Honduras Plunges Into Turmoil as Electoral Official Alleges “Monumental Fraud:” Trump’s Threats to Cut Aid and Pardon of a Convicted Drug Trafficker Manipulated Honduras' presidential election

From [HERE] and [HERE] Days removed from Sunday’s presidential vote, and still without a clear winner, Honduras’s post-election crisis became more contentious after a member of the country’s electoral authority denounced “monumental electoral fraud” on Thursday evening.

Marlon Ochoa, a representative for the Libre Party on the three-member National Electoral Council (CNE), alleged coordinated and deliberate electoral fraud carried out by the other council members, Cossette Alejandra López-Osorio of the National Party and Ana Paola Hall of the Liberal Party.

The CNE had claimed in a social media post on Tuesday that the delays in election results were due to technical issues. Two members of the council criticized Grupo ASD S.A.S, the company behind the Transmission and Dissemination of Election Results reporting system (known as TREP), for carrying out software modifications without the unanimous authorization of the council plenary.

But on Thursday, after repeated downtime of the TREP system continued to prevent the public from accessing real-time updates, the Honduran Center for Democracy Studies (CESPAD) issued an alert calling on CNE to take action.

López-Osorio and Hall represent the country’s traditional political parties, both of which were relegated to opposition status when Xiomara Castro won the general election for Libre in 2021. Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party has likewise alleged that irregularities may be affecting the results. [MORE]