Faced with the warning from the United States, Castro reacted by asking Trump for a "direct and frank dialogue" about the electoral process of last November 30 in Honduras. "We demand that the vote of all Honduran people be respected," emphasized Redondo. So far, there has been no reaction from the three CNE counselors, who represent the three major parties, National, Liberal, and Libre, while the Armed Forces, according to past statements from the new Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Héctor Valerio, will respect the electoral body's declaration and on January 27 - when Xiomara Castro's four-year term ends - there will be a transition of power. Castro convened the Council of Ministers on Saturday, after the U.S. government warned of "severe consequences" for "attempts to reverse the presidential election," which Asfura won. "Mr. President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump: I respectfully invite you to hold a direct and frank dialogue on the electoral process in Honduras," Castro indicated in an extensive message on the social network X. In particular, she noted, "regarding your public pronouncements on the social network X in favor of citizen Nasry Asfura, which negatively influenced the development of the democratic process and affected our candidate" (from Libre, Rixi Moncada). "The voices of 3.8 million Hondurans have spoken and the National Electoral Council has certified the results of the election." The electoral crisis that Honduras has been experiencing since the general elections of last November 30 has intensified again with the request made on Saturday by the country's president, Xiomara Castro, to the National Electoral Council (CNE) to immediately begin a vote-by-vote count of the elections, even though the body officially announced the results in December. The request was approved in a meeting of the Council of Ministers convened by Castro on Saturday, with the participation, as a guest, of the president of the board of directors of Parliament, Luis Redondo, proponent of the initiative for a new vote-by-vote count. On Friday, in an extraordinary session of Parliament, without more than 70 opposition deputies, who were not allowed to enter, according to their own complaints, a minority, among owners and substitutes of the ruling Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre, left), approved the new vote-by-vote count. The legislative decree was sanctioned by the head of state and immediately published in the official gazette La Gaceta. The Parliament's resolution is questioned by the opposition, jurists, analysts, and the Organization of American States (OAS), among other sectors, who consider the action improper because the CNE already issued an official statement on the elections and declared as the new elected president the presidential candidate of the conservative National Party, Nasry 'Tito' Asfura, who was publicly supported by U.S. President Donald Trump. All electoral material is safeguarded at the CNE's logistics center at the National Vocational Training Institute (Infop) in Tegucigalpa, whose security was reinforced on Saturday by the Armed Forces, which by law are responsible for the transport, security, and custody of electoral materials. After the Council of Ministers meeting, Redondo told journalists at the Presidential House that "we have given instructions so that from the National Congress (Parliament) a note is sent to the Council with a copy of La Gaceta so that they initiate it immediately, otherwise it will be the National Congress that will carry out the scrutiny as established by the Constitution of the Republic, in article 205, numeral 7". The military have warned that they will respect the CNE's declaration. "We are asking from the National Congress of the Republic, in a historic fact, that all the votes from the 19,167 polling boards are counted and that whoever wins wins, it doesn't matter who the winner is, it is respected after the total scrutiny of the polling boards is completed." "Attempts to illegally reverse the election of Honduras will have serious consequences," published the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs of the U.S. Department of State.
