Honduras Election Leaves Muddle In Its Wake

MIAMI (Nov. 30) -- Five months after a coup that was initially condemned by the Obama administration, voters in Honduras chose a new president in elections that Washington approved but most Latin American countries deemed illegitimate.

Early results from Sunday's vote gave a clear win to conservative businessman and politician Porfirio Lobo Sosa, 61. But the election remains controversial because it was organized by the de facto government of President Roberto Micheletti, which seized power in late June after forcibly removing President Manuel Zelaya from office. Along with almost all other states in the hemisphere, the U.S. has not recognized Micheletti's government, so its approval of this vote has consternated Zelaya's supporters.

"The election itself should not be accepted by either Hondurans or the international community," Zelaya told Sphere.com in a phone interview from the Brazilian mission in Tegucigalpa, where he has been holed up since he sneaked back into the country in September. Senior officials in Brazil, the region's second most influential power broker, said it would not accept the results of the election and predicted that U.S. relations with Latin America would suffer because of Washington's stance.

But there was no immediate evidence that Zelaya's calls for an election boycott had much effect. Though the Organization of American States refused under protest to send election observers, Honduran officials contended that more than 60 percent of eligible voters participated. "Turnout appears to have exceeded that of the last presidential election," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said. The conservative government of Colombia joined the U.S. in accepting the result.

The de facto Honduran government deployed about 30,000 troops across the poor Central American nation during the voting. But even if the election was relatively calm, the results don't quell the lingering uncertainty over the political situation in Honduras and how the hemisphere approaches it. Zelaya's term in office lasts until Jan. 27, yet he can't exit the Brazilian embassy for fear the coup leaders will arrest him.

The White House last month reversed its stance on Honduras when it announced it would support the election, even though other countries saw that as a tacit acceptance of the coup. Since then, Washington has faced criticism from many Latin American leaders for its perceived flip-flopping. The region remains sensitive to the memory of Washington's role in numerous 20th-century Latin American coups, which brought hardline military dictatorships to power and left tens of thousands dead or disappeared.

Following the coup, the Obama administration withheld about $30 million in aid to Honduras. But the U.S., by far the country's largest export market and biggest aid provider, did allow hundreds of millions of dollars more to flow into the country, saying Hondurans should not suffer because of the actions of the coup leaders and the military officials who backed them.

The orchestrators of the June 28 coup accused Zelaya, a former conservative who noticeably shifted to the left since his 2005 election, of trying to introduce leftist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez's brand of self-styled "21st-century socialism" to Honduras. Zelaya denies the charge, though he did advocate removing presidential term limits and called for a radical reform of Honduras's constitution.

Outside the U.S. embassy in Honduras, protesters said they would hold Honduran and U.S. leaders accountable for the detainment and abuse of those openly opposed to the Micheletti government and the election. Human rights groups said they have documented numerous cases of Honduran authorities imprisoning opponents of the coup government without trial.

"They live in constant fear because they know the authorities in their communities have lists of who they are," said Patricia Adams, co-coordinator of the Honduras Accompaniment Project for the Quixote Center, a faith-based U.S. activist group.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has born the brunt of criticism for Washington's handling of the Honduras situation. After Zelaya sneaked back into Honduras in September, Clinton said the ousted leader should be restored "to his position under appropriate circumstances," only to later back the election that excluded Zelaya from the ballot.

"I was particularly appalled by the amateurism Mrs. Clinton has shown," said Larry Birns, director of Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a liberal Washington-based think tank. "She gave mixed signals all along and appeared to give mixed signals about a policy that she didn't go along with all along."

With the election on the books and a new leader preparing to take office, Birns predicted the U.S. would feel the sting of its mishandling of the Honduran coup for years to come. Lobo Sosa, for his part, has proposed a national dialogue to find a way back to comity for the polarized nation. That will likely prove to be a difficult task.