Hours have passed without updates on the vote count in Honduras since conservative presidential candidate Nasry"Tito" Asfura publicly demanded that the electoral authority comply with legal deadlines, deepening the uncertainty on an election night marked by delays and tension.
“Article 279 clearly states that the first power outage is at three o'clock, and it should have been at 9:00 p.m.,” declared Asfura of the National Party on Sunday night, visibly frustrated. “We demand that Ana Paola Hall come out and do her job. I don't know what she's waiting for. Come out and do your duty. Let's not have a country waiting, on tenterhooks, in darkness. Please, do it for the sake of democracy.”
However, the candidate's complaint to the president of the National Electoral Council did not accelerate the publication of new data.
The latest figures showed Asfura leading the race with 56% of the ballots counted, followed closely by Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party, while the official candidate Rixi Moncada of the leftist Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre) was relegated to third place.
Meanwhile, the CNE website remains inaccessible.
The prolonged silence of the National Electoral Council (CNE) has generated a climate of growing tension at the counting centers, where electoral observers and party representatives wait without official explanations for the delay. The delay contrasts with the relative normality with which the election day unfolded, when approximately 2.8 million of the 6 million registered voters went to the polls.
Asfura, in making his public claim, insisted that both the official data and his party's records give him a significant advantage."In 6,600 polling station reports, we have a higher percentage, according to the CNE's data. In our data, the difference is even greater," he stated to his supporters.
The conservative candidate, a politician of Palestinian origin with a brief career in public administration, has become the central figure in these elections after receiving strong support from US President Donald Trump days before the vote. Trump described Asfura as “the only true friend of freedom in Honduras” and promised “a lot of support” for the Central American country if he won.
Washington's support came with the announcement of a future pardon for former president Juan Orlando Hernández, of the same National Party, who is serving a sentence for drug trafficking in the United States. Trump also linked his support for Asfura to the promise of working together to"fight the narco-communists" and confront the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro.
The night wears on without the National Electoral Council (CNE) having publicly explained the reasons for the prolonged delay in updating the results,a lack of information that fuels anxiety in a country accustomed to controversial electoral processes. The technical problems that had already delayed the publication of the first data by more than an hour have now turned into a silence that keeps Honduras on edge.
If Asfura manages to consolidate his lead when the counting process finally resumes, it would mark the return of the National Party to power and a significant political shift after the leftist government of Xiomara Castro, who came to the presidency in 2022 promising social transformations in one of the poorest countries in Central America.
The United States, which is closely monitoring the Honduran electoral process, has applauded the high voter turnout recorded during the day, although it has not yet commented on the delays in the publication of results that are keeping the country"on tenterhooks," as Asfura himself denounced.
