Honduras sets vote, but rifts continue

Months of international effort failed to reinstate President Manuel Zelaya, ousted June 28 and deported to Costa Rica. Instead, the most powerful outside mediator, the United States, agreed to recognize the outcome of today’s vote for a new president.

Several other countries will not, saying that a “free and fair’’ vote cannot be held under the watch of a de facto regime.

Many in Honduras and elsewhere hope the choosing of a new leader will allow the slate to be cleaned and Honduras to emerge from the diplomatic and political isolation that followed Zelaya’s removal.

But Zelaya’s backers and others say the elections will further deepen the impoverished nation’s stark divisions, as well as set a bad precedent by allowing a coup to stand.

Zelaya - who sneaked back into the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, on Sept. 21 and has been sheltered in the Brazilian embassy since - on Friday called on supporters to boycott the “spurious electoral process.’’ Major international election-monitoring groups refused to send observers.

Several human rights organizations on Friday denounced a “climate of terror’’ after weeks in which de facto authorities have cracked down on opposition media and arrested scores of opponents. A handful of low-charge explosives have detonated in recent days at the Supreme Court and pro-coup businesses.

In another setback for Zelaya, Costa Rican’s president, Oscar Arias, who unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate a settlement to the Honduran crisis, said he would recognize the results of the election. To do otherwise, he told CNN’s Spanish-language service, would be to further punish the Honduran people.

Roberto Micheletti, the man who replaced Zelaya in the coup but is not on the ballot, promised that “peace and tranquility will prevail’’ in Honduras for the vote.

Leo Valladares, a former human rights ombudsman and law professor who did not support the coup, said the elections may be a “first step’’ out of the crisis. But he said the next president must confront the underlying troubles that have polarized Honduras, which is run by a small, stubborn conservative elite.

One leftist political party allied with Zelaya rejected his call for a boycott and decided to participate in the election, saying it was better to attempt to effect change within the system than from the margins.

Zelaya was ousted after he ignored a court order to stop exploring ways to change the constitution to allow him to serve another term.

On Friday, he filed a complaint with the Organization of American States, attacking the “manifest ambiguity and contradiction’’ of US government policy.

Initially, the Obama administration, along with most of the international community, strongly condemned the coup and demanded Zelaya be reinstated. As the crisis dragged on, however, the United States seemed to waver. Finally, top US diplomats helped broker an agreement on Oct. 30 that would allow the Honduran Congress to decide whether Zelaya could finish his term ending Jan. 27.

Zelaya and Micheletti agreed to the deal. Zelaya and his supporters assumed Congress would vote before the election, but no sooner was the ink dry than congressional leaders, many of whom backed the coup, announced they would not convene until after the election.