More than six million Hondurans are called to the polls this Sunday, November 30 in Hondurasin the twelfth general elections held by the country since 1980, on a day considered crucial for the fragile democracy of a country where more than 60% of the population is in poverty. The leftist official Rixi Moncada and the rightists Salvador Nasralla and Nasry Asfura lead the race to succeed President Xiomara Castro, a fight that gained tension after the call of the US president, Donald Trump, to support Asfura against the communists and their allies.
Rixi Moncada, continuity
Born in Talanga, where she was born on February 13, 1965, Moncada is a lawyer with extensive experience in public administration, where she has served in three Secretariats of State: Labor, Finance and Defense.
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Before studying law, with a specialty in Criminal Law and Constitutional Law, at the University of Salamanca (Spain), she graduated as an education teacher, a profession that she has also practiced at the primary and university levels.
During the administration of Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009), when both were members of the conservative Liberal Party of Honduras, she was Secretary of Labor and Social Security and manager of the National Electric Energy Company.
In the current government, in which Castro became the first president after taking office on January 27, 2022, Moncada served as Secretary of Finance and Defense, in the latter also being the first woman to reach that position.
As a lawyer, she served in the courts and was an advisor to the Public Ministry (Prosecutor’s Office), among other positions.
She was the founder, in 2011, of the now ruling Freedom and Refoundation Party (Libre), whose general coordinator is former president Manuel Zelaya, husband and advisor of Xiomara Castro.
Moncada proposes an active state to correct market failures and reduce inequalities, under the concept of “democratization of the economy”, with low-rate credits, green industrial policy, investment in science and technology and reforms to promote competition.
In his message in Truth Social, when asking to vote for Asfura, Trump said that he could not work with “Moncada and the communists.”
Nasry Asfura, Trump’s candidate
Nasry Asfura is the “only true friend of freedom in Honduras,” Trump wrote, adding that they could “work together to fight the narco-communists,” being the one who defends democracy and “fights against” the Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro.
In these elections, Asfura, also known as ‘Papi a la Orden’, a phrase with which he greets his co-religionists, seeks in a second attempt to be president of Honduras covered in the flag of the conservative National Party.
The son of parents of Palestinian origin, Asfura was born on June 8, 1958 in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, of which he has been mayor for two consecutive terms (2014-2022).
After finishing high school at a Catholic school, he decided to study engineering, but he soon realized that his thing is the construction industry, to which he has dedicated most of his life.
As a politician he has also been a councilor for the Mayor’s Office of Tegucigalpa and secretary of the Honduran Social Investment Fund.
Asfura seeks the return to power of a National Party that suffered erosion during three consecutive periods, from 2010 to 2022, which were punctuated by multiple complaints of corruption and drug trafficking.
His commitment, if he becomes president, is for fiscal stability, employment and productive infrastructure, strengthening the agricultural sector, improving connectivity and prioritizing projects with immediate impact on the local economy.
Salvador Nasralla, on the fourth attempt…
With studies in Chile, Salvador Nasralla, the presidential candidate of the conservative Liberal Party of Honduras, is seeking for the fourth consecutive time to be president of his country, waving a flag against corruption, which has earned him many followers since he threw himself into the ring for the 2013 general elections.
Nasralla, a civil engineer, was born in Tegucigalpa on January 30, 1953, and from his adolescence he got involved in the media, until he became a renowned television presenter in a sports program that he has directed for more than four decades. In addition, he has been master of ceremony for beauty pageants and other social events.
He appeared in politics around 2011, when he founded the Anti-Corruption Party (PAC), with which in 2013 he sought to be president of Honduras for the first time, which he later repeated by creating another party, El Salvador de Honduras (PSH), alleging that the first one was “stolen” by former president Juan Orlando Hernández.
The second attempt, in 2017, also failed. In the third, in 2021, at the last minute he ended up making an alliance, only in the presidential formula, with the now ruling Freedom and Refoundation Party (Libre) led by Xiomara Castro, with the aim of removing from power the “narco-dictatorship” presided over by Juan Orlando Hernández, who in 2022 was extradited to the United States, where he was sentenced to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking.
With the triumph of Xiomara Castro, Nasralla rose to power as one of the three presidential appointees (vice president), a position he held until April 2024, when he resigned due to bitter confrontations with the president and her husband, former president Manuel Zelaya.
After leaving power, he joined a fractured Liberal Party, which he has proposed to bring back to power, after 16 years in the plain.
Nasralla focuses his agenda on attracting investment and generating employment, fighting corruption, reducing bureaucracy, modernizing infrastructure and supporting small and medium-sized entrepreneurs to increase competitiveness and create formal employment.
