Welcome to the Free Cities podcast. My name is Timothy Allen and this is the official podcast
of the Free Cities Foundation.
Hello and welcome to this special episode of the Free Cities podcast.
This is not one of my normal dispatches.
It will be a relatively brief summary of what we know so far as to what is going on in the current situation in the Honduras presidential election.
The election happened last Sunday and there's still no official result.
yesterday evening i sat in on a call with some of our close allies in honduras working within
the free cities ecosystem and they gave us the lowdown on what they can see happening in the
country at the moment i'm just looking at polymarket as we speak and according to the
people betting over there as fura is has a 92 chance of winning but since we have no official
result we can't declare that 100 anyway on the call yesterday was jorge colindres who is the
technical secretary at prospera and alex ugorji who lives in ciudad morazan and is uh very closely
connected with what is going on there. So I'm just going to give you a brief lowdown on what
we discovered and what these people who really do know what they're talking about think the outcome
of the election will be and what that will mean for the ZAs in Honduras. Briefly though to begin
with I'm going to talk just about the three main candidates in the election. Salvador Nasralla
from the Liberal Party and he was roughly tied with Rishi Moncada who is the incumbent from
Libre which is the Socialist Party and then Nasri Tito Asfura from the National Party
who currently is in the lead. Now according to what we can see now the good news is that Rishi
Moncada is completely out of the picture. So the socialists are out. So what we're discussing now
is a battle between Nasrallah and Asfura. And according to what we're hearing from the guys
in Honduras, Tito Asfura might win with the previously leading party candidate falling behind.
And it's worth noting here, Asfura was supported by President Trump just before the election.
And a lot of what you can see in the news is people discussing whether that was some kind of interference in the election.
Anyway, here's what Jorge had to say about the election shift.
He claimed about Honduras that it's never really been a socialist electorate anyway.
And as a majority, he described Hondurans as conservative and religious historically.
he cited polling saying that about 74 percent believe the free market is the only path to
prosperity and he framed it as anything where government is not messing with you is very well
liked in the country you might wonder then why did they elect a socialist government last time
and apparently according to him he said it was a coalition driven by the fear that the national
party who were in at the time would remain in power indefinitely and he claimed that the general
sentiment was that voters took a risk with the communists to ensure a difference in in the power
structure so alternation he describes libre's behavior once they got into power libre is the
left-wing party the socialists or communists i'll probably use those words interchangeably
he alleged that they took over the institutions including congress executive supreme court
using family members, the prosecutor general and the armed forces leadership. But despite that,
he said the opposition maintained a majority control over electoral bodies,
the National Electoral Council and Electoral Courts And when we asked him about interference in the elections and what would ensure the vote he said multiple groups have aligned against the government and
electoral bodies with opposition majority, evangelical churches, etc., the business
community, the media even. He said the media may take government money, but it stays aligned with
private sector interests and the US, he said, participated with strong anti-communist foreign
policy. Anyway, his bottom line at the moment is that the immediate question in Honduras is who
actually won between Asfura and Nasralla. But according to him, either would be good for Honduras
and especially for the ZAs. So we then asked him who out of the two remaining candidates would be
the best for the zones. Who's most preferable? Jorge said politicians are hard to predict once
they get into power but necessarily he believed both would be good for the ZAs. The national party
Asfura has a stronger base support for the ZAs. Tito Asfura himself he's the former mayor of the
capital city of Honduras. He has a construction company he's known for visible infrastructure work
often via government contracts and said he's well regarded in the sort of upper levels of the
private sector Nasrallah on the other hand he described Nasrallah's party the liberal party
as historically quite messy and factional but Nasrallah himself who was originally opposed
to the ZAs as part of attacking the former president Hernandez even though they engaged
with him he's now much more positive towards them he's a private sector oriented person former tv
presenter sports commentator actually and a civil engineer trained in chile jojai said personally he
likes nasrallah but again like i said both candidates are absolutely fine he doesn't mind
which one gets in really jojai actually predicted a settlement agreement between the zas and the
government ideally in q1 of 2026 but more likely the first semester of 2026 regardless of who wins
now then we asked him how when will the winner be declared given the incumbents are contesting
the results etc and jorge went on to say he basically according to him everyone has dismissed
the incumbents as politically irrelevant and said people are literally ignoring them he said the
key issue has been the armed forces but that was now clearly in favor of institutions he then
explained the process around 19 000 voting tables produced minutes electoral councils count the
minutes 22 700 minutes had inconsistencies requiring special review with party reps and said
the current vote was about 50 000 so theoretically it's possible the review could change the result
He estimated, in his own words, the tally will be done by either today, that's literally today when I'm putting this out, or maybe tomorrow.
The review will begin this weekend.
The declaration will likely occur within one to one and a half weeks.
And certainly there'll be a declaration before the end of December.
then we will pop over to alex alex ugorji who's who's closely aligned with what's going on
ciudad morizan and alex said he characterized himself as as kind of being an emissary for
massimo and saying that massimo was far more massimo mazzoni is the guy who basically founded
and owns ciudad morizan and he's far more pessimistic slash conservative in his tone
but he also appreciated that Jorge is far less conservative and I think it was a bit of a playful
contradiction to be honest. Morizan's risk posture after the Supreme Court ruling according to them
he said that at the Morizan government level they are uncertain of the ZA status after the Supreme
Court ruling they're taking a conservative approach they don't open companies anymore due to uncertainty
and liability concerns and said that the government has been giving conflicting signals.
Even if a ruling is illegal, it still creates uncertainty.
