As leadership changes in the Honduran election, won’t Trump get his way?

With just over two-thirds of the votes counted in the Honduran election, the lead has changed hands.

Former Vice President Salvador Nasralla has a small but potentially significant lead over his rival, the conservative former mayor of Tegucigalpa, Nasry Asfura. However, Asfura’s National Party continues to inform journalists that they have the numbers for an eventual victory.

The race continues on a knife edge.

In Washington, President Donald Trump has pinned his hopes on nothing less than an outright victory for Asfura and has sought to directly influence the race in support of his favorite candidate.

Whether suggesting that funds could be withheld from the impoverished Central American nation or making baseless accusations of election fraud, many in Honduras see the US president’s fingerprints all over this election.

For Honduran political analyst Josué Murillo, this smacks of the kind of treatment Honduras expected from Washington during the Cold War.

“No government should come here and treat us like a banana republic. That’s disrespectful,” he says in a Tegucigalpa cafeteria.

“Donald Trump saying who we should elect violates our autonomy as a nation and also affects our elections.”

Regardless of whether the National Party achieves victory, one of its key figures is already celebrating.

On Monday, former President Juan Orlando Hernández walked out of prison in Virginia a free man after serving just one year of a 45-year sentence on drug and weapons smuggling charges.

His release came after Trump urged Honduran voters to vote for Asfura.

Hernández was unexpectedly pardoned by Trump, despite being convicted last year by a New York court of leading a drug conspiracy that had brought more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.

His tenure was also marred by accusations of serious human rights violations by police and security forces, particularly against government critics.

So when Hernández was arrested in 2022, then extradited to the United States and finally imprisoned, most Hondurans celebrated it as a rare moment of justice in a nation plagued by institutional impunity, especially for political elites.

Trump has claimed the opposite, telling reporters on Air Force One that “the people of Honduras really thought (Juan Orlando Hernández) was a setup and it was a terrible thing.”

Journalists in Honduras who have covered Hernández’s rise and fall – from the moment he rose to national prominence following a 2009 coup to his extradition – struggle to recognize that description of a roundly detested former president.

However, he still has supporters, especially in the National Party. And no one has been more expressive in maintaining his innocence or asking for his forgiveness than his wife, Ana García Carías.

I sat down with the former First Lady, who described Mr. Hernández’s release as “like being in a dream, a dream come true.”

“We spoke to him this morning (Tuesday) and he is in a safe place. We were very happy, we spoke on the phone with all the children along with my mother-in-law and shared a moment of happiness, laughter and prayer together.”

In terms of the future, the question now arises as to whether Mr. Hernández will attempt to return to Honduras. García Carías says his possible return depends less on the outcome of the elections and more on whether the authorities will guarantee his safety.

“It depends on the security guarantees they give you in this country,” he says.

“Day after day, this government – ​​which, thank God, is on its way out – used hate speech against my husband, they spoke of persecution against him. And that is very dangerous for a former president: to return to a place where they have cultivated hatred against him from the highest, the president, to the lowest official.”

García Carías claimed that Hernández had been a victim of “legal warfare,” the “deep state,” and a “politically motivated witch hunt” by the Biden administration. I told her that the case against her husband had been largely built by the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Justice during Trump’s first term, not President Biden’s.

It was a point he quickly dismissed.

“That’s what the prosecutors claimed, but I think it’s very illogical,” he argues. “In whose mind would it make sense to take a man who they say is a co-conspirator to meetings with the CIA, the DEA, to give classified information about national security?”

“There was a political campaign (against him) that involved figures in the Biden administration,” he insisted, “and I think there was manipulation of the facts after the event.”

García Carías publicly acknowledged the role of two key MAGA figures in securing her husband’s pardon: influential conservative political advisor Roger Stone (beneficiary of a Trump pardon) and former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz.

“They both got involved in the case,” he says. “I recognize them and thank them for their contribution. In fact, I spoke with Mr. Stone on his radio show on Sunday and he told me that he had taken a letter from Juan Orlando, which he had written on his birthday to ask for forgiveness, and had given it directly to President Trump.”

Meanwhile, the vote count in Honduras continues for another night.

As votes continue to be counted, it should soon become clear whether Trump will get his way in Honduras and see a new ally elected in the country just as he pardons an old one.