Honduras presidential election race narrows, new partial results show

TEGUCIGALPA, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) -- After last Sunday's presidential elections in Honduras, the vote differential between opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla and President Juan Orlando Hernandez has shrunk to just 0.97 percent, according to the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) on Wednesday.

With 76.72 percent of votes counted, Nasralla stood on 42.65 percent with 1,098,163 votes while Hernandez had 41.76 percent to 1,075,167 votes.

Uncertainty remains as the TSE still has 24.61 percent of the votes to count, with the result determining who will lead Honduras for the next four years.

In a first preliminary tally on Monday, Nasralla had opened up a 4.9 percent lead over Hernandez. However, as the TSE began counting ballots from rural, more distant areas, the gap narrowed.

Both candidates have declared victory, with Nasralla on Tuesday night calling for his supporters to come to Tegucigalpa to defend their votes.

"I call on all Honduran people so that very early tomorrow morning, they accompany me to Tegucigalpa to defend the vote," wrote Nasralla on social media, insisting that the people should "defend in the streets what we won at the polls."

However, representatives of Hernandez' National Party of Honduras were preparing support marches on Wednesday to defend him.

The election observers of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Honduras called on the public to remain calm until the final results are released. The OAS also called on the TSE to speed up the vote count, in order to provide final information as fast as possible.

Local religious and business organizations have made a similar call, urging the official results to be respected.

Schools suspended classes on Wednesday due to the climate of tension.

Earlier this week, the TSE said the final results would be announced on Thursday. Enditem