While the official results seem to be lagging, most of Honduras has recognized Zelaya as the winner of yesterday's election. An exit poll and a sampling of key elections centers shows that Zelaya won with just over 50%. Lobo Sosa came in second with 44%.
Coverage:
BBC on the election.
Reuters on the results.
Miami Herald on Hondurans voting abroad.
El Heraldo front page article quoting Zelaya as saying "Today starts a new era of light for Honduras." He plans to implement major initiatives in his first 60 days in office.
El Heraldo also has a fantastic editorial titled "The day after" which is about moving forward with democracy after the divisive election. It's very worth reading and applies to democracies throughout the developing world.
UPDATE: So there's been a slight delay as Lobo has refused to accept the results of the election. He says he will not concede until the votes are officially counted and certified. It actually makes some sense. My guess is that if Zelaya wins this is nothing major and everything will be back to normal within a week. However, if the results change to Lobo, I think there will be massive protests in the streets.
El Heraldo, among other media, calls this a "crisis" and blames the electoral tribune. I agree with that. Also, coverage today in the LA Times.
5 comments:
(You don't have trackback so I'm commenting here - and I did provide a link to your blog - http://thomasgalvin.blogspot.com/2005/11/honduras-election-media-declares-left.html )
Why has the media been so quick to declare Zelaya the winner when almost no election results have been released? Zelaya declared victory after 2 exit polls were announced but it will take a few days to find out the official, and final, tally.
http://thomasgalvin.blogspot.com/2005/11/honduras-election-media-declares-left.html
Thanks. I've been watching the events today in Honduras and it's been interesting to watch the fight over the votes. I'm assuming that Zelaya won, but the delay in the vote counting can't be good for his legitimacy.
I hope Zelaya won. Honduras doesn't need to go backwards and reëestablish the death penalty.
BTW, This makes it look like it's all over but the crying:
Supreme Electoral Tribunal President Aristides Mejia declared Zelaya the winner of Sunday's race, but officials said final results would not be available until later Monday, at the earliest.
Obviously it's more than the media saying that Zelaya won.
Randy,
I think Zelaya won, but the governing party (including Lobo Sosa) has been very slow in accepting the results. They want to wait for the full vote count, which may take a few days.
The electoral commission's statement has really put the military in a bind, because they should protect the president elect, but they shouldn't recognize a president elect until the civilian leadership accepts the results. My feeling is that they should protect both candidates until the official results are announced, but I guess I'm just trying to find a balance.
I don't think this is a real crisis, just a bit of tension for a few days while everything gets sorted out. But we'll see.
As to who I hope wins, I really don't have a preference at all. I really wasn't impressed by either candidate, nor did I find either to be a danger to their country.
From what I can tell, they aren't all that different, and Zelaya's promise to hire more cops was probably attractive to some voters. Thus far, I am not that nervous there is any hanky panky. If you want to see real fraud in action, check out what's going on in Venezuela. It's the Big League of fraud elections, this Honduras stuff looks reasonably normal and fair.
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