Two days before the general elections in Honduras, US President Donald Trump seeks to influence in favor of the conservative candidate Nasry Titus Asfura. Through a comment published on his social network Truth, he has conditioned financial support for the country if Asfura wins the presidential elections. Otherwise, he has written, he will withdraw any support. Not only that, he has promised to pardon the former Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernández, who is serving time in a US prison after being sentenced to 45 years in prison for his ties to drug trafficking.
“I will grant a total and complete pardon to former President Juan Orlando Hernández, who, according to many people whom I deeply respect, has been treated very harshly and unfairly. This cannot be allowed, especially now, after the electoral victory of Tito Asfura, when Honduras is heading towards great political and financial success,” Trump emphasized in his message published this Friday through his social network, Truth.
Juan Orlando Hernández, known as JOH, was president of Honduras between 2014 and 2022, for the conservative National Party. During that time he was a strong ally of the United States in the fight against drug trafficking. But last year, in a two-week trial in a Manhattan courtroom, he was sentenced to 45 years in prison for associating for more than a decade with drug traffickers who paid him bribes to ensure that more than 400 tons of cocaine reached the United States. Three years earlier, his brother Juan Antonio Hernández was sentenced to life imprisonment for the same crime. Manhattan prosecutors had accused JOH of receiving a million dollars from Mexican drug lord Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán.
The political bomb dropped by Trump this Friday threatens to shake the election campaign. Honduras votes this Sunday to elect president, mayors and deputies in the midst of a deep political crisis, with extreme polarization, accusations of corruption and links to drug trafficking. The country’s president, Xiamara Castro, has declared a controversial state of exception to avoid violent acts during the elections, as she has justified. The country experiences frequent episodes of violence carried out by gangs linked to drug trafficking.
The presidential elections are very close with maximum equality between the candidates, according to the polls. The elections take place in a tremendous climate of tension with gross accusations and insults between the candidates.
“Yeah Titus Asfura wins the presidency of Honduras, the United States will give him great support, since it has so much confidence in him, in his policies and in what he will do for the great Honduran people. If he does not win, the United States will not waste its money, because a wrong leader can only bring catastrophic consequences to any country, no matter which one it is,” he wrote on the platform created by him to express his opinions. Washington has traditionally maintained interest in the country given its strategic situation in Central America.
This is Trump’s second message to support Asfura in just 48 hours. Last Wednesday he already published another statement in Truth in which he assured that he could work with the construction businessman and former mayor of Tegucigalpa to combat “drug trafficking.” The Republican president harshly attacked the other two candidates who maintain options whom he accused of being “communists”, despite the fact that they do not define themselves as such: the candidate of the leftist Free Party and former Minister of Defense, Rixi Moncada; and the television presenter, candidate of the Liberal Party, Salvador Nasralla.
Asfura’s party has maintained a relationship with the American Republican Party since the time of the presidency of Juan Orlando Hernández, who presided over the Central American country between 2014 and 2022. Hernández is currently in a United States prison serving a 45-year sentence for drug trafficking and firearms crimes.
It is not the first time that Trump has tried to influence an election. Last October, it offered millionaire economic aid to Argentina linked to the victory of the libertarian party, Javier Milei, in the legislative elections. The United States offered Milei a financial bailout valued at up to $40 billion to prevent the depreciation of the peso and calm the markets. The support of the Oval Office tenant was decisive in turning around the elections that had been complicated for Milei.
Honduras has a complex political history. With a succession of elections with accusations of irregularities. The country has traditionally been governed by conservative parties, but has experienced times of reform and periods of left-wing government. In 2009, President Manuel Zalaya was ousted following a military coup.
For more updates, visit our homepage: NewsTimesWire
