Nasry Asfura: Angry tide in Honduras

Nasry Asfura, a 67-year-old construction magnate and former Mayor of Honduras’s capital, Tegucigalpa, has emerged as the president-elect of the country after a long-drawn-out and contentious electoral process. Mr. Asfura, representing the National Party of Honduras (PNH), won 40.27% of the vote against 39.53% for Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party with a narrow margin of just 28,000 votes. The victory followed weeks of delayed vote counting, attributed to the country’s difficult topography, which slowed the counting of the rural ballots. These two parties have traditionally dominated Honduran politics, forming a long-standing two-party system that was only briefly interrupted, such as by the outgoing tenure of the left-wing LIBRE party’s Xiomara Castro. Mr. Asfura’s chances were win was significantly boosted when U.S. President Donald Trump explicitly endorsed him days before the November 30 election, coupled with threats to cut American aid if anyone other than Mr. Asfura won. LIBRE’s candidate, Rixi Moncada, who came in third place with approximately 19% of the vote, alleged electoral fraud and called the process illegitimate, citing U.S. interference and irregularities in the vote-counting system. Mr. Trump’s endorsement, in which he called Mr. Asfura someone he could work with to tackle “narcocommunists”, was followed by his pardoning of former President Juan Orlando Hernández just two days before the election. Mr. Hernández, who also belonged to Mr. Asfura’s PNH, had been convicted in U.S. courts and was serving a 45-year prison sentence for accepting millions in bribes to protect cocaine shipments. This move making clear who was his favourite in Honduras pointed to a striking irony. Mr. Trump has announced a naval blockade on Venezuela targeting President Nicolás Maduro, whom he claims, without proof, to be heading a narcotics network, while releasing a known drug trafficker in Mr. Hernández, convicted by the U.S. justice system. These actions are a re-assertion of a U.S. foreign policy that treats political processes as geopolitical moves in its backyard and are an extension of a subtler pro-oligarchic position taken by the U.S. since the coup in 2009 that deposed popularly elected President José Manuel Zelaya. Then, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had supported the coup-installed interim government, refusing to classify the military action as a “coup”, which would have triggered suspension of American aid, and indirectly facilitated the return to power of the conservative oligarchy that had dominated Honduras before Ms. Castro, Mr. Zelaya’s wife came to power in January 2022. Mr. Asfura’s victory is a major boost for the oligarchy, which includes a wealthy elite from influential families of Syrian and Palestinian descent who migrated to the country in the 20th century (and includes both the right-wing candidates in Mr. Asfura and Mr. Nasralla) and have maintained a strong grip over economic and political power. During his tenure as Mayor, Mr. Asfura was indicted in 2020 on charges of embezzling public funds, money laundering, fraud, and abuse of authority. He was also named in the 2021 Pandora Papers for operating offshore companies while serving as a public official....

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