There is still major tension and frustration in Honduras as the vote counting process for the recent presidential election drags on. The candidate Salvador Nasralla has taken a slim lead of less than 10,000 votes over his main rival Nasry Asfuera. Still, less than 70 percent of the vote has been counted since the election on November 30th. US President Donald Trump has been vocal about the election, throwing his support behind the conservative leaning Asfuera, the former mayor of the capital city of Tegucigalpa. The US leader has not been happy with the delay or current polling, spreading familiar accusations of voter fraud and even threatening to potentially withhold aid to the country should the outcome be unfavorable to his favorite. This has naturally garnered some criticism from Honduran citizens, who are weary of any renewal of the historic American interference in the region.
Trump has also made the decision to pardon former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was serving a 45-year jail sentence for drug-trafficking and weapons charges in Virginia. Hernandez was convicted of accepting bribes by drug cartels to fund his political ambitions in exchange for allowing the gangs to move more than 400 tons of cocaine into the US. During Hernandez’s time in office there was a spike in crime and gang activity within the country. Trump claimed that the pardon was a correction of the Biden administration’s excessive use of prosecution. All of this occurs at a time when the US has been conducting bombings on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean, as well as labeling Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro a terrorist and a drug trafficker. Much of what will matter in the future of Honduran foreign politics is incumbent on the outcome of an election that officials are scrambling to determine.
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