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Honduran President Declared Winner, but O.A.S. Calls for New Election

President Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras addressed his supporters in Tegucigalpa this month.Credit...Moises Castillo/Associated Press

MEXICO CITY — The Honduran electoral commission on Sunday declared President Juan Orlando Hernández the victor in a bitterly contested race, but the Organization of American States called for a new election, arguing that the vote was so riddled with irregularities that it was impossible to be sure of a winner.

The electoral commission, which is controlled by allies of Mr. Hernández, said he had won by about 50,000 votes over the opposition candidate, Salvador Nasralla.

The announcement, and the response from Luis Almagro, the secretary general of the O.A.S., seemed likely to escalate the political crisis that has gripped Honduras since the Nov. 26 vote.

David Matamoros, the electoral commission president and a member of the Honduran president’s National Party, declared a winner despite an earlier call from Mr. Almagro to hold back.

In a statement issued late Sunday, Mr. Almagro said, “Facing the impossibility of determining a winner, the only way possible so that the people of Honduras are the victors is a new call for general elections.” The O.A.S. election observer team had just presented a report that concluded the election process was of “poor quality.”

The electoral commission’s declaration came as Mr. Nasralla was on his way to Washington to meet with Mr. Almagro and the State Department.

In a video posted on his Facebook page from the airport in Miami, Mr. Nasralla said, “The fight continues and will continue.” He said the result announced by the commission “has no validity simply because the Organization of American States, of which Honduras is a member, does not endorse the results.”

In a sign that Mr. Hernández was prepared to challenge the O.A.S. directly, the president’s top adviser, Ebal Diaz, accused Mr. Almagro of violating the observation mission’s protocols and of “generating more violence.”

“You have been irresponsible, allowing a member of your team to scheme with” Mr. Nasralla “to try and steal the election,” wrote Mr. Diaz, the executive secretary of the president’s council of ministers.

On Friday, a national strike led to clashes between protesters and the military police at roadblocks around the country. At least 22 people have been killed since the disputed vote, according to the Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras, a human rights group.

Preliminary results on election night suggested that Mr. Nasralla had a strong lead, but the count was then stopped for more than a day. When the counting resumed, Mr. Hernández was reported to have begun closing the gap as new results were registered. Eventually, the electoral commission’s tally gave him a small lead.

Election observers from the O.A.S. said on Dec. 6 that the “irregularities, mistakes and systemic problems plaguing this election make it difficult” to be “certain about the outcome.”

The organization backed a call for a partial recount, and the electoral commission went ahead with the tally. The alliance of leftist parties backing Mr. Nasralla, as well as a third party, the Liberal Party, handed over their copies of the tally sheets from polling places to the O.A.S. and asked for the results to be nullified.

On Sunday, Mr. Matamoros, the electoral commission president, said in a brief televised statement that the agency had complied with all the O.A.S. recommendations.

But in their final report, the O.A.S. election observers cataloged a series of anomalies and sloppy practices, concluding that the doubts over the election’s integrity had not been dispelled. Among their concerns was the crash of a computer server three days into the counting that left the results vulnerable to tampering, opened ballot boxes, and an inexplicable change in voting patterns as the count went on.

In an analysis for the O.A.S., a Georgetown University professor, Irfan Nooruddin, found that after 68 percent of the votes were counted, there was a sharp swing away from Mr. Nasralla. The switch occurred across all regions, with late-reporting polling places reporting higher turnout and a greater share for the National Party.

“The differences are too large to be generated by chance and are not easily explicable, raising doubts as to the veracity of the overall result,” Mr. Nooruddin wrote.

However, the O.A.S. report did not find any important difference in a sample of the tally sheets handed over by the parties, whose representatives receive them directly at polling places on election night, and those published by the electoral tribunal.

Election observers from the European Union also said Sunday that the opposition had failed to show a significant difference between their parties’ copies of the tally sheets and those that were counted by the electoral tribunal. But the group said the tribunal and the Honduran Supreme Court should consider any additional appeals.

The election result creates a dilemma for the Trump administration, which has pressed in public for a transparent vote count but said nothing about irregularities.

Two days after the election, the State Department certified that the Honduran government was making progress on improving human rights and tackling widespread corruption — a sign of support for Mr. Hernández.

The Honduran president has proved to be a strong ally on the issues that matter most to the United States, like interdicting drugs and dissuading migrants from making the long trip to the Texas border.

But that alliance could prove uncomfortable if Mr. Hernández rejects the O.A.S. call and begins his second term in January with his legitimacy under a cloud. Although Congress has supported aid to Honduras, legislators have already raised concern over the disputed vote count.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, who has held up delivery of some aid to the Honduran government over concerns about human rights, said Sunday that the election result “leaves too many questions unanswered.

“There were multiple opportunities for fraud in this election, and only a determination by impartial international observers that the vote tally was fair and transparent will provide the necessary credibility to the process,” he said in an emailed statement.

Mr. Leahy also called on the government to stop shooting at protesters. “There is no justification for the tragic loss of life that has occurred,” he wrote.

Mr. Nasralla’s alliance has called for protests on Monday. The Liberal party has scheduled protests for Tuesday.

A correction was made on 
Dec. 17, 2017

An earlier version of this article gave the wrong date for the Honduran election. It was held Nov. 26, not Nov. 27.

How we handle corrections

Jeff Ernst contributed reporting from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Commission Ignores Critics and Declares Honduran President Winner of Disputed Vote. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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