Xiomara Zelaya has been sworn in as Honduras’ new president by a narrow margin

The National Electoral Council of Honduras (CNE) has updated the preliminary results of this Sunday’s general election in Central America. As of 4 a.m. GMT (10 AM GMT), a total of 18,293 presidential 9,327 minutes were recorded, equivalent to 50.99%. So far, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya It is widely imposed in competition.

The opposition candidate from the center-left Libertad y Refundación (LIBRE) has so far received 953,050 votes., Which is equivalent to 53.61%, with 601,805 votes, or 33.85%, more than Nasri “Tito” Asfura of the National Party, its main official rival, in charge of the contest.

In addition, Liberal Party candidate Yanni Rosenthal is in third place 164.001 9.23% of the vote. From this moment on, election officials have up to 30 days to submit election results.

Honduran President of the CNE, Kelvin Aguirre presented the poll results region-wise and declared a historic turnout of 3,221,264 with a turnout of 68.06.% Citizens eligible to vote.

The two main political groups, the LIBRE Party and the National Party, have come to celebrate in their respective campaign bunkers. Despite the initial results provided by the CNE, both parties considered themselves winners of the presidential race and invited their table witnesses to stay at the polling station to monitor the turnout until the end of the vote count.

The current president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, is the highest known concern for JOH in his country. He was re-elected in 2017 amid allegations of fraud and unconstitutionality, and he was not on the ballot. Their person in the ring is Mayor Asfura, a politician with a less prominent and more popular mindset in the center of the country who has been isolated for diverting 29 million lambs (about $ 1 million) in the past. Funds allegedly from the mayor’s office to his personal accounts or those who were complicit in funding the presidential election campaign.

The Special Advocacy Unit (UFERCO) against the impunity for corruption in the public ministry asked the Supreme Court for a preliminary hearing process in November 2020 so that Asfura responds to the allegations, but the High Court is controlled by a close friend of the president. Hernandez interrupted the process.

In last March’s National Party by-elections, Asfura defeated Congress leader Mauricio Oliva, one of Hernandez’s main opponents in the struggle for party control.

Until October 14, polls kept Asfura a favorite. that day, This trend began to change after its two main rivals announced that they were competing Against the Hernandez candidate. Xiomara Zelaya of the center-left Libertad y Refundación (LIBRE) party attracted the followers of a third party, Salvador Nasrallah, to his candidacy. At the end of October, the numbers showed that Zelaya and Asfura were equal.

After the alliance, fourth in the ring is Yanni Rosenthal, who belongs to a powerful banking family. Rosenthal, convicted in the United States of embezzlement, returned to Honduras to run for the presidency of the Liberal Party and ran for president; Their numbers never grew.

The fact that Hernandez’s first transaction with drug trafficking began when Hernandez was president of Congress between 2010 and 2011 is extracted from what is documented in judicial files. Juan Orlando and his brother Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernandez were associated with Alexander Orton. Parazzo, west of Copenhagen on the border with Guatemala. When the Hernandezs began to make deals with them, the Orton and Valle Valley clans dominated that area of ​​the cocaine route.

Ordane told U.S. officials Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, president of the Sinaloa Cartel, donated $ 1 million to Tony Hernandez in 2013 for JOH’s presidential campaign. A year ago, Juan Orlando asked the mayor of El Bariso to lower his political profile and fund his campaign; In return, Orton received official support to expand his empire in the West and to access public finance by appointing his brother Hugo to a ministry.

In parallel, JOH held talks with Giovanni Fuentes, a drug smuggler from Soloma in the northern part of the Cortes. Pharmaceutical laboratory capable of producing 300 to 500 kilograms of cocaine per month, Something finally found. Fuentes, who was arrested and interrogated in the United States, also admitted to meeting with Hernandez to discuss political security.

Little by little, between 2015 and 2018, he was already president of the nation, JOH’s former accomplices in drug trafficking surrender to the United States and the criminal map has changed.

Computer attack

The National Electoral Council of Honduras has launched an investigation into allegations that a computer attack may have been carried out on the voter list website within the framework of this Sunday’s presidential election in the country.

“The demise of the CNE website for the census is under investigation, and the first information obtained reflects an attack on a server located at the Council’s facility.”, The company explained in a statement.

Similarly, it has asked candidates and the media to “refrain” from publishing election results or declaring winners because it violates Section 241 of the Electoral Act.

Third, CNE is asking technology operators to wait at polling stations and wait for the arrival of “technical equipment” already in the delivery process.

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