By Marco Consolo – Dec 27, 2025
What better date for the final act of the electoral coup than Christmas Eve? In Honduras, the powers that be are not sitting idly by and, far from attending midnight mass like good Catholics, are conspiring against democracy. Once again, the facts belie the old adage that “at Christmas, we are all better people.”
24 days after the elections in the Central American country, the National Electoral Council (CNE) has just proclaimed Nasry Asfura, the National Party candidate sponsored by Donald Trump, as the winner of the presidential elections.
The announcement was made by a CNE that had been completely delegitimized, by a majority vote (not unanimous), given that one of its three members, Marlon Ochoa, representative of the ruling Libre party, refused to sign the announcement minutes. Before the final vote, Ochoa left the CNE session in which he had exposed, one after another, the inconsistencies and falsifications in the vote count: loss of internet signal, days-long interruptions in the count, manipulation of the “source code” of the data transmission programme, interference by organized crime, and a long list of other “anomalies” and corresponding complaints. Ochoa also pointed out that only in 30% of polling stations (5,690) was there a match between the biometric data and the reports drawn up, while in the remaining 13,135 there were clear discrepancies.
Among other anomalies in the electoral process, it is striking that the announcement was made without ending the counting of thousands of disputed votes both because they lacked biometric verification and because of inconsistencies in the numerical data and other issues. In Ochoa’s opinion, Asfura’s proclamation lacks legal validity, both in form and content, given that the electoral body must first examine the disputed reports and complete the count. The “special count” began with a five-day delay amid complaints from the other two presidential candidates—Salvador Nasralla (Liberal Party) and Rixi Moncada (Libre)—and street protests by both parties.
Ochoa has also filed a criminal complaint with the Honduran justice system to investigate possible “electoral offences.”
Reactions in the country
The Liberal Party candidate, Salvador Nasralla, who according to the “official” count was only a few thousand votes behind when the count was interrupted, did not mince his words: “Nasry Asfura will not govern Honduras, but organized crime led by Juan Orlando Hernández [will govern].” Hernández is the former president (of the same National Party as Asfura) who was serving a 45-year prison sentence in the US for trafficking 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. On the eve of the elections in Honduras, Hernández was pardoned by Trump.
“They are preventing the votes from being counted,” Nasralla said, adding that he would not accept any result announced without reviewing all the documentation and recounting all the ballots. Nasralla questioned both the results of the presidential elections and those of the deputies and mayors. Among other irregularities, he cited the intermittent interruption of data transmission, the use of different sized ballot papers, and other arbitrary actions committed by members of the National Party. Actions which, in his opinion, compromised the credibility of the electoral body and presented “totally false results.”
For her part, Rixi Moncada, candidate for the ruling Libre party, wrote in a public statement that “In Honduras, the CNE, following the empire’s instructions, has killed our nascent democracy, but our people are not naive: the proclamation of the ‘president-elect’ is a fraud and a foreign imposition… The civilized peoples of the world must know that the president-elect is one of the businessmen who requested Donald Trump’s intervention,” she continued. “During the mandatory electoral silence period, they paid to have threatening messages sent en masse to voters who receive remittances, with the sole intention of distorting the will of the people.”
The pro-Nasfura chorus could not fail to include the voices of the bosses. “Honduras is going through a deep post-election crisis that has tested the solidity of its democracy and institutions,” warned Anabel Gallardo, president of the Honduran Council of Private Enterprises (Cohep), referring to the electoral climate 24 days before the general elections. Gallardo staunchly defended the two CNE councillors who supported the coup: Cossette López (National Party) and Ana Paola Hall (Liberal Party). “Their work has been characterized by courage, moral integrity, patriotic commitment, and a strong sense of democracy,’ Gallardo said.
In a climate of growing tension and institutional conflict, the President of Parliament, Luis Redondo, has just described Asfura’s proclamation of his victory as a “betrayal of the homeland” and has refused to recognize him as president-elect. This statement paves the way for an institutional crisis with no end in sight.
US interference
Among the noteworthy international reactions was that of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the anti-Cuban, anti-Chavista and anti-communist hawk from the White House. ‘The people of Honduras have spoken: Nasry Asfura is the next president of Honduras. The United States congratulates the president-elect and looks forward to working with his administration to promote prosperity and security in our hemisphere”—a hemispheric security that, in the State Department’s Monroeist perspective, coincides with the national security of the United States.
