The Honduran political landscape is reeling from what leaders are calling an unprecedented act of foreign intervention, prompting an emergency meeting of the LIBRE party’s National Coordinating Committee. Former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009), who currently leads the left-wing LIBRE party, convened the urgent session in Tegucigalpa to formulate a response to what he characterized as deliberately hostile acts by former U.S. President Donald Trump.
The crisis stems from multiple interventions during Honduras’s recent presidential elections. Seventy-two hours before polls opened, Trump published three separate messages endorsing Nasry Asfura, the presidential candidate of the right-wing National Party (PN). In a more direct intervention, Trump explicitly urged Honduran voters to reject LIBRE’s candidate, Rixi Moncada, and threatened to cut U.S. economic aid to Honduras if voters supported the left-wing party.
The situation escalated further when Trump announced on December 1st the pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022), who had been convicted by a New York court and sentenced to 45 years in prison for trafficking more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. This pardon, combined with the electoral interference, has been condemned as a direct attack on Honduran sovereignty.
Zelaya, communicating through his X account on December 3rd, asserted that these actions constituted serious harm to the Honduran people and demanded a firm, decisive, and patriotic response. The LIBRE party is now considering appropriate political, legal, and diplomatic actions to defend national dignity, democratic processes, and the integrity of the popular vote in Honduras.