(The Guardian) Donald Trump has accused officials in Honduras of “trying to change” the result of the country’s presidential election, as the release of vote counts was paused with two rightwing candidates locked in a technical tie.
The virtual vote count had been slow and unstable before it was interrupted around midday on Monday. The electoral court said a technical problem was to blame and insisted the manual count was continuing.
On his social network, Trump accused officials of “trying to change the results” and warned that “if they do, there will be hell to pay!”.
It was the latest in a string of dramatic interventions by the US president. Before the vote, Trump had thrown his support behind Nasry “Tito” Asfura – who on Monday was ahead of his rival, Salvador Nasralla, by just 515 votes – saying that US support for the country was conditional on an Asfura victory.
He also made the extraordinary pledge to pardon Asfura’s ally, the former president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of drug trafficking in a New York court last year and sentenced to 45 years in prison for allegedly creating “a cocaine superhighway to the United States”.
As election officials pleaded for patience on Tuesday, Hernández’s wife, Ana García de Hernández, disclosed that the former president had been released from a US prison.
www.theguardian.com
The virtual vote count had been slow and unstable before it was interrupted around midday on Monday. The electoral court said a technical problem was to blame and insisted the manual count was continuing.
On his social network, Trump accused officials of “trying to change the results” and warned that “if they do, there will be hell to pay!”.
It was the latest in a string of dramatic interventions by the US president. Before the vote, Trump had thrown his support behind Nasry “Tito” Asfura – who on Monday was ahead of his rival, Salvador Nasralla, by just 515 votes – saying that US support for the country was conditional on an Asfura victory.
He also made the extraordinary pledge to pardon Asfura’s ally, the former president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of drug trafficking in a New York court last year and sentenced to 45 years in prison for allegedly creating “a cocaine superhighway to the United States”.
As election officials pleaded for patience on Tuesday, Hernández’s wife, Ana García de Hernández, disclosed that the former president had been released from a US prison.
Trump frees ex-Honduran president from prison as country awaits knife-edge election result
Release of convicted cocaine trafficker Juan Orlando Hernández is latest US interference in election and comes despite Trump’s apparent ‘war on drugs’
www.theguardian.com
