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Tegucigalpa (AFP)

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez edged closer Thursday to winning a tense election as police used tear gas to break up a protest and rival Salvador Nasralla said he will not recognize the result, claiming fraud.

In a vote count dogged by computer failures and claims by Nasralla that the president was stealing the election, Hernandez had overturned a 5.0 percent deficit by early Thursday to lead by just 1.0 percent with 90 percent of the votes counted.

Supreme Electoral Council chief David Matamoros said the count from Sunday's election would be completed Thursday.

Police used tear gas to break up a protest by Nasralla supporters outside the count headquarters in the capital early Thursday.

The popular TV host called his followers onto the streets to defend what he considered his election victory and to denounce a fraud.

The election in this poor, gang-plagued country has turned into a drawn-out showdown between Nasralla, 64, and Hernandez, 49, who is going for four more years in office despite a constitutional limit of just one term.

Nasralla attributed a series of failures in the TSE computer system to a maneuver to alter voting sheets in Hernandez's favor.

"We do not recognize the results because today the server went down, and things started going in that we cannot allow, records that are not signed and you can verify it, they are violated records, they don't have representatives' signatures on them," Nasralla told journalists late Wednesday.

The data transmission system had a five-hour failure on Wednesday and several others that were shorter.

The opposition candidate accused the TSE president of being part of a "conspiracy" with the ruling party to alter results.

Matamoros denied the accusations.

"We would not do well to go into a quarrel with any candidate," the TSE chief said.

- 'Survival instinct' -

Even TSE member Marco Ramiro Lobo said his suspicions had been aroused.

"I have doubts because curiously today (Wednesday) when the trend changed, the TSE's computer system has started to fail," Lobo told Radio America.

Ruling party chairman Reinaldo Hernandez said his candidate's lead was in line with his party's calculations.

"The results that we are reaching is what was indicated in our calculation, it is the point we had to reach," said Sanchez on Wednesday.

Hernandez's conservative National Party contends that a 2015 Supreme Court decision allowed him to run for another term.

Nasralla and his coalition, the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship, have denounced the incumbent's bid, saying the court does not have the power to overrule the 1982 constitution.

Both candidates had claimed victory within hours of polls closing on Sunday.

The TSE released partial results Monday showing Nasralla with a surprise five percent lead with more than half the votes counted.

On Tuesday, the election authority posted new results showing a 1.0 percent drop in the opposition candidate's previous lead -- with just over 61 percent of the ballots counted.

Nasralla accused the conservative president of plotting to rig the vote, saying his "survival instinct" was hijacking democracy.

Hernandez for his part asked Hondurans to be patient, saying votes from rural areas where his support was strongest had yet to be counted.

In each subsequent TSE bulletin, the gap has narrowed further, while the percentage of the other seven candidates remained unchanged.

"I do not understand why they have taken so long and why only one candidate goes up," said Freddy Canales, a cafe waiter in the capital Tegucigalpa.

© 2017 AFP