-
By Juan Fernando Herrera Ramos
-
-
After more than three weeks since the Honduran elections took place, its National Electoral Council finally certified the new president of Honduras. During the campaign, the two leading contenders, Nasry Asfura and Salvador Nasralla, who according to the council were separated by 27,026 votes in the final tally, promised to restore diplomatic ties with Taiwan if elected.
Nasralla refused to accept the result and said that he would challenge all the irregularities in court. However, with formal recognition from the US and rapid acknowledgment from key regional governments, including Argentina and Panama, a reversal of the results appears institutionally and politically improbable, even if legal challenges continue.
This early international recognition matters. In Honduras, as in much of Latin America, external validation has historically played a decisive role in consolidating contested electoral outcomes, often limiting the room for domestic institutions to meaningfully revisit certification decisions once international legitimacy has been conferred.
Taiwan has said it is in contact with Honduran president-elect Asfura, who said that Honduras was “100 times better” when it had formal relations with Taiwan, receiving far more concrete and visible benefits. He also said that he intends to work closely with the US, Taiwan and Israel to promote economic development in Honduras.
Their words should not be taken lightly. They suggest not only a diplomatic reorientation, but also an alignment with a broader strategic push that increasingly appears to be a “Monroe Doctrine 2.0,” under which US is reasserting influence in the western hemisphere after years of relative disengagement. Asfura, in particular, has significant political capital tied to Washington, and he has much to thank US President Donald Trump for.
Just days before the election, Trump pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, also from Asfura’s National Party, despite Hernandez having received a 45-year prison sentence in the US following his conviction on drug trafficking and firearms charges. While controversial, the timing of the pardon was widely interpreted within Honduras as a clear political signal of which party Trump was supporting.
Trump further reinforced that signal by publicly endorsing Asfura just days before the election, expressing his willingness to collaborate with his government, and framing Nasralla and the other candidate, Rixi Moncada, as communists who could not be trusted.
Later, amid disputes over the recount of thousands of votes with inconsistencies, Trump warned that there would be “hell to pay” if the results, which showed Asfura as the winner, were altered in any way, putting pressure on institutional authorities to finalize the process.
Given this level of overt backing from a sitting US president, it is difficult to imagine Asfura adopting a foreign policy that directly contradicts Washington’s strategic expectations, particularly on Taiwan and China. Honduras, after nearly two years of diplomatic alignment with Beijing, has little to show in terms of transformative investment and is facing mounting domestic criticism over unmet promises.
China, through Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lin Jian (林劍), on Thursday last week affirmed that it “respects the decision of the Honduran people” following Asfura’s rejection of continued alignment with Beijing. At the same time, it reiterated its desire to continue cooperating with the new government on Honduras’ development, conditional on respect for Beijing’s “one China” principle.
The language mirrors China’s response to similar diplomatic reversals in other small and medium-sized states, reflecting an effort to minimize reputational damage, while signaling that future cooperation would be politically constrained.
However, Asfura’s relationship with Taiwan is not a campaign invention. His ties date back to 2015, when he visited Taiwan with his wife to bolster ties between Taipei and Tegucigalpa. The visit coincided with broader municipal cooperation initiatives, and Asfura reportedly expressed admiration for Taiwan’s development model, infrastructure planning and urban governance.
In 2018, I worked for a company called Dong Jyu Group, which was collaborating with Tegucigalpa City Hall on construction projects. I recall a story involving Asfura and the group’s vice president at the time, Farris Cheng (鄭光禮).
In a casual exchange, Asfura asked Cheng what he thought of Honduras. Cheng replied that he liked the country, because it was surrounded by mountains. Asfura responded: “Yes, and you can see them, because we do not have buildings like you do.” Both of them laughed for a while, and then he added that one day Honduras would have those, too.
The exchange matters, because it reflects a longstanding aspirational view of development, one that aligns closely with Taiwan’s approach to incremental, people-centered economic growth, rather than headline-driven megaprojects.
Several structural factors point toward Honduras restoring diplomatic relations with Taiwan. One is the continued presence of Honduran students in Taiwan, many of whom remained even after the diplomatic switch to China. Another is the urgent need to revive the shrimp industry, which has been severely damaged since losing preferential access to Taiwanese markets and technical cooperation.
Industry data and exporters’ testimonies suggested that the promised Chinese market access has failed to compensate for regulatory barriers, with logistical delays and inconsistent demand, leaving producers worse off than before. For coastal communities, it has translated into unemployment, debt and social instability.
Public opinion has also shifted. About 80 percent of Hondurans voted for candidates advocating a return to Taiwan, a figure that reflects not nostalgia, but lived economic experience. For many voters, the diplomatic switch to China was judged not on ideological grounds, but on whether daily life improved. In most cases, it did not.
The outcome reflects 80 years of Taiwan-Honduras cooperation, encompassing infrastructure, education, agriculture, healthcare and institutional capacity building. The projects directly affected citizens, but their impact was often under-communicated.
That gap was addressed in part by the Taiwan Digital Diplomacy Association, a Taiwanese non-governmental organization that in 2022 partnered for a year with a Honduran public relations firm to document and publicize Taiwan-backed projects across the country. By translating technical cooperation into visible narratives, the initiative helped reconnect public perception with material outcomes.
There is little doubt that the efforts played a role in shaping public sentiment ahead of the Nov. 30 election, particularly among younger voters and regional communities that had directly benefited from Taiwanese programs.
The official inauguration of Asfura’s administration is scheduled for Jan. 27, but early signals from Taipei and Tegucigalpa suggested that preparatory diplomatic channels are already open, raising expectations that a formal restoration of relations could occur relatively quickly.
If that happens, Honduras would not simply be reversing a diplomatic decision. It would be reasserting a development model grounded in long-term cooperation, institutional trust and realistic expectations, rather than symbolic alignment with great-power competition.
For Honduras, the choice ahead is not between China and Taiwan in abstract geopolitical terms. It is between two very different approaches to partnership, and the election result suggested that Hondurans have made their preference clear.
Juan Fernando Herrera Ramos is a Honduran journalist based in Taipei.
