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Hondurans elect new president after coup
Source: Agencies |
November 30, 2009, Monday
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A NEW Honduran president, expected to be chosen from a poll starting yesterday, will face the challenge of defending his legitimacy to the world and to his own people, who are bitterly divided 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. But their campaigns 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 president ousted in a June 28 coup, is urging a boycott, hoping overwhelming abstention will discredit the election. As polls opened yesterday, he vowed the United States would regret its decision to support the vote.
"Abstention will defeat the dictatorship," Zelaya told Radio Globo from the Brazilian Embassy, where he took refuge after sneaking back into the country from his forced exile on September 21. "The elections will be a failure. The United States will have to rectify its ambiguous position about the coup."
The interim government of Roberto Micheletti hopes the election will end the isolation and foreign aid cuts that have deepened poverty in this banana-exporting nation.
The dispute has presented the Obama administration with its first major policy test in Latin America and divided Western countries.
The United States joined other nations in demanding Zelaya's reinstatement and it suspended development aid and anti-narcotics cooperation with the coup-installed government. But it now argues Hondurans have the right to choose a new president in regular elections that were scheduled before the coup.
Some Latin American countries including Brazil and Venezuela say they will refuse to recognize the vote. But Washington's support matters most in Honduras, which sends more than 60 percent of its exports to the US.
Lobo and Santos promise to encourage private investment to create jobs while increasing social benefits in a country where 70 percent of the 7 million people are poor and about 1.5 million get by on US$1 a day or less.
Porfirio Lobo and Elvin Santos, two prosperous businessmen from the political old guard, are the front-runners. But their campaigns 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 president ousted in a June 28 coup, is urging a boycott, hoping overwhelming abstention will discredit the election. As polls opened yesterday, he vowed the United States would regret its decision to support the vote.
"Abstention will defeat the dictatorship," Zelaya told Radio Globo from the Brazilian Embassy, where he took refuge after sneaking back into the country from his forced exile on September 21. "The elections will be a failure. The United States will have to rectify its ambiguous position about the coup."
The interim government of Roberto Micheletti hopes the election will end the isolation and foreign aid cuts that have deepened poverty in this banana-exporting nation.
The dispute has presented the Obama administration with its first major policy test in Latin America and divided Western countries.
The United States joined other nations in demanding Zelaya's reinstatement and it suspended development aid and anti-narcotics cooperation with the coup-installed government. But it now argues Hondurans have the right to choose a new president in regular elections that were scheduled before the coup.
Some Latin American countries including Brazil and Venezuela say they will refuse to recognize the vote. But Washington's support matters most in Honduras, which sends more than 60 percent of its exports to the US.
Lobo and Santos promise to encourage private investment to create jobs while increasing social benefits in a country where 70 percent of the 7 million people are poor and about 1.5 million get by on US$1 a day or less.
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