Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Nasry Asfura del National party, Xiomara Castro de Libre and Yani Rosenthal of the Liberal Party will be the candidates for the presidency of Honduras after winning primary and internal elections held on March 14, the National Electoral Council (CNE) reported Tuesday, confirming the trend. that transcended that same day.
For the ruling National Party, founded more than a century ago, the presidential candidate in the November 28 general election, the winner was Nasry Asfura, who had been mayor of Tegucigalpa for two terms and had the upper hand over President Mauricio Oliva. Parliament since January 2014.
Asfura received 681,701 votes, equivalent to 70.12%, CNE chairman Ana Paola Hall said on the national radio and television network, which was two hours late.
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The candidate of the Party for Freedom and Restoration (Libre), the first opposition force, is Xiomara Castro, the wife of former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who was overthrown on June 28, 2009 after taking power under the banner of the Liberal Party on January 27, 2006.
Castró, Libre’s former presidential candidate in the 2013 general election, collected 404,238 votes, representing 79.08%, in an election in which he competed with three other contenders.
Libre emerged as a party in 2011, following the return to the country of Manuel Zelaya, who spent more than a year in exile in the Dominican Republic as a result of his overthrow in 2009.
The candidate of the also centennial Liberal Party, according to the final report of the CNE, is Yani Rosenthal, who was the minister of the presidency in the government led by Manuel Zelaya, with 339,001 votes, which amounts to 49.97%.
Rosenthal defeated Luis Zelaya, former Liberal Party presidential candidate in the 2017 general election, and deputy Ángel Darío Banegas.
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The March 14 elections were interrupted by multiple complaints of alleged corruption by candidates for elected office, with a higher incidence in the free and liberal parties, mainly in the presidential formula.
Luis Zelaya ensures that Yani Rosenthal, who returned to the country in August 2020 after serving a three-year sentence in the United States for money laundering related to drug trafficking, who he said was known to have committed fraud in the election.
Rosenthal rejects the allegations of alleged fraud and now urges the liberals, whose party collapsed after Manuel Zelaya’s coup d’état, to unite and seek alliances to remove the government from power. National party, who has led the Executive for three consecutive terms.
In the March elections, candidates for the country’s presidency were elected, three vice presidents, 298 municipal mayors, 20 deputies from the local parliament and 20 from Central American.
The CNE has also been questioned by politicians who feel involved in the primary and internal elections.
Hall affirmed that the elections have been “the most peaceful, democratic and transparent in our country’s recent history,” and that the CNE has operated “with transparency, in response to the dedication to the people and the truth ”.
He added that the primaries and internal elections process went ahead despite multiple difficulties, including the covid-19 pandemic, which has hit the Central American country since March 2020, with a balance of about 5,000 deaths and 200,000 infections.
The result of the election exercise will take effect when published in the official La Gaceta newspaper.