Referendums

The Honduran president said Thursday that he would ignore a high court ruling ordering him to reinstate the military chief he had fired, escalating a showdown that has threatened the leftist leader's hold on power. President Manuel Zelaya's plan to hold a referendum Sunday on changing the constitution has pitted him against the country's top courts, the attorney general, military leaders and even his own party, all of whom say the vote is illegal.

A bitter debate on how to rescue Mexico's troubled state-owned oil company went directly to the people Sunday as residents of the capital and nine states voted in a nonbinding referendum on President Felipe Calderon's plan to open some portions of the petroleum industry to outsiders. The vote, organized by the opposition Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, has no official bearing on energy legislation making its way through Congress.

Turnout was light, but voters in a nonbinding referendum gave an overwhelming "no" to President Felipe Calderon's proposal to give private firms a bigger role in Mexico's government-controlled petroleum industry. More than 80% of those who cast ballots Sunday in Mexico City opposed the plan, according to the official tally of the federal district released Monday. The results were even more lopsided outside the capital, where nine of Mexico's 31 states also participated.

Adding to the drama that has engulfed contract talks between actors and Hollywood studios, moderates on the Screen Actors Guild board are expected to push for the ouster of the union's negotiators. The move designed to break the six-month deadlock could undermine the guild's current leadership, which some fear is bringing Hollywood to the brink of another strike.

Top city officials and labor and business representatives were said to be close to an agreement Tuesday night that would keep off the ballot a referendum on a new law that extends the city's "living wage" ordinance to workers at a dozen hotels near Los Angeles International Airport. Today is the legal deadline for the City Council to respond to a referendum petition, submitted by the business community last month, that would ask voters to reverse the law.

Portugal will hold a national referendum today on legalizing abortion, an emotive issue in an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country where there are worries not enough people will vote to validate a decision. The latest polls showed almost two out of three Portuguese favored lifting the ban, but in a similar referendum in 1998, more than half the 8.7 million electorate failed to vote, and the ban remained.

Ecuador's Congress approved holding a referendum on whether to create an assembly to rewrite the constitution, bowing to demands by leftist President Rafael Correa, who is seeking to weaken traditional political parties. Correa blames the parties for the Andean nation's problems. He called on Ecuadoreans "to fulfill their role in history, crushing the political mafias at the ballot boxes." Ecuador has been marked by political instability, with seven presidents in the last decade.

Amid anemic turnout, Egyptians voted Monday on a package of constitutional amendments in a referendum boycotted by opposition groups and criticized by human rights organizations and the U.S. government. Despite a push by President Hosni Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party to get out the vote, polling stations throughout Cairo saw only a trickle of voters -- many of them party members or civil servants bused in from work.

The Japanese government took a historic step Friday toward revising the country's pacifist constitution, winning parliament's endorsement of procedures for a national referendum necessary to make changes to its postwar charter. But the referendum bill had to be rammed through the lower house of parliament against bitter resistance by opposition parties. The clash signaled that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe still faces a tough fight to win approval for the actual constitutional amendments.

A free-trade pact once thought to be slam-dunk is now up for grabs in Costa Rica, where President Oscar Arias on Friday announced that his government would hold a national referendum on the controversial measure. Arias, a supporter of the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement, known as DR-CAFTA, called the pending vote "a triumph" for democratic procedure that would let Costa Ricans determine whether to participate in the pact, to which the U.S. is a party.