Hondurans vote to elect president in a close race

Hondurans voted Sunday to elect a new president only days after President Trump intervened in a close race with an endorsement of one candidate and announced that he would pardon a former Honduran president convicted of trafficking cocaine into the United States.

- By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN AND MARLON GONZÁLEZ

ROXANA MEJIA votes in the Honduran election at a North Hollywood church.

At a voting site in the capital, the country’s major parties were represented outside with tables, banners, flags and music. Several dozen people lined up outside the gate to the neighborhood school and were allowed in about 30 minutes after the official start of voting.

In addition to a new president, voters will elect a new Congress, as well as hundreds of local positions.

The 3 candidates with a chance to win

Among the five presidential candidates on the ballot, polls indicated three had a chance to win and were finishing in close competition. They are:

■ Rixi Moncada, who served as finance and later as defense secretary in the current administration of President Xiomara Castro and is running for the social democratic Libre, or Liberty and Refoundation, party.

■ Salvador Nasralla, who is making his fourth bid for the presidency, this time as the candidate for the conservative Liberal Party.

■ Former Tegucigalpa Mayor Nasry “Tito” Asfura, the Trump-backed candidate who carries the mantle of the conservative National Party.

Moncada promises to “democratize” an economy still defined by extreme wealth and poverty. Nasralla casts himself as the outsider who can clean up the country’s endemic corruption. And Asfura is trying to restore the National Party as a pro-business force tarnished by previous bouts of presidential corruption. Asfura has been accused of embezzling public funds in the past, allegations that he denies.