Sawt Falasteen - Honduran presidential candidate decries vote 'theft' in race against Trump-backed rival

The accusations come after the ruling left-wing Libre party called for the vote to be annulled and accused US President Donald Trump of election interference.

The ballot count had stalled over the weekend at 88.6 percent since Friday, but resumed on Monday with nearly 99 percent of ballots counted.

Trump-backed Nasry Asfura, a 67-year-old businessman and member of the right-wing National Party, has 40.53 percent of the votes, compared to 39.16 percent for Nasralla, a 72-year-old television presenter from the Liberal Party, the National Electoral Council (CNE) said.

"This is theft," Nasrulla wrote late Monday in a post on X.

Both are well ahead of the Libre party's Rixi Moncada, who was polling third.

The CNE's president, Ana Paola Hall posted on X that "after carrying out the technical actions (accompanied by external auditing), the data is now being updated."

- Calls for annulment -

Thousands of voting records with "inconsistencies" also still need to be reviewed, election officials said.

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 protests and strikes, while urging officials not to cooperate with the government transition.

The ruling party announced that it would also hold an "Extraordinary Assembly of National Dignity" on December 13. The incumbent president, Xiomara Castro, has not commented on her party's announcements.

The CNE has until December 30 to declare a winner, according to Honduran 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.

Trump also declared his clear support for Asfura in the final stretch of the campaign, declaring him a "friend of freedom" and accused Nasralla of merely "pretending to be an anti-communist."

The Libre party had criticized 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.

J.Saleh--SF-PST