Honduras election bring risks of more instability Such is the fear of the international observer missions deployed here in large numbers this weekend - the State Department, the Organization of American States (OAS), the European Union and others. It is also on the minds of Hondurans stocking up on bottled water, food and supplies as they gird for the worst, as if bracing for a hurricane. With three major presidential candidates, eight political parties, a polarized electorate divided sharply along class lines and a rickety electoral apparatus vulnerable to fraud, there is plenty to dread. Honduras has earned the unfortunate distinction in recent years of having the world's highest homicide rate, with 20 murders a day in a country of only 8 million. Drug traffickers have made it the landing pad of choice for smugglers" flights from South America; U.S. anti-narcotics agents estimate that 87 percent of the cocaine on U.S. streets touches down first in the jungle airstrips of Honduras. The country's rampant killings, intractable corruption, feeble institutions and weak economy have driven growing numbers of illegal migrants to the United States in recent years, and a new crisis here could push more people north. It's one reason that U.S. diplomats describe Sunday's outcome as something like the opposite of a Las Vegas tourism pitch: What happens in Honduras doesn't stay in Honduras. Although a stable, relatively smooth election could lead to increased U.S. trade and more legal migration, "a negative outcome means that people who don't feel safe and can't provide for their families will try to come without a visa," said one high-ranking U.S. Embassy official. The country is a lesson in the risks of democracy interrupted. Honduras was already wobbling in June 2009 when President Manuel Zelaya was deposed in a coup, with soldiers pulling him from his bedroom and putting him on a plane to Costa Rica in his pajamas. Zelaya was allowed to return two years later, and the leftist, Stetson-wearing, mustachioed rancher remains the country's pivotal political figure. Although not a candidate in this election, he has done little to conceal his prominent role in the campaign of his wife, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya. Their newly founded Free Party has upended the country's two-party status quo and energized large sectors of the urban poor, rural peasants and students. But Castro, Zelaya and their supporters could send Honduras into another downward spiral if they cry fraud after a loss and take to the streets. "The country has been dominated for too long by foreign powers and an oligarchy of families," said Castro supporter Efraim Reyes, an attorney carrying his briefcase through the capital's Central Park, where Sandinista folk songs played from a Free Party campaign tent opposite a Burger King with a "Casa del Whopper" sign. "They don't tolerate anything that will affect their interests," he said.