PRESIDENT Juan Orlando Hernandez held on to a lead of more than 52,000 votes in Honduras’s hotly disputed presidential race as the long-delayed count wrapped up.
Hernandez led by a margin of 43 per cent of votes over opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla’s 41.4 per cent, according to the latest results published on the electoral tribunal’s website.
His edge expanded in the latest count from about 46,000 votes.
Tribunal president David Matamoros said all of the ballots had been tabulated but the court was not declaring a winner yet. Parties have 10 days to challenge the results.
The last ballot boxes that presented “inconsistencies” were examined without the presence of Nasralla and his Opposition Against Dictatorship alliance, which chose not to send representatives as the vote tallying continued and have called for a far broader recount and a rerun of the entire vote.
Nasralla told a rally in the capital, Tegucigalpa, that the magistrates of the electoral tribunal “are employees of President (Juan Orlando) Hernandez”, who ran for re-election despite a constitutional ban on doing so.
Hernandez’s government is enforcing a 10-day curfew of 6pm to 6am to quell demonstrations.
There were pot-banging protests over delays in the vote count. Clashes between protesters and troops have killed at least one.
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