Nasry Asfura declared victor of Honduran presidential election

For Christmas, Hondurans officially have a new president-elect — but the second-placed candidate has not accepted the results. Three and a half weeks after the Central American nation’s elections, Nasry Asfura has been declared the victor of the November 30 vote. The conservative former mayor of capital city Tegucigalpa, who has been endorsed by U.S. President Donald Trump, beat second-placed Salvador Nasralla, the National Electoral Council announced on Wednesday evening. The results come after the initial vote count ended in a technical tie, triggering a weeks-long process to establish who had won. The Honduran electoral authorities declared Asfura victor with 97.9% of the results counted, and said it was mathematically impossible for the results to change. Asfura, of the National Party, received 40.3% of the vote to Nasralla’s 39.5% — a difference of 27,026 votes. Rixi Moncada, the incumbent ruling party’s chosen successor, came a distant third with 19.2%. “I recognize the great work of the electoral commissioners and the whole team that implemented the elections,” Asfura wrote on X after the results were announced. “Honduras: I’m ready to govern. I will not fail you. God bless Honduras!” Nasralla, a television host who worked with outgoing President Xiomara Castro in a role comparable to vice president before parting ways with her, said that he did not accept the results.  Electoral observers from delegations such as the European Union did not report suspicions about the election’s integrity. In a news conference and a series of social media posts, Nasralla described the results as “fraud” and said that the authorities had declared Asfury the winner before all the votes had been counted.  In one post, he tagged Trump, writing: “Mr President, your endorsed candidate in Honduras is complicit in silencing the votes of our citizens. If he is truly worthy of your backing, if his hands are clean, if he has nothing to fear, then why doesn’t he allow for every vote to be counted?” Trump backed Asfura in a post on social media, saying that the two could “work together to fight the Narcocommunists.” Despite his claims to prioritize the fight against drug trafficking, the U.S. leader also pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year jail sentence in the U.S. for drug trafficking and weapons charges after being extradited there to stand trial. Hernández, like Asfura, is a member of the National Party. Asfura will take office on January 27 and serve a four-year term.