Honduras electoral tribunal declares incumbent winner of presidential election News
Honduras electoral tribunal declares incumbent winner of presidential election

The Honduras Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) [official website, in Spanish] on Sunday declared [text, PDF, in Spanish] incumbent President Juan Orlando Hernández the winner of last month’s disputed presidential election.

The tribunal found that Hernández won by 50,446 votes, receiving 42.95 percent of the vote. Opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla received 41.42 percent.

The election has been marred with accusations of fraud and other irregularities, and the Organization of American States [official website] called Sunday for new elections [statement]:

Deliberate human intrusions in the computer system, intentional elimination of digital traces, the impossibility of knowing the number of opportunities in which the system was violated, pouches of votes open or lacking votes, the extreme statistical improbability with respect to participation levels within the same department, recently printed ballots and additional irregularities, added to the narrow difference of votes between the two most voted candidates, make it impossible to determine with the necessary certainty the winner.

The Honduran people deserve an electoral exercise that provides democratic quality and guarantees. The electoral cycle that the TSE concluded today clearly has not met those standards.

In a statement posted to Facebook Sunday, Nasralla called the results invalid and vowed that the “fight will continue.”