Hondurans chose a new president yesterday whose first challenge will be defending his legitimacy to the world and his people, and ending a debilitating, five-month-long crisis caused by Central America’s first coup in more than 20 years.
Porfirio Lobo and Elvin Santos, two prosperous businessmen from the political old-guard, are the front-runners in an election where campaign promises have been overshadowed by the debate over whether Hondurans should cast ballots at all in a vote largely shunned by international monitors.
Manuel Zelaya, the left-leaning president ousted in a June 28 coup, is urging Hondurans to boycott the vote, hoping overwhelming abstention will discredit the election and persuade the international community not to recognize the next government.
The interim government of Roberto Micheletti hopes the election is Honduras’ ticket out of months of isolation and foreign aid cuts that have deepened poverty in the banana-exporting nation and turned it into a pariah state.
The dispute has presented the Obama administration with its first major policy test in Latin America and divided Western Hemisphere countries, which united to condemn Zelaya’s overthrow, but failed to restore him despite months of arm-twisting.
The US, which called for Zelaya’s reinstatement and suspended development aid and anti-drug trafficking cooperation with the coup-installed government, now argues Hondurans have the right to choose a new president in elections that were scheduled well before the coup, with the candidates chosen in primaries last year.
Leftist-led Latin American countries including Brazil and Venezuela say they will refuse to recognize the vote, but it is Washington’s support that matters most in Honduras, which sends more than 60 percent of its exports to the US, from bananas to Fruit of the Loom underwear.
Zelaya’s supporters accuse Washington of backtracking on its support for the deposed leader.
“The best thing for this country is not to vote to show the world, the United States, which stabbed us in the back and betrayed us,” said Edwin Espinal, whose 24-year-old wife, Wendy, died from asthma complications a day after soldiers hurled tear gas to disperse her and other protesters demanding Zelaya’s return.
Many other Hondurans, however, simply want to go to the polls and end a crisis that has eroded an economy that had already been lurching toward recession. Since the coup, tourists have disappeared from Mayan ruins and rain forests, multilateral lending agencies have blocked the country’s access to credit and even shoeshiners complain of dwindling business as Hondurans save their money.
“Who cares if other countries accept what we decide at the polls?” said Juan Jose Alvarado, a 45-year-old attorney checking where he should vote with election workers sitting under a tent set up outside Tegucigalpa’s elegant, peach cathedral. “The elections have to be legitimate because it’s what we are deciding.”
Zelaya supporters say free campaigning has been impossible during months of strife that saw the jailing of pro-Zelaya protesters and the occasional shutdown of anti-government radio and television stations.
Human rights group say soldiers have raided homes and detained people for publicly urging Hondurans not to vote. The military says it is searching for illegal weapons and trying to prevent unrest.
Homemade bombs explode nearly every day, including one that went off on Saturday morning in front of a pro-government radio station. The explosives have caused little damage.
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