Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Nasry Asfura del National Party, Xiomara Castro de Lliure and Yani Rosenthal of the Liberal Party will be the candidates for the presidency of Honduras after winning the primary and internal elections held on March 14, the National Electoral Council (CNE) reported on Tuesday. which confirmed the trend which 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 has served two terms as mayor of Tegucigalpa, and won to Maurici Oliva, President of the Parliament since January 2014.
Asfura obtained 681,701 votes, which is equivalent to 70.12%, said the commissioner president of the CNE, Ana Paola Hall, on the national radio and television channel, which was two hours late.
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The candidate of him Freedom and Refoundation Party (Free), the main opposition force, is Xiomara Castro, wife of former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who was overthrown on June 28, 2009, after taking power on January 27, 2006, under the flag of the Liberal Party.
Castrar, former presidential candidate of Free in the generals of 2013, accumulated 404,238 votes, representing 79.08%, in an election in which he competed with three other contenders.
Free emerged as a party in 2011, following the return to the country of Manuel Zelaya, who for more than a year was exiled to the Dominican Republic following 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 Minister of the Presidency in the government headed by Manuel Zelaya, with 339,001 votes, representing 49.97 %.
Rosenthal won over Luis Zelaya, a former Liberal Party presidential candidate in the 2017 general election, and MP Angel Darío Banegas.
ELECTIONS sprinkled with FRAUD COMPLAINTS
The March 14 elections have been marred by multiple allegations of alleged corruption by pre-candidates in popularly elected positions, with more incidence in the Free and Liberal parties, mainly in the presidential formula.
Luis Zelaya says Yani Rosenthal, who returned to the country in August 2020 after serving a three-year prison sentence in the United States for laundering drug-related assets, over which he pleaded guilty, committed election fraud.
Rosenthal rejects allegations of alleged fraud and is now urging the Liberals, the party cracked after the coup to Manuel Zelaya, to unite and seek alliances to remove from power the National Party, who leads three consecutive terms at the helm of the Executive.
In the March elections, candidates for the presidency of the country, three vice presidents, 298 municipal mayors, 20 deputies in the local parliament and 20 in the Central American were elected.
The CNE has also been questioned by politicians who feel affected in the primary and internal elections.
Hall stated that the elections have been “the most peaceful, democratic and transparent in the recent history of our country,” and that the CNE has worked “transparently, responding to the commitment to the people and the truth “.
He added that the process of the primary and internal elections has been resolved despite many difficulties, including the covid-19 pandemic, which has affected the Central American country since March 2020, with a balance of around 5,000 dead and the 200,000 infections.
The result of the election year will take effect when it is published in the official newspaper La Gaceta.