Honduras hopes to move past coup with election

Tegucigalpa: Hondurans were to choose a new president Sunday  whose first challenge will be defending his legitimacy to the world and his people, and ending a debilitating, five-month-long crisis caused by Central America's first coup in more than 20 years.

Porfirio Lobo and Elvin Santos, two prosperous businessmen from the political old-guard, are the front-runners in an election where campaign promises have been overshadowed by the debate over whether Hondurans should cast ballots at all in a vote largely shunned by international monitors.

Manuel Zelaya, the left-leaning president ousted in a June 28 coup, is urging Hondurans to boycott the vote, hoping overwhelming abstention will discredit the election and persuade the international community not to recognise the next government.

The interim government of Roberto Micheletti hopes the election is Honduras' ticket out of months of isolation and foreign aid cuts that have deepened poverty and turned it into a pariah state.

The dispute has presented the Obama administration with its first major policy test in Latin America. Zelaya's supporters accuse Washington of backtracking on its support for the deposed leader.