The State Department recognized Porfirio Lobo’s victory in Sunday’s election but said the Honduran Congress still needed to vote on the restoration of deposed President Manuel Zelaya and form a government of national unity.
“While the election is a significant step in Honduras’ return to the democratic and constitutional order … it’s only a step and it’s not the last step,” said Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela.
Before the election, the United States tried and failed to have Zelaya reinstated. Its support of the election upset many Latin American nations, including powerful Brazil, which called Sunday’s vote invalid.
Elected five months after a coup forced Zelaya into exile on June 28, Lobo is urging Latin American governments to recognize him as president-elect in order to help pull the country out of a deep political crisis.
Opposition leader Lobo won some 55 percent of the vote, easily defeating ruling party candidate Elvin Santos. A boycott by supporters of Zelaya was ineffective and electoral officials say the turnout was above 60 percent.
Human rights groups say crackdowns on pro-Zelaya media and marches during the campaign put the validity of the vote in doubt.
Lobo, 61, urged leftist governments in the region to recognize the vote, which was scheduled before the coup.
“We ask them … to see that they are punishing the people who went to vote, do so every four years and have nothing to do with what happened on June 28,” he told journalists.
“I am happy looking towards the future. You keep asking, ‘And Zelaya?’ Zelaya is history, he is part of the past,” Lobo told foreign reporters, although the conditions mentioned by the United States include a vote on Zelaya and presumably his participation in a unity government.
“For us, the most important international relationship we have is obviously with the United States,” Lobo said.
Brazil, which is increasingly flexing its muscles as its economy becomes more powerful, has dug its heels in on Honduras and refuses to acknowledge Lobo’s win.
