President Donald Trump expressed concerns about the now-halted presidential vote count in Honduras in a statement on Monday — stressing that there will be “hell to pay” if the results are altered.
Honduras held a presidential election on Sunday. The race was for much of the count led by Trump-endorsed conservative politician Nasry Asfura of the National Party of Honduras (PNH), former Vice President Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party, and Rixi Moncada, who represented the ruling far-left Liberty and Refoundation (Libre) party.
Honduras’s National Electoral Council (CNE) has not finalized the vote count at press time. Without disclosing initial specifics, the electoral authority halted the vote count process on Monday at a time when it had only counted 57 percent of all votes cast — leaving the process in a suspenseful “technical tie” standstill.
According to the latest publicly available partial results, conservative candidate Asfura has so far obtained 39.91 percent of the votes against liberal candidate Nasralla’s 39.89 percent — with Asfura enjoying only an extremely thin 515 vote lead on Nasralla. Moncada, the candidate of the current ruling socialist administration of President Xiomara Castro, only obtained about 19 percent of the votes so far.
“I want to inform you that the Preliminary Results Transmission System (TREP) has concluded, and a few hours ago, with 57.03 percent of the transmitted tally sheets, a difference of 515 votes was reflected between the presidential candidates of the PLH and PN parties,” CNE head Ana Paula Hall wrote on social media on Monday.
“Given this virtual tie, we must remain calm, be patient, and wait for the National Electoral Council (CNE) to finish counting the tally sheets for contingency procedures 1 and 2. Subsequently, the special recount process will be carried out, thus finalizing the general count,” she continued.
President Trump referred to the ongoing electoral situation in Honduras and the halted vote count on Truth Social on Monday.
He said:
Looks like Honduras is trying to change the results of their Presidential Election. If they do, there will be hell to pay! The people of Honduras voted in overwhelming numbers on November 30th. The National Electoral Commission, the official body charged with counting the Votes, abruptly stopped counting at midnight on November 30th. Their count showed a close race between Tito Asfura and Salvador Nasralla with Asfura holding a narrow lead of 500 votes. Their tally was stopped when only 47 percent of the Vote was counted. It is imperative that the Commission finish counting the Votes. Hundreds of thousands of Hondurans must have their Votes counted. Democracy must prevail!
On Tuesday morning, CNE released an official statement on its social media accounts announcing that the service hired for the online platform used in the reporting of statistical vote tallies information “experienced technical problems” on Monday. The company allegedly told CNE that the packages of tally sheets transmitted on election night are “still pending processing.”
“The CNE has requested a report from both the company and the external auditing service. The CNE has demanded that ASD SAS [the company] provide the fastest possible technical solution so that all citizens have full and continuous access to the statistical data,” the statement read.
CNE explained that, as a “temporary measure,” it enabled a public space on a secure location to allow media and political parties to continue monitoring the vote count in real time. It vowed to continue working to deliver electoral results within the deadlines established by local law, “providing all the guarantees offered by the law to the actors in the electoral contest.”
Hours before CNE’s announcement on Tuesday, socialist candidate Rixi Moncada addressed her followers on Monday night and accused President Trump of allegedly committing “electoral fraud and interference” in Sunday’s vote. Despite the partial results showing that she has no path to victory in light of Asfura and Nasralla’s “technical tie,” Moncada assured that she has not yet lost the election.
According to the left-wing propaganda network Telesur, Moncada justified her accusations by citing purported audio recordings that reveal an alleged “tampering with the preliminary results transmission system and biometrics.” Moncada also pointed to the “direct imperial foreign interference” allegedly committed by President Trump, who backed the election’s conservative candidate.
Last week, President Trump criticized Moncada for her public admiration of late Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castro and branded Nasralla a “borderline communist,” as Nasralla served as vice president for current socialist President Xiomara Castro before he resigned and ultimately ran as the candidate of the Liberal Party.
President Trump gave his endorsement to Asfura and stressed that he could not work with “Moncada and the Communists, and Nasralla is not a reliable partner for Freedom, and cannot be trusted.” According to Moncada, President Trump’s remarks constituted a “direct coercion to vote.”
“President Donald Trump labels me a communist, that tired old Cold War tactic. The Honduran people who know me will always be on my side, outraged by his interference,” Moncada said on Monday.
“I will maintain my position and I will not give up. I will always be on the side of the people, with my values firmly rooted in the defense of my free homeland, in the principles of non-interference and popular sovereignty,” she continued.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here
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