ShareThisThe best antidote to the current confusion about who should govern Honduras is a free, fair election, and that appears to be what Honduras pulled off Sunday.
Local officials say the turnout was better than 60 percent of registered voters, which means that Hondurans ignored ousted President Manuel Zelay's calls to boycott the election, and international election observers called the balloting credible and free of intimidation.
The winner, Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo, described as a conservative rancher, narrowly lost the last election to Zelaya, who is currently holed up in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa.
This would seem to -- or should -- settle the matter. But with the early exceptions of the United States and Colombia, other American nations, especially those with leftist leaders, are refusing to recognize the outcome.
As president, Zelaya had attempted to change the constitution to allow him to stay in office in ways Hondurans found unnervingly like those that Hugo Chavez used to consolidate a near-dictatorial hold on power in Venezuela.
The Supreme Court ruled Zelaya's proposed referendum illegal, but he pushed ahead anyway. Finally, the army removed him from office at gunpoint, a move endorsed by Congress, the high court, the attorney general, many of Zelaya's former supporters and now, it seems, a majority of the Honduran people.
President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, which has refused to recognize the outcome, said doing so would encourage more coups. Given Latin America's unfortunate history in that regard, the possibility should not be taken lightly, but in this case it seems to have more to do with sympathy for a fellow leftist.
All of this might not matter if the inauguration were not until Jan. 27. The United States has proposed guaranteeing Zelaya immunity from arrest to allow for creation of an interim national unity government. Zelaya is holding out for full reinstatement. He would be wise to settle for amnesty, and if he still thinks he should be president, challenge Lobo in four years.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
