TEGUCIGALPA, Dec 02 (AFP): A businessman who has US President Donald Trump's backing for the presidency of Honduras was locked in a "technical tie" with a rightwing TV host after a preliminary vote count, the Central American country's electoral body said Monday.
Nasry Asfura, 67, led 72-year-old rival Salvador Nasralla by just 515 votes, making it a "technical tie," National Electoral Council (CNE) head Ana Paola Hall said on X after a partial digital tally of Sunday's down-to-the-wire ballot.
She called for "patience" as the CNE starts a manual count in a vote that left the ruling left-leaning party out in the cold in one of Latin America's most impoverished and violent countries.
Days before the vote, former Tegucigalpa mayor Asfura won the backing of Trump -- as the US president sought to put his finger on the scale of another Latin American election.
In a post to his Truth Social platform on Monday, Trump accused the Honduran electoral body of "trying to change the results" of the vote, adding: "If they do, there will be hell to pay!"
The US president has become increasingly vocal about his support for allies in Latin America, threatening to cut aid to Argentina and Honduras if his picks do not win.
Ally Javier Milei came out on top in Argentina's mid-term elections, but it is not yet clear if Trump's endorsement will be enough to secure victory for Asfura, whose campaign slogan was: "Grandad, at your service!"
The election is a clear defeat for ruling leftists trailing far behind in the vote count. A swing to the right could help build US influence in a country that under leftist government had looked increasingly to China.
The election campaign was dominated by Trump's threat and the surprise announcement that he would pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez of Asfura's National Party.
Hernandez is serving a 45-year prison sentence in the United States, where he had been accused of belonging to one of "the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world."
Some Hondurans have welcomed Trump's intervention, saying they hope it meant migrants will be allowed to remain in the United States.
Many Hondurans have fled north to escape grinding poverty and violence, including minors fearing forced recruitment by gangs.
