Trump threat overshadows Honduras vote
Polls closed Sunday in Honduras' knife-edge presidential election, after a campaign dominated by US President Donald Trump's threat to cut aid if a conservative candidate loses.
Trump threw his weight behind 67-year-old Nasry "Tito" Asfura in the final days of the race, upending a contest that is too close to call in a country plagued by drug trafficking and gang activity.
Asfura's main challengers are 60-year-old lawyer Rixi Moncada from the ruling leftist Libre party and 72-year-old TV host Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party.
Lawmakers and hundreds of mayors will also be elected in the fiercely polarized nation, which is also one of the most violent countries in Latin America.
An Asfura victory would see Honduras become the latest country in Latin America -- after Argentina and Bolivia -- to swing right after years of leftist rule.
"If he (Asfura) doesn't win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad," Trump wrote Friday on his Truth Social platform, echoing threats he made in support of Argentine President Javier Milei's party in that country's recent midterms.
Trump also made the shock announcement that he would pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, of Asfura's National Party, who is serving a 45-year prison sentence in the United States for cocaine trafficking and other charges.
Some Hondurans have welcomed Trump's interventionism, saying they hope it might mean Honduran migrants will be allowed to remain in the United States.
But others have rejected his meddling in the vote.
"I vote for whomever I please, not because of what Trump has said, because the truth is I live off my work, not off politicians," Esmeralda Rodriguez, a 56-year-old fruit seller, told AFP.
Nearly 30,000 Honduran migrants have been deported from the United States since Trump returned to office in January.
The clampdown has dealt a severe blow to the country of 11 million people, where remittances represented 27 percent of GDP last year.
After voting in the capital Tegucigalpa, Asfura denied that the planned pardon would benefit him, saying: "This issue has been circulating for months, and it has nothing to do with the elections."
- Fears of election fraud -
Leftist Rixi Moncada -- who represents outgoing President Xiomara Castro's ruling Libre party -- has portrayed the election as a choice between her and a "coup-plotting oligarchy."
That is a reference to the right's backing of the 2009 military ouster of leftist Manuel Zelaya, Castro's husband.
Preemptive accusations of election fraud, made both by the ruling party and opposition, have sown mistrust in the vote and sparked fears of post-election unrest.
The president of the National Electoral Council, Ana Paola Hall, warned all parties "not to fan the flames of confrontation or violence" at the start of the single-round election.
Moncada, who has held ministerial portfolios under both Zelaya and Castro, said she will only acknowledge the final results, not preliminary counts.
Nasralla also served in Castro's government but fell out with the ruling party and has since shifted to the right.
The 67-year-old Asfura was in the construction business before being elected mayor of Tegucigalpa, serving two terms.
- 'Escape poverty' -
Long a transit point for cocaine exported from Colombia to the United States, Honduras is now also a producer of the drug.
But the candidates barely addressed the fears of Hondurans about drug trafficking, poverty and violence during the campaign.
"I hope the new government will have good lines of communication with Trump, and that he will also support us," said Maria Velasquez, who is 58.
"I just want to escape poverty."
(U.Kabuchyn--DTZ)
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