Trump-Backed Candidate Declared Winner in Honduras

Trump-backed candidate Nasry Asfura won Honduras' presidential election, the country's electoral authorities said Wednesday afternoon, ending a weeks-long count that has whittled away at the credibility of the Central American nation's fragile electoral system. The election continues Latin America's swing to the right, coming just a week after Chile chose the far-right politician José Antonio Kast as its next president, the AP reports.

• Asfura, of the conservative National Party, received 40.27% of the vote in the Nov. 30 election, officials say, edging out four-time candidate Salvador Nasralla of the center-right Liberal Party, who finished with 39.39% of the vote.

• Asfura, the former mayor of Honduras' capital Tegucigalpa, won in his second bid for the presidency, after he and Nasralla were neck-and-neck during a weeks-long vote count that fueled international concern.
• On Tuesday night, a number of electoral officials and candidates were already fighting and contesting the results of the election. Meanwhile, followers in Asfura's campaign headquarters erupted into cheers. "Honduras: I am prepared to govern," wrote Asfura in a post on X shortly after the results were released. "I will not let you down."
• The results were a rebuke of the current leftist leader, President Xiomara Castro, and her governing democratic socialist Liberty and Re-foundation Party, known as LIBRE, whose candidate finished in a distant third place with 19.19% of the vote.

• Asfura ran as a pragmatic politician, pointing to his popular infrastructure projects in the capital. Trump endorsed the 67-year-old conservative just days before the vote, saying he was the only Honduran candidate the US administration would work with. Trump endorsed Asfura in a post declaring that he would pardon former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was serving a 45-year sentence for conspiring to import cocaine into the US.
• Nasralla has maintained that the election was fraudulent and called for a recount of all the votes just hours before the official results were announced. He and others opponents of Asfura have maintained that Trump's last-minute endorsement was an act of electoral interference that ultimately swung the results of the vote.
• The unexpectedly tumultuous election was also marred by a sluggish vote count, which fueled even more accusations. The nation was stuck in limbo for more than three weeks as vote counting by electoral authorities lagged, and at one point was paralyzed after a special count of final vote tallies was called, fueling warnings by international leaders.