At first, Trump threatened to sanction Honduras (in addition to sending back thousands of migrants) if “his candidate” did not win. After the coup attempts were exposed before the election deadline, with the release of 26 wiretaps revealing their strategy, the US State Department expressed its “deep concern about the actions of certain parties and candidates who continue to disrupt the Honduran electoral process.” Here, too, the pot calls the kettle black: the main organizers of the electoral coup declared that “Anyone who obstructs or attempts to delay the work of the CNE will face consequences. The Honduran people have waited too long. They deserve a timely, transparent and credible process.” In other words: do as we say, and anyone who gets in the way will have to deal with the empire.
Honduras Government Official: Electoral Coup Was Unprecedented Fascist Operation
The US big stick (without the carrot)
The position of the military hierarchy, which played a leading role in the 2009 civil–military coup against President Mel Zelaya, remains uncertain. To avoid any misunderstanding, a few hours before Asfura’s proclamation, the Chief of Staff of the Honduran Armed Forces, Brigadier General Héctor Benjamín Valerio Ardón, met with the head of US troops in Honduras, US Colonel Victor Allan Kent. According to a press release, “the two military leaders exchanged views on issues of bilateral interest and strengthened the ties of cooperation and trust between the military institutions of Honduras and the United States, within the framework of hemispheric security and a shared commitment to regional peace and stability” [i].
Before Nasfura’s proclamation, in a statement by Marco Rubio, the US State Department imposed visa restrictions on Mario Morazán, magistrate of the Electoral Tribunal (TJE), and Marlon Ochoa, member of the National Electoral Council (CNE). The accusation is that they “undermined democracy and prevented the counting of votes” in the Central American country.
“The United States will not tolerate actions that undermine our national security and the stability of our region. We will consider all appropriate measures to deter those who obstruct the counting of votes in Honduras,” wote Rubio. The Honduran Parliament President, Luis Redondo, was also denied a US entry visa for “undermining democracy.”
Other international reactions
On the international fascist front, the so-called Madrid Forum, an international political alliance of the right launched in 2020 by the Disenso Foundation, a think tank linked to the Spanish political party Vox, has also spoken out. The forum attacked the Liberal Party candidate, Salvador Nasralla, describing him as “former vice-president allied with Zelaya” and “a destabilizing agent.” In perfect neo-colonial style, the Spanish-led organisation demanded that “Mel Zelaya accept his crushing defeat and remain silent.” In its “upside-down world” narrative, the forum claimed that “the consummate coup leader Mel Zelaya intends to carry out a new coup, like the one in 2009, taking advantage of flaws in the electoral software purchased by the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Honduras… On Maduro’s orders, Zelaya wants to take advantage of the difference in votes between Nasry Asfura and Salvador Nasralla to destabilize the country,” the forum stated in its rambling and aggressive communiqué.
Among those who congratulated Nasfura, in addition to the governments of Argentina and Peru, was the Chilean government of Gabriel Boric, which immediately accepted the “official” results despite national and international complaints about the lack of transparency in the process. The Chilean government assured that it respects the CNE’s decision: “It guarantees the legal certainty of the electoral process,” wrote the Foreign Ministry of Chile in a statement, referring to reports from the OAS and the EU. This attitude is very different from that taken towards the 2024 presidential elections in Venezuela, when the Chilean government called for a recount of all votes and refused to recognise the election of President Maduro although it was ratified by the electoral commission and the Supreme Court. Chile’s position on Honduras was echoed by the next Chilean president, Pinochet supporter José Antonio Kast, who sent his congratulations to Asfura.
The OAS (Organization of American States) and the EU electoral observation missions stood out for their complicit silence. Apart from a string of rhetorical words, they hypocritically limited themselves to asking the CNE to “speed up the vote count, respecting the will of the Honduran people”—a position worthy of the famous three monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
Conclusions?
Far from being over, the electoral coup opens uncertain scenarios, both in institutional terms and in the daily lives of millions of Hondurans, as well as on the international front. In addition to street protests in the country, international support is needed to oppose the electoral coup and ensure respect for the Constitution and electoral law. What is happening in Honduras has an impact on the rest of the continent, where the shift to the right marks the US counter-offensive against “progressive” governments: a veritable “conservative and reactionary revolution” led by Trump.
[i] https://www.latribuna.hn/2025/12/23/jefe-del-emc-de-las-ffaa-se-reune-con-titular-del-grupo-militar-de-eeuu-en-honduras/
From Orinoco Tribune – News and opinion pieces about Venezuela and beyond via This RSS Feed.