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The incumbent president of Honduras was announced as the winner of the presidential election again on Sunday, December 17, following three weeks of protests in which his opponents accused him of widespread vote rigging.

Juan Orlando Hernández was named as the winner of the November 26 election following an investigation by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal of Honduras, or TSE. He marginally defeated opposition leader Salvador Nasralla; winning with 42.95 per cent of the votes to 41.24 per cent, according to Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. David Matamoros, head of the TSE, announced the result on local television, the newspaper reported. He said that the TSE counted all the votes in a “marathon session, transmitting the procedure live in the eyes of the world”.

Later the same day, a spokesman for Hernández’s party, Partido Nacional de Honduras, formally acknowledged the election result in this video, which was streamed live on its official Facebook page. According to Venezuelan television station Telesur, the spokesman said: “From November 26 we expected the results and we knew that everything was going to end as it happened today.”

Both Hernández and Nasralla had declared themselves winners in the election. But Nasralla and his supporters have accused Hernández of vote rigging and fraud. The scandal has sparked protests across the country, particularly in the capital of Tegucigalpa.

The president has been criticized for running for a second term, as the Honduran constitution previously outlawed a president’s re-election until a Supreme Court ruling overturned the ban in 2015, the BBC reported. Credit: Facebook/Partido Nacional de Honduras via Storyful