Honduras’s National Electoral Council has declared National Party candidate Nasry Asfura the winner of the presidential election nearly a month after voters went to the polls. BBC reported that the result ended weeks of uncertainty caused by technical failures, delayed tallies and accusations of fraud.
According to the council, Asfura won with 40.3% of the vote, edging Liberal Party challenger Salvador Nasralla, who received 39.5%. The contest had been too close to call for weeks, and the delays only deepened political tensions. The vote took place on 30 November, but the final count was held up twice because of technical outages that election officials described as inexcusable.
BBC said the national results portal crashed a day after the initial delay, forcing officials to count around 15% of tally sheets by hand. That process became the basis for protests across the country, including demonstrations by supporters of the ruling Libre party in Tegucigalpa who said the election was being manipulated.
Asfura, who was backed by US President Donald Trump, responded to the result by saying he was ready to govern and would not let voters down. Nasralla said he would not accept what he called a result built on omissions, but urged his supporters to remain calm. The electoral controversy also triggered sharp reactions from outside Honduras, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling on all parties to respect the result so that the transition of authority could proceed peacefully.
The politics around the vote became more volatile after Trump himself intervened. BBC reported that the US president warned there would be “hell to pay” if Asfura’s lead was overturned and threatened to withdraw financial support from the United States if he did not win. In a further surprise, Trump also pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, a member of Asfura’s National Party, who was serving a 45-year sentence in the US on drug and weapons charges.
The declaration now gives Honduras an official winner, but it does not end the political argument. President of Congress Luis Redondo said the result was completely illegal, while outgoing president Xiomara Castro had alleged that an electoral coup was taking place. Those claims underline how fragile the country’s political climate remains even after the CNE’s announcement.
The formal count may be over, but the aftermath will continue to shape Honduras’s politics and its ties to Washington. For now, Asfura has the mandate, Nasralla disputes the process, and the country remains split over whether the election was resolved or merely pushed into a new phase of contention.
