Sawt Falasteen - Trump-backed conservative holds knife-edge lead in Honduras vote

Nasry Asfura, 67, a self-styled "grandad" faced a down-to-the-wire race with a right-wing rival to see who will lead one of Latin America's poorest and most violent countries.

With 56 percent of Sunday's vote counted, the Honduras' electoral commission said Asfura led rival Salvador Nasralla by just 0.4 percentage points.

Days before the vote, Asfura won the shock backing of Trump -- as the US president sought to put his finger on the scale of another Latin American election.

Trump has become increasingly vocal about his support for allies in the region, threatening to cut aid to Argentina and Honduras if his picks did not win.

Ally Javier Milei was victorious in Argentina's mid-term elections.

But it is not yet clear if Trump's endorsement will be enough to secure victory for Asfura -- a former Tegucigalpa mayor Asfura, whose campaign slogan was "Grandad, at your service!"

"If he (Asfura) doesn't win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad," Trump wrote Friday on his Truth Social platform.

What is clear is the election is a clear defeat for ruling leftists, who trail with less 20 percent of the vote.

Supporters of the incumbent Libre party and its candidate Rixi Moncada called for protests Monday.

A swing to the right could help build US influence in a country that under leftist government has looked increasingly to China.

The election campaign was dominated by Trump's threat and the surprise announcement that he would pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, of Asfura's National Party.

Hernandez is serving a 45-year prison sentence in the United States for cocaine trafficking and other charges.

The former leader was once described by the United States as being part of one of "the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world."

He was accused of helping traffic more than 400 tons of cocaine to the United States and of turning Honduras into a virtual narcostate.

Trump said he had looked at the evidence and concluded Hernandez "treated very harshly."

- Slow roll -

The vote count from Sunday's election has progressed slowly, and final results could take days.

"It is impossible to know the winner with the data that we have" said political analyst Carlos Calix.

Lawmakers and hundreds of mayors will also be elected in the fiercely polarized nation, which has swung back and forth between nominally leftist and conservative leaders.

Some Hondurans have welcomed Trump's intervention, saying they hope it might mean Honduran migrants will be allowed to remain in the United States.

Many Hondurans have fled grinding poverty and violence to the United States, including minors fearing forced recruitment by gangs.

This escape route has become more difficult since Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Nearly 30,000 Honduran migrants have been deported from the United States since Trump returned to office in January.

The clampdown has dealt a severe blow to the country of 11 million people, where remittances accounted for 27 percent of GDP last year.

But others have rejected Trump's perceived meddling.

"I vote for whomever I please, not because of what Trump has said, because the truth is I live off my work, not off politicians," Esmeralda Rodriguez, a 56-year-old fruit seller, told AFP.

Michelle Pineda, a 38-year-old merchant, hoped the winner sees the country "as more than just a bag of money to loot."

Preemptive accusations of election fraud, made both by the ruling party and opposition, have sparked fears of unrest.

Long a transit point for cocaine exported from Colombia to the United States, Honduras is now also a producer of the drug.

"I hope the new government will have good lines of communication with Trump, and that he will also support us," said Maria Velasquez, 58.

"I just want to escape poverty."

N.AbuHussein--SF-PST