TEGUCIGALPA – Hondurans are heading to the polls on Sunday to elect a president in general elections that have been rejected by most of the international community in the wake of the June 28 coup that ousted President Mel Zelaya.

The de facto government headed by Roberto Micheletti went ahead with the elections despite criticism from Zelaya supporters and the international community.

The polls opened at 7:00 a.m. and are scheduled to close at 4:00 p.m., but the voting can be extended for an hour at the discretion of elections officials, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said.

Preliminary results are expected to be released around 6:00 p.m., elections officials said.

Micheletti voted in his hometown of El Progreso, a city in northern Honduras, and told reporters he was casting his ballot “for Honduras, for democracy.”

“I have faith in God that nothing is going to happen,” Micheletti said.

A total of 4.6 million Hondurans, including 1 million people living abroad, are eligible to vote in Sunday’s election for president, three vice presidents, 128 members of Congress and 298 local officials.

In the presidential balloting, opposition National Party candidate Porfirio Lobo is the frontrunner in the polls.

“The process is going normally, the people are exercising their right to vote. Remember that this election marks, without a doubt, a step toward a national unity government. At the national level, all the reports are normal,” Lobo said.

Ruling Liberal Party candidate Elvin Santos is trailing Lobo in the polls because the party split over the coup against Zelaya, who belongs to the party.

Micheletti is also a member of the Liberal Party.

Coup opponents, backed by most of the international community, say a free and fair vote is impossible given the repression imposed by Micheletti’s “interim” regime, which has killed at least a dozen people, imprisoned hundreds and repeatedly shut down independent media.

Five human rights organizations with representatives in Honduras denounced the existence of a “climate of terror” ahead of Sunday’s elections in the Central American country.

Soldiers on the street “detain members of the resistance for no reason,” assaulting them in some instances, the groups said in a statement released Thursday.

While most Organization of American States members have said they would not recognize the Honduran elections, Washington is backing the process and personnel from the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, both funded by the U.S. Congress, are in Honduras to observe the balloting.

Elections officials also invited about 250 foreigners, including business leaders, politicians and former officials to serve as observers.

Zelaya, who has been holed up at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa since slipping back into the country on Sept. 21, denied Saturday that he was seeking asylum abroad.

“It’s not true that I am seeking political asylum,” Zelaya told Efe by telephone from the Brazilian Embassy.

Patricia Licona, who served as Zelaya’s deputy foreign minister, said on Sunday that the deposed president’s administration was expecting leaders attending this week’s Ibero-American Summit to issue a statement about the coup and the elections.

“It’s logical that in the Ibero-American area a statement will be made because there was a coup and there have been violations of human rights,” Licona said.

Zelaya accepted a U.S.-brokered deal last month to end a months-long stand-off with the de facto regime.

Under the terms of the agreement, a unity government was to be formed and the Honduran Congress was to vote whether or not to reinstate Zelaya.

But Zelaya pronounced the pact dead early this month after Micheletti formed a “national unity” government headed by himself before Congress even addressed the reinstatement matter.

Congress is expected to conduct the vote on Wednesday, following the elections.

Critics say the de facto regime was emboldened when then-U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon said Washington would recognize the election winner regardless of whether Zelaya was reinstated.

Micheletti contends Zelaya’s ouster was not a coup, insisting that the troops who expelled him were simply enforcing a Supreme Court ban on the president’s planned non-binding plebiscite on the idea of revising the constitution.

The Honduran establishment contends that Zelaya, a former rancher who moved to the left once in office, had been taken under the wing of Venezuelan socialist President Hugo Chavez, who is reviled by conservatives across Latin America.

But while coup leaders and their apologists accuse Zelaya of seeking to extend his stay in office, any potential constitutional change to allow presidential re-election would not have taken effect until months – if not years – after the incumbent stepped down in January.