Honduras hopes to move past coup with election

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Hondurans on Sunday elected a new president whose first challenge will be defending his legitimacy to the world and ending a crisis over a June coup that has isolated one of Latin America's poorest countries.

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 vote at all in an election largely shunned by international monitors.

The debate has split Western Hemisphere countries, and voter turnout could determine how widely the next government is recognized.

The United States, hoping to resolve its first major policy test in Latin America, is defending the election while leftist governments allege it whitewashes Central America's first coup in 20 years.

Washington's support matters most in Honduras, which sends more than 60 percent of its exports to the United States, from bananas to Fruit-of-the-Loom underwear, and relies heavily on money sent home from the 1 million Hondurans who live in the U.S.

President Barack Obama's government suspended development aid and anti-narcotic cooperation with Honduras over the coup. But U.S. diplomats say Hondurans have the right to choose their next leader in regular elections that were scheduled well before Zelaya's ouster.

Manuel Zelaya, the left-leaning president ousted in a June 28 coup, said that overwhelming abstention would discredit the election and the U.S. would regret its stance.

"Today the people will defeat the dictatorship," Zelaya said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from the Brazilian Embassy, where he took refuge after sneaking back into the country from his forced exile. "The United States made a mistake. ... If they are democrats in their country, they should be democrats in Latin America."

Police fired tear gas at several hundred pro-Zelaya protesters in the northern city of San Pedro Sula, and at least one person was injured and required stitches on his head. Police spokesman Orlin Cerrato said protests are banned on election day.

Zelaya has support among many poor Hondurans who believed in his promises to shake-up a political system dominated by two political parties with few ideological differences and influenced by a few wealthy families.

Mauro Romero, 59, had no intention of setting foot in a polling station.

"Zelaya is the president that we elected. We don't want the same dinosaurs in power, people who have been there for 30 years, only getting fat," said Romero, sitting on the steps of the Tegucigalpa's peach-colored 18th century cathedral, now covered in graffiti saying "No to the coup!"