When the count was paused late Friday over what electoral officials described as technical problems with recording votes, businessman Nasry Asfura, 67, a National Party (NPN) candidate endorsed by Trump, was narrowly leading in the contest to become the next president.
Asfura was slightly ahead in a neck-and-neck race with fellow right-wing candidate Salvador Nasralla, a 72-year-old television presenter from the Liberal Party.
They were both well ahead of Rixi Moncada, a candidate from the ruling Libre party, who was polling third.
The vote count had stalled since Friday, but the counting resumed on Monday, according to the president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Ana Paola Hall.
She posted on X that “after carrying out the technical actions (accompanied by external auditing), the data is now being updated.”
Hall said Monday evening the slow electoral count has now reached about 97% of votes recorded, amid accusations from some contenders that it has been riddled with fraud.
Nasralla claimed “the corrupt ones are the ones holding up the counting process.”
Late Sunday, the Libre party demanded “the total annulment” of the elections and called for mobilisations, protests, and strikes, while urging government officials not to cooperate with the government transition.
The ruling left-wing party announced that it would also hold an “Extraordinary Assembly of National Dignity” on Dec 13. The incumbent president, Xiomara Castro, has not commented on her party’s announcements.
The CNE has until Dec 30 to declare a winner, according to the law.
In the final days before the election, Trump pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was in office from 2014 to 2022 and had been serving a prison sentence in the United States on a drug-trafficking conviction.
In 2023 Honduras issued an international arrest warrant against Hernandez and on Monday the attorney general asked Interpol to act on it, accusing Hernandez of money laundering and fraud.
The US leader also declared his clear support for Asfura in the final stretch of the campaign. Trump declared him a “friend of freedom” and accused Nasralla of merely “pretending to be an anti-communist.”
In its call for the results of the Nov 30 election to be scrapped, Libre criticised Trump’s actions ahead of the vote.
“We condemn the interference and coercion of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, in the elections in Honduras,” the party said in a post on X.