by Erick Galindo
Bomb threats, international calls for a boycott, and protests resounding from Washington, D.C., to Honduras’ capital of Tegucigalpa did not deter more than 1.7 million voters from casting their ballots Nov. 29 to choose a new president. Attracting 55 percent of the vote was Porfirio Lobo Sosa, or Pepe, as he is affectionately known in this tiny Central American republic. He is a key member of its conservative National Party, the direct opposition to the Liberal Party of ousted President Manuel Zelaya’s Liberal Party. In 2005, Lobo Sosa was runner-up to Zelaya in the presidential election. He was an adamant advocate to remove Zelaya from office.
A wealthy farmer, Lobo Sosa had tallied 897,000 votes with 60 percent of precincts reporting, more than 200,000 than were cast for the Liberal Party’s Elvin Santos, who has conceded.
Officials said that 62 percent of the eligible population voted in spite of tension and violence that has engulfed Honduras since Zelaya was seized and flown out of the country in a June 28 coup.
Holed up at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa since sneaking back into the country Sept. 21, Zelaya has challenged the reported high turnout numbers, saying that his people reported less than half of registered voters cast ballots. He also denied reports that he is seeking political asylum in Nicaragua or anywhere else.
Analysts in both political camps do not expect the protests and violence to stop as a result of the election, but the large turnout has brought some optimism to a country that has suffered from economic sanctions, tourism downturns and numerous bouts of violence in the past five months.
In Washington, D.C., cultural anthropologist Adrienne Pine, author of “Work Hard, Drink Hard. On Violence and Survival in Honduras,” told Hispanic Link that the likelihood of the election being fair was slim.
“The country’s conditions are anything but free and fair right now,” said Pine, an American University professor who spent more than 10 years in Honduras. “The human rights violations are atrocious and the same military that has carried out over 4,000 human rights violations is responsible for protecting the elections.”
Pine represents a group of voices that claim anything short of Zelaya’s reinstatement would be a blow to democracy in the region. Zelaya’s term would have expired this year. He was charged by foes with planning to change a constitutional limitation that would have allowed him to run for reelection. The Organization of American States and most countries in the hemisphere, with the notable exception of the United States, have vowed not to recognize the election.
After the de facto Honduran government agreed to post-election concessions, the U.S. reversed its stance on the results, with State Department officials telling reporters that another four years of opposing the Honduran government was an unwise choice. Now Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica are indicating their support for the next government in hopes of ending the political crisis.
The OAS’s refusal to monitor the elections for fairness left the U.S. State Department scrambling to send its own monitors, impeding the Obama Administration’s path toward improving relations with Latin America.
The Center for Democracy in the Americas criticized the U.S. reversal of policy and said in a statement that it would only serve to slow negotiations for peace in the region.
President-elect Lobo Sosa emphasized peace and international relations as primary goals in his victory speech. Runner-up Santos also called for peace and unity of the Honduran people. Lobo Sosa’s term begins Jan. 27.
(Erick Galindo, of Washington, D.C., is editor of the national newsweekly Hispanic Link Weekly Report.) ©2009
