As of 4:00 p.m. on Dec. 5, the Honduran Electoral Council (CNE), responsible for counting votes from the Nov. 30 presidential election, effectively ceased the vote count due to “technical problems outside the control of the electoral authority,” according to its president Ana Paola Hill, Telesur reported on Dec. 7. She blamed the company contracted to process the votes for the problem. Within the CNE itself another top official, Marlon Ochoa, denounced “deliberate manipulation of the Transmission of Preliminary Electoral Results,” or TREP, which he said constituted an “electoral coup.” He documented a series of irregularities which he said could make this election the “least transparent one” in Honduran history with problems that go well beyond technical glitches.
The Anglo-American apparatus in Washington, including the pro-NATO Atlantic Council and others of its ilk, had counted on a neoliberal, right-wing victory in Honduras and were backing the National Party candidate Nasry Astura, whom Donald Trump had endorsed. They wanted no one from outgoing President Xiomara Castro’s Libre Party, given Castro’s close relations with China, Russia and the BRICS.
In the days following the election, until vote counting ceased late on Dec. 5, results showed a tight race between the Nasry Astura, with 40.19% and Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasrulla with 39.49%, both of whom accused each other of stealing votes. The candidate of the ruling Libre Party, Rixi Moncada, polled at 19.30%. Charges of foreign interference were also made, focused on the National Party’s hiring of Argentine “consultant” Fernando Cerimedo, who had been communications director for Javier Milei when he ran for President in 2023. Cerimedo, an expert in digital campaigning, is accused of having intervened to secure Trump’s endorsement of Astura, which is prohibited by Honduran electoral law.
As of now, given the electoral paralysis, the CNE has given candidates until Monday Dec. 8 to submit requests for “administrative nullification” of the entire process, and until Dec. 15 to request review of vote tallies or a special recount of votes. By midnight on Dec. 5, the Libre Party had submitted its nullification request to the CNE and called for voting to be repeated at every one of the 19,167 polling places in the country, on grounds that the popular will “had been adulterated” on Nov. 30.
