Honduras opposition candidate alleges fraud in presidential vote
TEGUCIGALPA: Honduran opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla on Tuesday accused incumbent President Juan Orlando Hernandez of trying to steal the Central American country’s bitterly- disputed election by faking poll results.
Leftist TV host-turned-politician Nasralla said Hernandez was colluding with the army and the electoral authorities to forge new results sheets and give himself the edge in Sunday’s presidential election.
“He’s fabricating (the results),” Nasralla told AFP in an interview.
“He controls the media. He’s going to have the results sheets he wants validated and change the will of the people.”
The election in this poor, gangplagued country has turned into a drawn- out showdown between Nasralla, 64, and Hernandez, 49, who is going for four more years in office despite a constitutional limit of just one term.
Both candidates have declared victory, but the results are far from clear.
In the early hours of Monday, Nasralla led by five percentage points with 57 per cent of ballots counted.
Then the Supreme Electoral Tribunal interrupted its live broadcast of the results and announced the rest of the ballots would be brought to the capital, Tegucigalpa, to be counted.
On Tuesday, the election authority posted new results on its website: 44.4 per cent for Nasralla to 40.5 percent for Hernandez — about one percentage point narrower than the opposition candidate’s previous lead — with just over 61 per cent of the ballots counted.
Nasralla accused the conservative president of plotting to rig the vote, saying his ‘survival instinct’ was hijacking democracy.
“He knows if he’s not the president any more he’ll be extradited to face corruption charges,” he told AFP.
“He’s trying to sow chaos so he can declare a state of emergency and take control with the help of his people and the army.”
Hernandez for his part asked Hondurans to be patient.
Officials have said the final vote tally may not be ready until Thursday.
In his first public appearance since declaring himself winner Sunday night, Hernandez said his supporters are right to take to the streets in celebration, as they have done.
Speaking at a press conference, he again insisted he has won the presidency and his party the largest number of seats in congress.
“The result is more than clear,” he said at the presidential residence.
But Hernandez also said people must wait until all the ballots are counted.
“It is important for everyone to be patient, for everyone to be considerate with Honduras,” he said.
The Organisation of American States electoral observation mission called Tuesday for Honduras to speed up the process.
The mission “urges the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) to expedite the processing and dissemination of results and to provide citizens the information at their disposal as soon as possible,” it said in a statement. — AFP