Parliament threatens not to validate election in Honduras

President of Congress alleges interference by Trump in the presidential election and by drug trafficking groups. Candidates denounce fraud, and international observers urge caution.

The Parliament of Honduras threatened this Wednesday (10/12) not to validate the result of the country’s presidential election, stating that the vote took place under internal and external pressure.

The Caribbean nation held the election on November 30, but the final result has not yet been released, amid allegations of fraud, interference and problems in the scrutiny of hundreds of minutes, while the country remains immersed in uncertainty.

Protests erupted on Wednesday, with hundreds of supporters of the ruling Libre party blocking a bridge in the capital, Tegucigalpa, demanding the election be annulled. The country’s electoral commission spent more than 24 hours without releasing new results from the count, apparently paralyzed.

In a document, Parliament makes it clear that it “will not validate a process marred by internal pressure from organized crime structures linked to drug trafficking” and “much less under external pressure”, when referring to statements by American President Donald Trump made hours before the election, in favor of one of the candidates.

“Interference”

The president of the Honduran Parliament, Luis Redondo, condemned Trump’s “interference” and denounced that his public statements in favor of Nasry “Tito” Asfura, candidate of the conservative National Party, constituted “coercion” against voters.

The Parliament’s statement added that Trump’s support for Asfura and his decision to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández “constitute unacceptable interference, a direct threat to the Honduran people and a flagrant violation of democratic principles and international law to influence the vote through pressure, disinformation and economic conditions.”

A member of the same party as Asfura, Hernández had been serving a 45-year prison sentence in New York since June 2024 for drug trafficking and illegal weapons possession. The Honduran Public Ministry is making efforts to re-arrest the former ruler.

“We absolutely condemn the interference of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, who, through public statements made 72 hours before the November 30 elections, threatened and coerced Honduran citizens, altering the free exercise of suffrage”, said Redondo in a statement agreed by the Permanent Committee of Parliament, which comprises nine of the 128 deputies, but which has great powers.

Hernández was extradited by his country in 2022 and convicted of drug trafficking in 2024, but the former president insists that everything was a “setup” perpetrated by the government of former American president Joe Biden.

Trump-backed Asfura is in first place with a small lead | Leonel Estrada/Reuters

The National Electoral Council (CNEA) has not yet released the final result of the election and admitted that 2,773 minutes showed inconsistencies and should be subjected to special scrutiny, the date of which has not yet been defined. With that, 500 thousand votes are at stake.

The latest official tally, released on Tuesday, with 99.40% of the minutes scrutinized, gives an advantage to Asfura, supported by Trump, with 1,298,835 votes (40.52%). Right behind is Salvador Nasralla, from the Liberal Party, with 1,256,428 votes (39.48%). Both are right-wing candidates.

In third comes the leftist candidate of the ruling party, Libre, Rixi Moncada, with 618,448 votes (19.29%).

Fraud accusations

Nasralla on Tuesday denounced a “monumental fraud” in the elections and demanded a special “minute by minute” recount in the face of a series of technical failures and alleged irregularities in the Transmission of Preliminary Electoral Results (TREP) system.

“The failure of the electoral results transmission system, managed by the Colombian company ASD, represents the greatest technical and legal risk observed in the current electoral process. We are not facing a minor error, we are facing vulnerabilities that compromised the reliability of the digital count, generating inconsistencies that should be impossible in a correctly validated system”, he emphasized.

Nasralla, second placed, accuses fraud not lawsuit | Fredy Rodriguez/Reuters

For Nasralla, a system with active security “would have rejected these inconsistencies and forced us to manually review the minutes before transmitting them”.

The ruling party, led by leftist President Xiomara Castro, also rejected the provisional results, saying Trump’s support and pardon for former President Juan Orlando Hernández were electoral interference.

What observation missions say

Parliament asked international observation missions to “include in their final reports a detailed analysis of the events that occurred, especially external and internal threats, TREP failures and administrative decisions that affected the biometric verification of votes”.

At the same time, international missions asked on Wednesday that political parties respect the popular will expressed in the elections.

The European Union Electoral Observation Mission (EU EOM) called on political actors to respect the will of Hondurans in the elections and encouraged political forces to use “the traceability mechanisms” offered by the CNE and the resources provided by law to resolve “questions about the results”.

The European delegation, present in the country with 138 observers since October 11, also asked the members of the CNE and the Electoral Court of Justice to act “in an impartial and exemplary manner”, avoiding “obstructions or delays” of a political nature.

In turn, the Electoral Observation Mission of the Organization of American States (MOE/OAS) urged parties, candidates and authorities to “await the official results and maintain active surveillance over the ongoing ballots” to ensure that the “final phases of the process develop in accordance with the law and reflect the popular will”.

The OAS highlighted the need for “maximum transparency”, asked the CNE to speed up the count and reiterated that it will continue to monitor the process in accordance with Chapter 5 of the Inter-American Democratic Charter.

Furthermore, he warned against “any call to alter public order” during the vote and emphasized the importance of security forces protecting electoral materials.

Originally published by DW on 12/11/2025