Elections provide legitimate solution for Honduras

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — The presidential election that will take place Nov. 29 is the legitimate way to solve the crisis that has given this country a disproportionate international presence since President Manuel Zelaya was deposed in June.

This is an obvious conclusion after talking at length with interim President Roberto Micheletti, judicial and legislative authorities, members of the opposition, business leaders and foreign observers during a recent visit. Nobody in the current government is interested in a fraudulent election, nor is one likely, given safeguards that include a widely respected national electoral tribunal and Supreme Court. The authorities seem eager to have the burden of international censure lifted by keeping their promise to hand power over to an elected president.

In these circumstances, it makes no sense for the Organization of American States to say it will not recognize the winner of an election whose competing candidates were nominated when Zelaya was still in power.

The polls place the opposition ahead, and all sides, including Zelaya's Liberal Party, are holding street rallies and saturating the airwaves. The vote will be held not a minute later than would have been the case if Micheletti had not taken over.

Accepting for the sake of argument that Zelaya's ouster was a classic military coup, it is plainly absurd to deny Honduras a solution that liberal democracies usually demand of illegitimate presidencies — that elections be held and successors seated. This was the objective in challenging Chile's Augusto Pinochet and Argentina's junta between 1976 and 1983.

The OAS is bent on compounding its increasing irrelevance by not sending observers or assisting with the election. How does it prove that the Honduran election is fraudulent if the OAS doesn't accept the government's invitation to witness the process from within? Other entities, including the National Democratic Institute, are sending missions.