Hondurans Divided After Coup Backer Wins Presidential Election Boycotted by Zelaya Supporters

The Obama administration is moving further away from its stated support for the reinstatement of the ousted President Manuel Zelaya. On Monday, the State Department praised this weekend’s Honduran elections, which saw coup backer and wealthy landowner Porfirio Lobo emerge victorious with 55 percent of the vote. Zelaya’s supporters boycotted the election, and many Latin American countries have refused to recognize its outcome.

**AMY GOODMAN**: As we turn now to Honduras where the Obama administration is moving further away from its stated support for reinstatement the ousted President Manuel Zelaya. On Monday the State Department praised this weekend’s Honduran elections which saw coup backer and wealthy landowner, Porfirio Lobo, emerge victorious with 55% of the vote. Zelaya supporters boycotted the election and many Latin American countries have refused to recognized its outcome. Speaking in Washington, D.C., Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, called the vote a significant first step.

**ARTURO VALENZUELA**: While the election is a significant step in Honduras’ return to democratic and constitutional order after the 28 June coup, it’s just that, it is only a step and it’s not the last step. Given the gravity of the coup d’etat and the polarization that Honduras has undergone, both before and after the coup d’etat, it is extremely important Honduran leadership moving forward in the next few months attempt to follow the overall broad frameworks of the Tegucigalpa – San Jose Accord. By that I mean, what are the additional steps that need to be taken? A government of national unity needs to be formed. The Congress has to take a vote on the return of President Zelaya to office, and another element of the San Jose Accords that I think it would be very very important as Honduras moves forward to try to re-establish the democratic and constitutional order is the formation and the structuring of a truth commission which was also contemplated in the original Tegucigalpa framework.

**AMY GOODMAN**: The Honduran coup regime says turnout was relatively high at 62, but independent estimates put it at 47. Speaking in Portugal, Zelaya’s foreign minister, Patricia Roda, said most Hondurans see the vote as illegitimate.

**PATRICIA RODA**: What has happened is an attempt to wipe clean a military coup, which clearly could not be wiped clean. The Honduran people know what it was—a crime, and as a crime they recognize it and yesterday decided not to take part and become accomplices.

**AMY GOODMAN**: The Honduran Congress is scheduled to vote tomorrow on whether to accept a deal that would allow Zelaya to serve out the remainder of his term which ends next month. Lawmakers are expected to reject a proposal, further complicating the prospects for resolving the Honduran political crisis. For more, I’m joined here in Washington by Sergio Moncada. He is co-founder of the group Hondurans for Democracy. On the telephone from Honduras is Patricia Adams. She is co-coordinator for the Honduras Accompaniment Project for the Quixote Center which organized an international human rights delegation to Honduras that arrived last week. Patricia, let’s begin with you. Describe what you saw, what happened with these elections and why you are in Honduras.

**PATRICIA ADAMS**: We’re in Honduras because it’s important that there be international presence, not officially recognizing and sanctioning the election, but rather a presence on the streets and in the communities and alongside the grass roots in order to witness and observe their experience of the elections, the elector process and the entire climate in which the elections are taking place. What I saw in Tegucigalpa was very empty streets and incredibly overwhelming calm manifested by the fact that most people were observing the popular curfew that the National Front organized and called for the people to stay inside their homes. Many did not vote. All the polling places I drove past the hour Tegucigalpa on Sunday were pretty much empty. Much greater number of police, military and poll organizers than actual voters. The reports that we had from the 3 teams that we had in other parts of the country confirm that, that the people observed the popular curfew and that there were very few people voting, with the exception of San Pedro Sula where they took to the streets, and as you probably saw, their protest was violently repressed.

**AMY GOODMAN**: We are also joined by Sergio Moncada, co-founder of Honduran’s for Democracy. He is here with me in Washington, D.C. Sergio, your response to these elections and what happens now?

