HONDURAS (By Lisa J. Adams, Associated Press) November 28, 2005 — Opposition candidate Mel Zelaya, who vowed to reinvigorate the Honduran economy by eliminating government corruption, is the country's new president, the top election official said Monday even while ordering a recount of the previous day's vote.

Aristides Mejia, president of the national election institute, did not give vote tallies for the Liberal Party's Zelaya or his opponent, ruling National Party candidate Porfirio Lobo Sosa.

"Hondurans have a president-elect ... and it is Zelaya," Mejia told Channel 5.

Late Sunday, the institute said voting trends favored Zelaya, who received 50.8 percent of the vote, compared with Lobo Sosa's 44.2 percent. A national exit poll of 120,000 voters Sunday by television stations HRN and Channel 5 also gave Zelaya a significant lead.

Official vote tallies were not expected until later Monday at the earliest. Lobo Sosa has not conceded. The winner assumes office Jan. 27 for a term of four years.

Three other candidates from smaller parties were expected to win only a fraction of the presidential vote.

The country's nearly 4 million voters also were electing a vice president, 128 congressional representatives, 298 mayors and 2,000 city councilors. Sunday's vote was the seventh in the Central American nation of 7 million since 1981, when it abandoned more than two decades of military rule.

Balloting took place under the watch of more than 16,000 soldiers and police officers, as well as 6,000 local observers and 114 election monitors from 14 countries.

Both Zelaya and Lobo Sosa are wealthy agricultural landowners who support a free-trade agreement with the United States. Each also pledged to develop tourism, increase access to education, expand agricultural production and support small businesses.

However, they clashed on law-enforcement issues.

Zelaya, a former congressman and bank director, insisted the quickest way to achieve prosperity for a country with a 70 percent poverty rate was by eliminating corruption, which he claimed was rife in the government and private sector.

Zelaya has proposed several measures to give citizens more power, including a transparency law and a civil assembly to monitor the government. He also promised to support life imprisonment for hardcore criminals, including gang members.

Honduran law does not allow life imprisonment, though judges have imposed sentences of up to 60 years for grave crimes.

Lobo Sosa, widely reported to have studied in a communist school in the former Soviet Union, was congressional president, helping current President Ricardo Maduro push through laws to criminalize gang membership. Maduro is not allowed by law to run for re-election.

Lobo Sosa proposed instituting the death penalty for "abominable crimes" including sexual assault, kidnapping and murder. He says many of those crimes are committed by gangs.

Honduras abolished the death penalty in 1937.