TEGUCIGALPA, Dec 24 - Nasry Asfura, the conservative National Party candidate backed by U.S. President Donald Trump, has won Honduras' presidential election, the electoral body said on Wednesday as it finally declared a victor of the November 30 presidential election after weeks of delays, technical problems, and allegations of fraud.
The electoral authority, known as the CNE, said Asfura had won 40.3% of the vote, edging out center-right Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla who garnered 39.5%. The candidate of the ruling LIBRE party, Rixi Moncada, came a distant third.
Results were so tight and the ballot processing system so chaotic that around 15% of the tally sheets comprising hundreds of thousands of ballots had to be counted by hand to determine the winner.
The results were approved by two electoral council members and one deputy, as disputes continued over the razor-thin vote. The third council member, Marlon Ochoa, was not present in the video declaring the winner.
"Honduras: I am ready to govern. I will not let you down," Asfura said in a post on X following the confirmation of the results.
The head of the Honduran Congress rejected the CNE's declaration, however, describing it as an "electoral coup".
"This is completely outside the law. It has no value," Congress president Luis Redondo, of the ruling LIBRE party, wrote on X.
Trump threw his support behind Asfura, a 67-year-old politician and businessman who is the former mayor of the capital Tegucigalpa, writing in a Truth Social post before the election that he was the "only real friend of Freedom in Honduras" and urging people to vote for him.
Trump also threatened to cut off U.S. financial support to Honduras if Asfura did not win and pardoned former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, also of Asfura's National Party, who had been serving a 45-year sentence in the U.S. on drug trafficking and weapons charges.
Amid delays in the count, Trump weighed into the election again alleging fraud without providing evidence and saying there would be "hell to pay" if Honduras changed preliminary results that had put Asfura ahead.
Trump's backing of Asfura, experts say, is part of his push to mold a conservative bloc across Latin America, stretching from Nayib Bukele in El Salvador to Javier Milei in Argentina.
Both Nasralla and the ruling LIBRE party have decried Trump's comments as election meddling.
Nasralla told Reuters that the last-minute interference from Trump had damaged his chances of winning.
(Reporting by Leonel Estrada, Laura Garcia, and Inigo Alexander; editing by Stephen Eisenhammer)
