “Tito” Asfura is ahead with 40.52%, followed closely by Salvador Nasralla on 39.48% – a margin of only 42,000 votes.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.On the eve of the vote, the US president also announced a pardon for the former president and Asfura ally Juan Orlando Hernández, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison for allegedly creating “a cocaine superhighway to the United States”. He was released last week.At a press conference on Tuesday, Honduras’s president “condemned” Trump’s “interference … 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”.A former finance minister under Castro, Moncada was chosen by the president to run in her place, as Honduras’s constitution does not allow re-election.Before the vote, Trump had claimed Moncada was a communist and that her victory would hand the country to the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro – the target of an escalating US military buildup – “and his narco-terrorists”.Moncada is in third place in the preliminary count, with 19.29%.President Castro said that Trump’s statements “violated the most sacred principle of our constitution. Sovereignty resides in the people, exclusively in the Honduran people.”She also referred to Hernández’s release: “Conservatives in Washington have decided to ally themselves with drug trafficking and organised crime.”After a lengthy investigation that had key developments under Trump’s first administration, Hernández was convicted in the US 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.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Monday, the Honduran attorney general, Johel Zelaya – an ally of Castro’s government – ordered the immediate execution of an international arrest warrant for Hernández, whose whereabouts have been unknown since his release from a federal prison in West Virginia last week.Still speaking about the current elections, Honduras’s president said on Tuesday that the vote had been marked by “threats, coercion, manipulation of the TREP [the results transmission system] and the adulteration of the popular will”, although she presented no evidence.She added: “These 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.”The runner-up, Nasralla, claimed a “monumental fraud” was under way and demanded a recount “tally sheet by tally sheet”.Shortly afterwards, the president of the electoral council, Ana Paola Hall, said: “I cannot tamper with the results, neither to help nor to harm anyone – and you know something, even if I could, I still wouldn’t.”Despite Asfura’s lead in the preliminary count, roughly 14.5% of the tally sheets, containing thousands of votes, showed “inconsistencies” and must be reviewed. The electoral council has until 30 December to announce the official result.