Honduras to elect new president after campaign marked by mud-slinging

Hondurans head to the polls on Sunday to elect a new president. The next leader of the Central American nation will have to address issues such as structural poverty and inequality, migration both from and through Honduras towards the United States, and the effects of climate change-driven extreme weather on rural areas.  Despite these challenges, political analysts say mudslinging has prevailed over coherent policy proposals in the presidential campaign. Who are the candidates in the Honduran elections? Current leftist President Xiomara Castro, the first woman to hold the top job, cannot stand for re-election because Honduras does not allow leaders to run for a second consecutive term. Her successor will govern the country from 2026-2030.  Polls show three presidential candidates have realistic chances of winning. Rixi Moncada is running for the left-wing LIBRE party. She co-founded the party with Castro and former president Manuel Zelaya, who is Castro’s husband. Moncada served as defense minister before resigning this year to focus on her presidential campaign. She also served in Zelaya’s cabinet (2006-2009). Castro has endorsed Moncada, and she will probably continue her predecessor’s policies if she wins. “The battle on Sunday is between two models: the oligarchy model and the democratic socialist model,” Moncada said during her end-of-campaign speech. Moncada’s government would likely be a regional ally of Venezuela and Cuba. Salvador Nasralla is the candidate of the long-standing Partido Liberal (Liberal Party), which represented the progressive sector until the emergence of LIBRE. Nasralla is an extravagant TV and beauty pageant host who has run for president twice before, with different parties. He was elected as Castro’s “presidential designee” — a role equivalent to vice president — in 2021, after dropping out of the race and backing her. However, he left the government last year after they fell out. Nasralla has said he admires the economic policies of Argentine President Javier Milei and the hardline security approach of neighboring El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. He has said he intends to copy Bukele’s policies if he wins.  The homicide rate in El Salvador has plummeted from 53 per 100,000 in 2018, the year before Bukele was elected, to just 1.9 per 100,000 in 2024, according to statistics from the police and attorney general. However, the Salvadoran leader has been accused of presiding over severe human rights abuses in the name of cracking down on gangs.  Nasralla has also promised to support the agricultural sector, combat drug trafficking and corruption, and cut taxes for large companies. Nasry Asfura is running as part of the traditional conservative Partido Nacional (National Party), which has historically been the Partido Liberal’s rival.  Asfura is a construction magnate who served as mayor of Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, between 2014 and 2022. He was Castro’s main electoral opponent in 2021. During his campaign closing rally, he described Moncada’s views as “failed ideologies.” What are the proposals? Despite the candidates’ starkly differing political positions, the presidential campaign has been characterized by tit-for-tat verbal attacks and an appeal to emotion, rather than policy proposals, according to Dr Joaquín Mejía Rivera, a human rights researcher at the Reflection, Investigation and Communication team of the Jesuits in Honduras. Both Asfura and Nasralla have called for “communists” — by which they meant LIBRE — to be removed from power. They have also said they suspect Moncada may attempt to use her influence as former defense minister to intervene in the elections. Moncada, on the other hand, said her rivals are backed by sectors that took part in the coup that forced Zelaya out in 2009. Mejía Rivera underscored that both Nasralla and Asfura’s discourse and stances on issues such on morality and religion are significantly to the right of center. Honduran democracy has been beset by challenges in the recent past. Castro’s predecessor Juan Orlando Hernández was accused of winning the 2017 election through fraud. The accusations sparked massive protests in which over 30 people lost their lives. These events, which came just eight years after the military coup against Zelaya, contributed to enduring popular mistrust of part of the country’s institutions.  In 2024, Orlando Hernández was convicted of drug trafficking in the United States and sentenced to 45 years in prison. “Honduras is characterized by accumulating crises we do not solve, on top of our structural problems,” Mejía Rivera said. “There are historic issues no government has been able to solve.” He said the country had been on a path of “democratization” since the worst of these challenges, with poverty and homicide rates both falling. However, he added that challenges with poverty, inequality, impunity, and corruption, and rights abuses such as forced disappearances are ongoing. Honduras is ranked by the United Nations as one of the least developed countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its GDP per capita was US$3,426 per capita in 2024, according to World Bank data.  Who can vote — and for what? Over 6 million Honduran adults are eligible to vote in Sunday’s election, although voting is not mandatory. As well as electing a new president, the 128 seats in Congress will be renewed.  Honduras does not have presidential run-offs, so the next leader will be decided on Sunday.