Honduras held a presidential election on Nov. 30 — but more than two weeks later, a winner still hadn’t been declared.
The conservative candidate endorsed by President Trump, Nasry Asfura, has a narrow lead in the vote count so far, as of the morning of Dec. 16. But the long delay, and the supposed technical glitches causing it, are raising fears of possible fraud.
International observer groups such as the Organization of American States (OAS) say they've yet to see evidence of that. But given Honduras’ history — including what the OAS did call brazen vote tampering in the 2017 presidential election — the ballot-counting controversy could morph into yet another hemispheric crisis for the U.S.
Honduran election officials say they've counted more than 99% of the ballots, which show Asfura of the right-wing National Party leading Salvador Nasralla of the more centrist LIBRE party by only 40,000 or so votes — about a 1 percentage point margin.
Problem is, says Honduras' election council, the CNE, about 500,000 votes need to be re-counted because of inconsistencies (reminiscent of what Americans saw in the U.S. presidential election 25 years ago with Florida votes).
CNE officials, meanwhile, are blaming the delays largely on technical difficulties with the vote-counting system and outside political distractions.
Still, the longer the wait, the more suspicions will grow. Even OAS observers, while saying they're not seeing fraud, indicate they are seeing disturbing incompetence — and they're warning Honduran officials the protracted delay is “not justifiable.”
READ MORE: Former Honduran President Hernández freed after Trump pardon
Meanwhile, questions are also growing about whether President's Trump personal involvement in the Honduran election has complicated the scene.
And it would appear it has. Trump of course has the right to endorse a candidate if he wishes. But critics point to his threat to cut off U.S. aid to Honduras if Asfura doesn’t win — and his assertion, with no evidence, that if Asfura loses it will be due to fraud.
That’s led Asfura’s opponent, Nasralla, to accuse Trump of blackmailing Honduran voters into voting for Asfura — or strong-arming election officials into making sure Asfura wins.
Honduran President Xiomara Castro, whose left-wing party’s candidate is finishing a distant third, is accusing Trump of imperialist interference in the country's democracy.
While international observers say they're not yet seeing election fraud in Honduras, they are seeing "unjustifiable" incompetence in the vote -count delay.
At the same time, the delay, fairly or not, is starting to remind people of Honduras’ 2017 presidential election crisis, when then right-wing President Juan Orlando Hernández was widely accused of winning re-election by fraud.
In that race, Hernández was behind in the vote count until suddenly the vote-counting system crashed — and when it re-booted he was suddenly ahead and was declared the winner. Then the OAS did see fraud — it even called for a new election — and the scandal led to violent street protests and a deadly crackdown by the military.
Three years ago, upon completing his presidency, Hernández was extradited to the U.S. and was convicted on drug-trafficking charges and sentenced to 45 years in U.S. prison.
But two weeks ago, two days after the Nov. 30 Honduran election, Trump shockingly pardoned Hernández — almost as if to haunt Hondurans with those 2017 memories.
Hernández is now a free man.
Protests bubbling up
Whether fraud has occurred or not, if the Honduran election dysfunction continues, it could broaden into a crisis beyond the Central American nation and become a new headache in Latin America for the U.S. and the Trump administration.
Honduras is already starting to see street protests begin to bubble up in cities like the capital, Tegucigalpa. And Honduras is the last country in the hemisphere that needs that sort of unrest.
Criminal drug gangs are still very powerful there — and so is the urge for Hondurans to leave the country and emigrate to the U.S. southern border.
All that is last thing the U.S. in turn needs: more drug and immigration crises on its hemispheric street. What's more, Trump and his administration could also see other countries in Latin America, if not around the world, blame him for helping create the mess.
Which is a reminder that earlier this month the Trump administration issued a new national security strategy that revived the idea of the Monroe Doctrine — the two-century-old notion that the U.S. is the boss of the western hemisphere and has the right to intervene in the affairs of its countries.
Trump is now reiterating that the hemisphere, including Canada, should be subordinate to the U.S. — especially in terms of commerce — and he insists that vertical relationship will benefit the rest of the hemisphere, too.
Either way, it helps explain why he thinks the U.S. should have the Panama Canal again, why it should have Greenland — and why he’s gotten involved in elections like Honduras’.
