Honduran Vote Recount Urged as Tally Shows President Is Ahead
4, 2017
MEXICO CITY — Honduran election officials said Monday
that President Juan Orlando Hernández had won a small majority in a preliminary vote count, but international election monitors backed opposition demands for a partial recount, arguing that there were too many irregularities to be sure of the result.
Marisa Matias, the leader of the European Union mission, urged the election board to accede to the opposition’s demands in order "to have transparent
results, to have confidence, to regain confidence in a system where the Honduran people do not have much confidence right now.
"The narrow margin of results, as well as the irregularities, errors and systemic problems
that have surrounded this election does not give the mission certainty over the results,’’ Jorge Quiroga, a former president of Bolivia who is leading the O.A.S.
But as results came in the night of the election on Nov. 26, Salvador Nasralla, a former sportscaster running
at the head of an alliance coordinated by Mr. Zelaya, led the count by almost 5 percentage points.
The political crisis took a new turn late Monday when members of the elite Cobras police unit in
Tegucigalpa, the capital, refused to leave their hillside barracks to enforce a 6 p.m. curfew.
" Mr. Hernández’s government imposed a 12-hour nighttime curfew on Friday
and said it would last for 10 days after peaceful protests by the opposition spilled into violence and looting in a few areas.
