President declares himself winner of re-election bid
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — President Juan Orlando Hernandez declared himself the winner of his country’s presidential elections Sunday after exit polls gave him almost 44 percent of the vote.
“I am contented, happy,” Hernandez told supporters. “We won this election.”
Television presenter Salvador Nasralla was running second with 34.7 percent and academic Luis Zelaya third with 17.7 percent, according to the poll by the company Ingenieria Gerencial.
The first official results were expected Sunday evening.
Polling stations closed on time despite an expectation that voting would be extended, with people in some areas complaining they did not have time to cast their ballots.
The elections pitted Hernandez, a 49-year-old conservative, against eight other candidates in a single-round vote.
He had been expected to defeat center-left canBut didate Nasralla, who had the rare backing of two opposition parties, and Zelaya, who represented the conservative Liberal Party.
About 6.4 million voters were also eligible to elect 128 members of Congress and the mayors of 298 municipalities.
The Central American country’s constitution bans re-election, but Hernandez based his candidacy on a 2015 Supreme Court ruling in favor of former president Rafael Callejas, who argued that the ban violated his human rights.
Callejas was not running after having been jailed in the United States over a FIFA corruption scandal.
The opposition argued that the Supreme Court could not override the constitution, but Hernandez said he needs a second term to consolidate his achievements, such as improving security.
The president sent soldiers to crack down on criminal gangs, extradited drug lords to the U.S. and slightly reduced Honduras’ homicide rate, still one of the highest in the world.