And the mood there after the election he said the mood is that a deal will happen within 12 months or less Slightly more conservative than Jorge timeline but still in 2026 He said Morazan is optimistic and is planning Massimo is thinking about what to build next
He predicted that if a deal is made, tens of millions of dollars could flow into Morazan
very, very quickly and said optimism is the highest since the Supreme Court ruling,
the original one that is maybe even since 2021 here's a quick explanation of the supreme court
ruling just for context this is what jorge said the supreme court declared the za regime
unconstitutional and tried to apply it retroactively he argued that under honduran principles such
rulings cannot affect acquired rights or settled legal situations and he acknowledged even if the
ruling is null and void in practice it may be treated as real because it carries official seals
and signatures the key legal pillars that jorge emphasized were non-retroactivity
slash acquired rights the constitutional rulings should not disrupt settled legal situations
and international treaty protection jorge highlighted uh the honduras kuwait treaty
that he said explicitly guarantees legal status of ZAs for at least 50 years or 450 years and
argued that that hasn't been changed that's not been struck down so the ruling didn't order him
to stop operating put it that way somebody else very closely related to Morazan said that she
spoke with Carlos Pineda recently who's described as one of the key people behind the original ZA
law and carlos agrees with jorge's optimism regardless of whether nasrala or asfura wins
though carlos personally prefers asfura and jorge prefers nasrala he emphasized the structural
importance of international treaties because they limit what honduras can do unilaterally and said
experts in in international arbitration would likely not favor honduras because evidence of
acquired rights violations is strong. Then we had a question about public opinion on the situation
with the ZAs. What's the public opinion? Jorge said they do regular polling. He didn't have exact
numbers, but cited something like 40% positive, 30% negative, remained a neutral unknown. He said
Prospera's brand is positive, but not widely known. ZAs as a concept is more widely recognized.
and he claimed there's a belief that ZAs helped motivate US support for Honduran democracy,
which is good for PR. Okay, then we had a question about connecting additional land plots,
referenced an old provision allowing additional land plots to be connected
to an existing ZA and what are the chances of restoring and using that? Jorge said their legal
position is that incorporating additional land is safeguarded by the international treaty because
the za organic law is integrated into it and he claimed that a regulatory body share that view
and that they have supporting legal opinions so they might incorporate additional property soon
and they said they want a formal agreement with the next government to increase certainty
and enable more ZA-like zones in Honduras.
He also claimed Honduras is still the easiest place to start similar zones
because people are already familiar with them.
Alex Ugorgi added that the ZAs have a separate land registry,
which is interesting, from the national regime's land registry.
And that offers robust protection and complicates expropriation tax,
building permit interference, etc.
that was just a side note okay then we had a question about immigration and residency
logistics whether resources exist for attendees to for example the free cities conference to fly in
and while they're there simultaneously pursue honduran residency maybe via investment or real
estate jorge's answer was that prosper has an agreement with the national migration institute
to facilitate residency for prosperer investors or business people or residents and he claimed that
the current government didn't revoke that so it's still in place and ideally the new administration
will respect and reactivate it by september he offered a plan b standard petition process
file request and stay while processing paying small periodic fees so basically that possible you can according to what i understood anyway you can stay there indefinitely just by updating your file every
every few months then someone mentioned why did prosper reduce its uh claim recently that's the
claim against the government it was many many billions and they were claiming and jorge clarified
this is something masmo talked to me about when i was in prague last and i think he got it a little
bit wrong he said it looked like the prosperer just recently reduced their claim uh of of the
government but actually it wasn't reduced it's just that the initial filing didn't take a final
damages number so there was no number it was an up to figure figures estimated the total project
loss that could be claimed was up to 11 billion or something now since operations continued and
the worst case loss didn't materialize the recent filing presented actual calculated damages for what
happened over the past four years so that that was just a misunderstanding as far as settling goes
with the government here are some predicted timelines jorge said it should be a priority
for the government due to finances and hoped it could be done in the first semester of 2026
okay closing remarks jorge was very very positive and and this is my takeaway he predicted 2026 will
be the year of the za saying growth could be extremely rapid if they go fully online again
which is phenomenal news of course here were the key takeaways this is what was collectively
communicated as far as i'm concerned number one the election outlook shift away from the libre
party the socialists slash communists this is seen as a major opening a final winner will be
expected late december after review of disputed minutes the two acceptable winners according to
the free cities foundation and jorge and everyone connected with the zedays
is that both asfura and nasrallah would likely be favorable to the zedays with national party support
more established let's say the legal posture Jorge's side emphasizes that acquired rights
and treaty protections are in place Alex emphasized practical enforcement risk when
the government ignores the law operational reality of what's going on Morazan is still building
but not incorporating companies currently customs uh interference remains a concrete example of
what's been going on uh the customs offices were taken away previously now the settlement goal
both jorge and alex expect a deal in 2026 jorge said ideally first semester alex within 12 months
so it's all looking pretty good we did also mention of course that the free cities conference
is scheduled in september in prospera and alex actually mentioned that he's going to do some
side trips to morizan if you want to look around anyway joe expects a settlement after political
agreement and the timeline depends heavily on the government's legal strategy so there you have it
very very very positive news from Honduras currently this is what we've discovered on the
ground and as we sort of move into 2026 I think 2026 is going to be a monster year for the free
cities ecosystem and not just Honduras I was talking about this in Prague I've never seen so
many projects coming online as we see today and currently and now we've got great news
from Honduras where two of the most famous and most advanced Free Cities projects are occurring
so it's all good right that is the end of my brief summary of what we know from Honduras
let's keep our fingers crossed and I can't wait for 2026 and I will see you all in the next dispatch
many thanks
Thank you.