TEGUCIGALPA – As Honduras gears up to elect its next president, the conversation has taken a dramatic shift from local issues to international headlines, focusing on U.S. President Donald Trump and his unexpected pardon of a former Honduran leader.

This week, Trump made waves in Honduran political circles by endorsing Nasry “Tito” Asfura, a candidate from the conservative National Party. Adding fuel to the fire, he announced a pardon for ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández, who is currently serving a 45-year sentence in the U.S. for drug trafficking offenses.

The impact of Trump’s sudden involvement

Prior to Trump’s surprising intervention, the election discourse was dominated by the candidates’ concerns over the integrity of the voting process. All three leading contenders were casting doubts on the election’s fairness, each vowing not to accept results that didn’t favor them.

As Saturday rolled in, the people of Honduras found themselves pondering the implications of Trump’s moves, questioning who might gain from his actions and speculating on his motives.

Unpredictable elements in play

The endorsement of Asfura seemed straightforward enough: one conservative backing another. But throwing in Hernández, someone whose lengthy U.S. federal trial in a New York City courtroom was covered daily in the Honduran media, was a wild card.

It could hurt Asfura by reminding voters of the depths of the corruption of his party. Or it could help him by firing up the National Party’s base.

Trump also dismissed the other two leading candidates Rixi Moncada of the governing social democrat Libre Party and Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party, who he called a “borderline Communist.”

Eve of the election

Moncada, the former finance and defense secretary in the outgoing administration of President Xiomara Castro, pounced on the U.S. president’s intervention.

Before she stepped to the podium before cheering supporters, a giant screen played video loops of Hernández’s arrest.

Moncada framed it as Honduras’ organized crime interests and the country’s handful of economically dominant families deciding in the days before the election that their candidates wouldn’t be able to beat her, so they went to Washington for help.

It was Castro who had Hernández arrested months after he left office, something Moncada said that Honduras’ powerful economic interests allowed, because he was no longer of use to them. But now, desperate, Trump was sending who she called “the biggest capo in the history of Honduras” back to try to energize conservative voters.

“What has happened yesterday (the pardon) is a new crime and that new crime we will judge tomorrow (Sunday) at the ballot box,” Moncada said to cheers. “They won’t come back.”

The night before, Nasralla tried to use Trump’s interference to bolster his own cultivated outsider status, even in his fourth bid for the presidency.

“I don’t answer to dark pacts, or corrupt networks or criminals who have killed our people,” he said Friday night.

Divisive figure

It was all giving Hondurans a lot to talk about Saturday.

At an intersection in a wealthier Tegucigalpa neighborhood, Adalid Ávila sold oranges, bananas, pineapples and rambutans from the back of a pickup truck. About 100 yards away a banner fluttered from a highway overpass with a picture of Hernández the day he was handed over to U.S. authorities in 2022.

It warned people not to forget allegations that he had also diverted money from social security as president.

But Ávila said a lot of people still think highly of Hernández, so he didn’t think Trump’s pardon would have much effect on the election.

Endorsement of Asfura

The 21-year-old vendor said that he planned to vote for Asfura, who he remembered as Tegucigalpa’s mayor for building tunnels and bridges – including the one the banner hung from — that somewhat relieved its crushing traffic.

“He’s hardworking, he inspires you,” Ávila said. He did think that Trump’s endorsement could help Asfura, because Hondurans know how much help the U.S. can be, he said.

Most of all, Ávila wants Honduras’ next president to be “honorable,” to work for the people and not forget the campaign promises, he said. He worried that the leading candidates won’t accept Sunday’s result.

“People aren’t tolerant in this country,” he said. “There’s always revolution, because no one likes to lose.”

Hope for peaceful vote

Melany Martínez, a 30-year-old nurse, waited in a long line Saturday morning for a “baleada,” a Honduran delicacy of beans, cheese and cream wrapped in a soft, fresh tortilla.

She called Trump’s endorsement of Asfura an “alert” to Hondurans and she wondered what the U.S. president’s angle was.

“I think the people’s decision must be taken here, because in the end we’re the citizens,” she said. Trump’s pardoning of Hernández struck her as wrong, because he had been convicted of a crime.

She too hoped for a peaceful election with a respected result. But she had heard talk in the street about the chance of trouble and even suggestions to stock up on household essentials.

As a nurse, she wants the next president to focus on education and health, two areas that have been chronically ignored.

Oliver Eraso, a law professor at the National Autonomous University of Honduras, said that he didn’t expect Trump’s interference to have a big impact on voters’ decisions.

“The social and collective behavior of the electorate was already defined a week or two ago, especially when it comes to the National Party and the Liberal Party,” he said.

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Marlon González contributed to this report.