**SERGIO MONCADA**: Thank you for having me here. The response is the same as many Hondurans. We believe these are illegitimate elections being held in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. Just to give you some examples, the democratically elected president of Honduras right now is housed in the Brazilian embassy where snipers have guns pointed at him throughout the day. He has been for two months there subject to constant harassment, nightly marches of the military that surround the compound, not to mention what is happening to the people of Honduras. As was mentioned before, on the day of the elections around 500-1000 protesters took to the streets peacefully and they were violently repressed by the military and police. In addition to that, the day prior to that we had many instances, one of the most visible of repression was the ransacking of the offices of an agricultural co-op in central Honduras and on the day of the election the group that I lead with other Hondurans here in the Washington area staged a protest in front of the D.C. voting site, one of five voting sites in the U.S. One of the protesters that joined us had her sister arrested by the military the day prior to the elections simply for participating in a protest. The State Department claims these were free and fair elections and our group and many other groups in the U.S. beg to disagree. This could not be further from the truth.

**AMY GOODMAN**: Sergio, what you think the United States should be doing right now?

**SERGIO MONCADA**: From reading between the lines, U.S. Department wants to have it both ways with the statements of Mr. Arturo Valenzuela yesterday. I think we’ll be hearing for the next couple of days more reports about the actual number of voters that turned out. the discrepancies between the official numbers and, for example the numbers that are being provided by the company that was hired to do exit polls. And I believe the state department will keep playing this game of recognizing this and we want Hondurans to move ahead, but the state department will really have to play a much, much more aggressive role in actually healing the divisions within the country. Hondurans are so divided right now that it is impossible–impossible to achieve peace. In fact, there are many factions within Honduras in both camps are speaking of the very tangible possibility of a civil war happening and what’s happening in the region.

**AMY GOODMAN**: I want to turn right now to Andrés Conteris who is inside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa where the elected president, Manuel Zelaya, has been holed up now since he snuck back into the country. Andres from what is the response of the president inside?

**ANDRES CONTERIS**: Amy, President Zelaya clearly says this election has to be rescinded. It cannot be justified in any legitimate way because of the very poor participation by the electorate. It is to be reprogrammed and that is the only way that democracy can return to this country because this election was an instrument of the coup regime to cover up the repression that they have been doing and to try reach out to the international community, and that is why it needs to be completely reversed, both the coup and the election itself.

**AMY GOODMAN**: And the response to the election of Porfirio Lobo, who is he, and this issue of what will happen in this legislature? Would President Zelaya under any circumstances take office again before his end of term in January?

**ANDRES CONTERIS**: Porfirio Lobo, known as Pepe Lobo, is a very wealthy businessman who has been in congress for a while. He is part of the National Party. He has totally tried to ignore the coup itself in his campaign so as not to be basically blamed for it and not to get involved with that messy issue. In terms of what President Zelaya will do, he will remain here as long as he can in the Brazilian embassy and he will continue to get the pressure from both the domestic resistance as well as the international community in trying to reject the election and in trying to reprogram it to call for new elections. If the Congress votes this week to restore him, he will not accept that unless those who committed crimes in the coup itself will face justice. That is the only way he would return to office, is what he has said.

**AMY GOODMAN**: Let me put that question to you and what the response inside the Brazilian embassy of what should the U.S. be doing right now and the role it has played.

**ANDRES CONTERIS**: The U.S. has been complicit in the coup itself and has used the accord signed between the Zelaya and the Micheletti camps as a way to move forward without really restoring democracy. The United States, when the accord was signed, Thomas Shannon, the Assistant Secretary, immediately went to the media and said that the U.S. would recognize the election in spite of the fact that Zelaya would be restored or not. This was a violation the spirit and the word of the accord. The United States had no justified reason to do that whatsoever. And so the U.S. has been part of the problem here in not restoring democracy and the U.S. now really if it is to wash its hands of this, if it is to come clean, it must also reject the election because it has had such low participation and must go along with what President Zelaya says, to reprogram it so that democracy can be returned.

**AMY GOODMAN**: Thank you all for being with us, Andrés Contreris speaking to us from inside the Brazilian embassy where he has been holed up the president and several dozen others, the elected president of Honduras Manuel Zelaya. I want to also thank our guests here in New York as well as in Honduras. Sergio Mancada is the coordinator or co-founder of Hondurans for Democracy and Patricia Adams, coordinator of the Honduras Accompaniment Project for the Quixote Center.