Twenty-five days after the Honduran elections of November 30, the electoral results were finally known: Nasry Asfura, important construction magnate and candidate of the National Party of Honduras (PNH), has become the new president of the country with 40.27% of the votes and a participation of only 51.54%. The far-right candidate focused his campaign on strengthening the security apparatus and implementing economic policies aligned with the interests of the United States. His party embodies the political expression of the traditional economic elites and the most conservative sectors of the country: greater profits for large companies and greater exploitation of the working class.
An undemocratic electoral process
The entire electoral process took place within the framework of a flawed and fraudulent climate. The election results were harshly questioned. The vote counting continued for almost a month, until December 25, due to a series of technical incidents. As soon as the results were announced, Asfura’s main opponent, Salvador Nasralla, a center-right candidate who came in second by just 27,000 votes (with 39.54%), refused to acknowledge his defeat and publicly denounced the results. He demanded the verification of more than 8,000 electoral college records. He also stated that he would publish evidence of document falsification, which he attributes to an advisor to the National Electoral Council (CNE) linked to the PNH. The verification of multiple tally sheets, decided by the CNE after the vote, was criticized by all political parties, while the president of Congress described the results as “totally illegal.”
For her part, Rixi Moncada, candidate of the center-left ruling party, also denounced the elections as “falsified.” Within the National Electoral Council (CNE) itself, the representative of the outgoing president Xiomara Castro’s party refused to recognize the result, going so far as to call it an “electoral coup” and file a complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office.
In this situation, workers and the popular classes have no right to express themselves beyond their vote, since Castro declared a state of emergency during the elections under the pretext of “preventing acts of violence.” In this context, Donald Trump publicly threatened Honduras on December 1, declaring: “It appears that Honduras is trying to alter the results of its presidential elections. If they do, they will pay a price,” thus persisting in the interference that characterized the support campaign for Asfura. This crisis, therefore, demonstrates the instability of the Honduran regime, caught between social anger and imperialist interference, a situation that the various factions of the Honduran bourgeoisie are incapable of resolving.
An election marked by American interference
The Honduran electoral process cannot be understood without the open interference of the US government. Donald Trump, who maintains an aggressive policy towards Latin America, publicly supported Asfura to maintain a pattern of regional dependence and safeguard US interests. He made Washington’s economic aid conditional on the candidate’s victory. “If Nasry Asfura does not win, the United States will not waste its money,” he declared a few days before the elections in Truth Social. This is the same blackmail used in Argentina to try to avoid the defeat of Javier Milei in the last legislative elections. Washington prefers an Asfura government, considering it a stable and predictable ally for its geopolitical interests in the region, in particular the control of emigration and the intensification of imperialist looting policies.
The US president even hypocritically declared, “We can work together to fight the narco-communists and give the people of Honduras the help they need,” when announcing on the eve of the election that he would pardon former President Juan Orlando Hernández, from the same party as Asfura, who was sentenced in the United States in 2024 for drug trafficking, arms trafficking and corruption. In fact, he was released on December 1 after the elections. While claiming to combat drug trafficking by surrounding Venezuela with a vast military deployment in the Caribbean, Trump pardons a leader clearly linked to organized crime, drug trafficking, corruption and who applied a repressive policy while in power. This cynicism reveals the true nature of the intervention: it is not about combating narcoterrorism, but about defending a system of exploitation, inequality, structural plunder and imperialist subjugation.
With Milei in Argentina, Noboa in Ecuador or recently Kast in Chile, Trump will be able to count on one more lackey in the region to carry out his policy of plundering natural resources and neocolonial control of Latin America.
The impasse of the center-left government of Xiomara Castro
The result of the Honduran elections can also be explained by anger towards the previous government. Xiomara Castro came to power in 2022, driven by a mass movement demanding an end to the policies of Juan Orlando Hernández. His victory had generated great expectations of change; However, his years of government were a fiasco for the working class and the popular sectors.
Xiomara did not touch the economic interests of the ruling classes. The national upper class and large landowners kept their privileges intact. The ZEDE (Zones of Employment and Economic Development), neocolonial enclaves that cede territorial and legal sovereignty to encourage foreign investment, remain in force despite their promises to dismantle them. Despite its discourse of sovereignty and its search for relations with China, the Castro government maintained the US military base in Palmerola, ensuring the presence of the Pentagon on Honduran soil.
Immigration and security policy has also been marked by pressure and agreements with the United States, while poverty continues to drive thousands of people into exile. The high cost of living, unemployment, homelessness, the precariousness of the public health and education systems, and rural poverty continue to afflict the vast majority of the population. The “free sovereignty” government has become a mere manager of austerity, maintaining the economic structure that benefits a minority. His “progressivism” has been exhausted by a policy of alliances with the same sectors of the establishment that he claimed to fight. An example of the popular indignation generated by the Castro government is that its candidate for the 2025 elections, Rixi Moncada, Minister of Finance and later Minister of Defense under his administration, obtained only 19.2% of the votes.
In these elections marked by an undemocratic electoral system, the imperialist interference of the United States and the arrival of the extreme right to the government, the true solution for the working and popular classes will then not come from the institutional parties but from the independent organization from below of the workers, peasants, precarious workers and young people who fight in the streets, in the workplace, in the universities and in the countryside, which begins by organizing the fight against electoral fraud and the candidate imposed by Trump, and which continues for living conditions as a increase in salaries that allow all employees to cover their basic needs, the distribution of the land among those who work it, the cancellation of all foreign debt (an instrument of imperialist plunder), the breaking of all military pacts with the United States, the immediate closure of the Palmerola base and the mobilization against all imperialist interference.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
