Today will prove to be a truly historic day in modern Honduran history. It's a turning point...One of those rare days when everyone knows history is being made and that they are all a part of it. People had been both nervous and euphoric leading up to today's vote. Anxious and tense because of predictions of violence by the 'resistance', yet happy and content because Honduras is turning an important page in its 21st century history.
Hondurans are rightly proud of the fact that following their constitution, they removed a would be tyrant from office, replaced him with the constitutionally designated president of the congress, and are now voting in the election that had been previously ordained by the constitution with candidates selected by last year's primary. Honduras stood up to tremendous pressure from the world's most powerful countries and proved that she is truly 'the little country that could'...
It is with this background that I accompanied my wife to vote this morning. I had a sense of euphoria as I knew I was observing history being made even though we were only at a small polling station in the outskirts of Tegucigalpa. My wife had thoroughly researched all the candidates and voted for candidates from four of the five parties. Although I'm not a trained election observer, the elections appeared to be 'free and fair' to me. There was no intimidation, quite the contrary, people seemed genuinely pleased to be there. The atmosphere was happy, almost festive.
One old lady summed it up best...When she exited, she looked directly at me, the lone foreigner, held up her ink stained finger and said, "Viva Honduras". I smiled back at her and said "Viva Honduras".
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