Trump and drug lords hand in hand

Trump and drug lords hand in hand

Domestic and foreign powers attempt to enforce the “correct” election result in Honduras

by Leo Gabriel (from Tegucigalpa)

[This article posted on 1/1/2026 is translated from the German on the Internet, http://www.linksnet,de,]


All those who, as announced, had expected the first free elections in Honduras on November 30 after the coup in June 2009 were bitterly disappointed: Not only are there still no clear election results fourteen days later due to alleged “technical problems”; because of Donald Trump's massive intervention, there can be no question of independent opinion-forming.

Four days before the election, Trump had spoken out on his Truth Social platform in favor of Nasry Asfura, the candidate of the ultra-conservative National Party, and demonized his rivals from the Liberal Party and the left-wing LIBRE (Libertad y Refundación) as “communists”:

“Should Maduro and his narco-terrorists take over another country, as they have done with Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela? The only one defending democracy and fighting Maduro is ‘Tito’ Asfura,” Trump tweeted.

This was apparently enough to spark an externally driven rumor among the approximately 2 million Hondurans living in the US that Trump would block the so-called remesas, i.e., the portion of wages that foreign workers in the US send home to their families, which constitutes the most important part of Honduras' gross domestic product.

On election day itself, however, things had been relatively civilized in the polling stations, which is why international election observers from the EU Commission and the Organization of American States (OAS) had already been moved to make positive statements. It was only later that it emerged that the so-called maras – youth gangs that work with the drug cartels – had ensured that a large proportion of the electronic devices used to identify voters were unusable, which is why only about a third of the votes cast were counted on election night itself.

Disappointment on the left

However, the numerous representatives of civil society networks were less than pleased, as they had expected the candidate of the left-wing LIBRE (Libertad y Refundación) party, which is still in government, Rixi Moncada, to win based on the opinion polls. Instead, according to the results announced by the Electoral Council (CNE – Consejo Nacional de Elecciones) after considerable delays, she appears to be in third place.

According to observers, this is mainly due to the fact that her predecessor, Xiomara Castro of LIBRE, the wife of former President José Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted by the army with the support of the National Party in 2009, failed to curb galloping inflation and reform the public health system, which was already in a state of disrepair when she took office.

In addition, many have accused her government of providing public positions to a large number of her relatives, while many qualified job seekers who did not belong to the party were left behind. According to consistent statistics, Xiomara Castro did manage to reduce the poverty rate from 63 to 45 percent, bring electricity to even the most remote villages, and repair most of the previously treacherous roads.

A decisive factor in why many who voted for Xiomara four years ago did not vote for Rixi Moncada this time was the fact that the relatively young intellectual had based her election program on the theme of “democratization of the economy,” which led to radical polarization in this country traditionally dominated by a dozen large families.

For this reason alone, voter turnout fell by about 14 percentage points compared to 2021.

Trump pardons convicted ex-president

But what was even more decisive was what the powerful man in the White House in Washington had done and caused. Not only did Donald Trump, as mentioned, clearly speak out in favor of the National Party candidate, Nasry Asfura, but he also suddenly pardoned the country's most notorious drug lord, Juan Orlando Hernández (popularly known as JOH), who had won the presidency from 2013 to 2021 (also with the help of electoral fraud).

JOH was arrested shortly after the Conservatives were voted out by Xiomara Castro in 2021 and extradited under then-US President Joe Biden to a court in Miami, which sentenced him to 45 years in prison for smuggling 400 tons of cocaine and countless heavy weapons into the US. He is now free again, but must fear being re-arrested at any time if he leaves the US. The Honduran Minister of Justice has already issued an arrest warrant for him.

Since all these machinations would meet with resistance in Honduras, many observers assume that they would in one way or another benefit Salvador Nasralla, who is in second place in all polls, a former sports reporter from San Pedro Sula who formed an alliance with LIBRE in the last elections and served as vice president from 2021 to 2023. In a way, this was also the case at the beginning of the count, when Nasralla of the Liberal Party and Asfura of the National Party were still very close together.

Anatomy of electoral fraud

But then the announcement of the election results by the Electoral Council was suddenly interrupted. First for twelve hours, and then repeatedly for shorter periods. This suggests that in one case, the votes of one candidate were transferred to the other. In fact, the chaos now seems to be complete: the results presented by the Electoral Council do not match the parties' records, and when the author of this article, who was accredited as an election observer, tried to enter the computer center managed by a dubious Colombian company on election night, he was denied access by the military.

According to the current results of the CNE electoral council, 40.5 percent voted for Asfura, 39.2 percent for Nasralla, and 19.3 percent for Rixi Moncada. However, this does not include the results from 28,861 polling stations, which were contested for a variety of reasons and account for 38.7 percent of the votes cast.

In addition, several audio recordings have surfaced in which the president of the electoral council, Cossette López Osoria of the Liberal Party, was offered $200,000 by an unknown party. Marlon Ochoa, who is represented as an advisor on the LIBRE side in the CNE electoral council, said he had evidence that the algorithms had been changed in the technical headquarters of the electoral council.

In any case, the situation is currently extremely tense. The LIBRE presidential candidate has convened the party's recently expanded base and called for a general mobilization in the week before Christmas, during which she intends to demand the annulment of the elections. Nasralla is very offended because he too was labeled a “communist” by Trump, even though he proclaimed totally neoliberal policies during his campaign and declared himself a great friend of the US; he is now demanding a recount of every single vote, “voto por voto.” There are serious signs that part of the Liberal Party could split from him and form an alliance with the National Party.

In any case, the final result must be determined by December 30.

However, it is also very likely that in reality the decisions are not being made in Honduras, but in Washington, which many observers are now calling an “electoral coup.” In this context, the recent statement by the commander of the US fleet in the Caribbean is significant. He said: “It would be very easy for us to make a stopover in Honduras on the way to Venezuela and Colombia.” In fact, the US still has an air base in Palmerola that was tested in the 1980s during the Contras' fight against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.