At least one protester died and more than 20 people were injured as demonstrations mounted in Honduras after a delayed presidential vote count sparked unrest amid opposition accusations of electoral fraud, APA reports quoting Reuters.
A recount of disputed ballots from last Sunday’s vote was likely to take up to two more days before yielding a winner in a neck-and-neck race between U.S.-backed President Juan Orlando Hernandez and his center-left rival, TV star Salvador Nasralla.
International concern has steadily grown about the electoral crisis in the poor Central American country, which also suffers from drug gangs and one of the world’s highest murder rates.
Police sources said at least one man had been shot and killed at a protest in the city of La Ceiba, while about 12 members of the military and police force had been injured in the demonstrations, which snarled traffic outside Honduras’ main port on Friday.
At least 10 protesters had also been injured in the capital of Tegucigalpa, according to the city’s Hospital Escuela.
Hernandez began stretching a slim lead over Nasralla on Thursday as the vote count ran in his favor, maintaining a reversal in the trend that began after a 36-hour delay halted the process on Monday.
Until then, Nasralla had held a five-point lead with over half the ballots counted, and the sudden change in direction to Hernandez’s advantage after the restart sparked clashes between police and protesters.
Late on Thursday, David Matamoros, the top electoral tribunal official, heeded calls from international election observers and Honduras’ top business group and said the tribunal would hand-count some 1,031 outstanding ballots, or roughly 6 percent of the total, that had irregularities.
That fresh count would be completed in up to two days, and would allow the tribunal to declare a definitive winner with 100 percent of ballots counted, Matamoros said.
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