Only six weeks ago, Category 4 Hurricane Matthew ravaged
Haiti’s southern peninsula, leaving close to 600 people
dead, thousands of homes destroyed, bridges and roads
washed out, and over one million people
in great distress.Ten days ago, another storm dumped a foot of rain
in 48 hours on Haiti’s north, causing massive,
destructive flooding in Cap Haïtien and at least 10
deaths.
Haiti’s verdant south provides much of the
country’s food, but now “tens of thousands of acres of
crop land and millions of fruit trees have been
destroyed," said Ann Lee, the chief executive of J/P
HRO, the humanitarian relief NGO founded by actor Sean
Penn after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake.
This has raised the specter of famine. "If we
don't manage to re-launch agriculture in three to four
months, we'll find ourselves with a major food crisis,"
Haiti’s interim President Jocelerme told the BBC. "Our
projection is that we need between $25 million and $30
million to resolve the farming issue. Right now we have
$2.5 million."
It is in this catastrophic context that Haiti
is rushing to hold elections on Sun., Nov. 20, despite
the almost certain exclusion of thousands of storm
victims. Run-offs are scheduled for Jan. 29, 2017.
The elections – a redo of the first-round of
presidential elections which were originally held on
Oct. 25, 2015 and a second round for dozens of
legislative seats – were originally scheduled for Oct.
9, but they had to be postponed until Nov. 20 after the
hurricane hit.
Washington, in concert with the European Union
and compliant UN officials, is pushing Haitian
authorities hard to hold elections rapidly. It was angry
when Privert
formed an
independent verification commission in April and even
angrier in June when the commission
recommended the 2015
presidential elections be reheld. In July, the Obama
administration refused further financial support for
Haiti’s 2016 elections, but Privert’s government said it
would carry on anyway with a budget of $55 million.
Three weeks after the hurricane, Washington
partially reversed itself. Matthew had “resulted in an
unanticipated, urgent, and considerable need to
rehabilitate voting centers and roads in the affected
regions of southwestern Haiti,” the U.S. Embassy wrote
in an Oct. 31 press release. The U.S. did not agree to
help fund the Haitian government, which took charge of
relief efforts after Matthew, but, without providing a
figure, said it would “provide financial support to
United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) to
support a timely and transparent election process.”
UNOPS, which is a key agency of the
Washington-backed 5,000-member UN Mission to Stabilize
Haiti (MINUSTAH) military occupation force, played a
central logistical role in Haiti’s 2015 elections, which
the verification commission found to be fraudulent.
UNOPS was widely accused of having a hand in some of
those
election irregularities,
particularly in the questionable transport of ballots.
Also pushing for rapid elections are the
presidential candidates themselves, particularly the
four leaders of the field of 27: engineer Jude Célestin
of the Alternative League for Progress and Haitian
Emancipation (LAPEH), banana-businessman Jovenel Moïse
of the Haitian Bald Headed Party (PHTK), former senator
and mayor Moïse Jean Charles of the Dessalines Children
party (Pitit Desalin), and Dr. Maryse Narcisse of the
Lavalas Family party (FL).
In a Nov. 6
speech at the
Renaissance Village in Zoranje near Port-au-Prince,
former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the FL’s
founder, told a crowd that if there are no elections on
Nov. 20, “there will be uprooting (dechoukaj),” a
statement which caused clucking among Haiti’s media and
political class. The Provisional Electoral Council (CEP)
summoned Narcisse, accompanied by Aristide, to “explain”
the statement. As had other FL leaders, they claimed the
remark had been misinterpreted.
“If the provisional president [Privert] is not
capable of guaranteeing the good functioning of
institutions so that the electoral council can organize
free, fair, and democratic elections, he must leave,”
said Joel “Pacha” Vorbe, one of the FL’s leaders, to
Le Nouvelliste.
On Oct. 27, the CEP gave Privert’s government
ten days to repair
280 voting centers and the roads to another 161 voting
centers, as well as distribute thousands of new voter
identification cards (Cartes d’identification nationale
or CIN) to people who may have lost them during the
hurricane.
Privert responded that Nov. 20 was “irreversible”
and agreed to carry out what many Haitians are calling
“mission impossible.”
In a Nov. 15 press release, Haiti Action, an FL
support group based in California, listed seven reasons
why the coming elections give cause for concern:
“1) The CEP is headed by Léopold Berlanger,
a leading figure of the 2004
US-backed coup against democratically elected
President Jean Bertrand Aristide.
“2) The main 2004 coup leader and wealthy
sweatshop owner, Andy Apaid, plays a central role as
lead consultant in the CEP tabulation center where the
votes will be counted and the results published.
“3) The CEP under Berlanger's leadership has not
implemented a number of recommendations of the Electoral
Verification Commission, which was established in
response to the massive fraud in last year’s elections.
The CEP has allowed fraudulent parliamentary results to
stand, favoring supporters of outgoing President Michel
Martelly who was imposed by the U.S.
“4) The CEP insists on quarantining a candidate's
votes from a precinct where this candidate obtains 200+
out of a total of 550 ballots. Under the pretext of
preventing fraud, perfectly valid ballots are eliminated
from the count because a popular candidate is receiving
‘too many’ votes. Officials of Fanmi Lavalas have been
protesting this measure as it arbitrarily discards valid
ballots in precincts that have large turnouts in favor
of their candidates.
Quarantined or provisional ballots end up not
being counted and are likely to be destroyed.
“5) A leading figure of the 2004 coup, Rosny
Desroches, is in charge of the officially-designated
election observer teams of 1,500 individuals.
The media reports that funding for the observer
teams came through the National Democratic Institute
(NDI) in collaboration with International Foundation for
Electoral Services (IFES).
While the International Republican Institute
(IRI) does not have offices in Haiti, it operates from
the Dominican Republic through a number of existing
organizations in Haiti.
Both NDI and IRI are part of the U.S.
government’s National Endowment for Democracy; the IRI
was implicated in the 2004 coup and are known for
funding interference, destabilization and other efforts
to influence elections to impose US foreign and economic
policies, including regime change.
“6) It has been reported that the National
Organization for the Advancement of Haitians (NOAH) is
organizing an election observer team of 200 people.
NOAH has worked closely with the Organization of
American States (OAS) and the US State Department, both
of which have been ardent supporters of fraudulent
elections in Haiti.
“7) The OAS, which is sending a team of observers
for the Nov. 20 election, has been thoroughly
discredited in Haiti for its recent support of the
massive fraud orchestrated by the CEP in 2015.
The OAS record of support for fraudulent
elections in Haiti includes its intrusive role in the
2010-11 elections that resulted in Martelly being
imposed as president.”
In recent weeks, the editors of
Haïti Liberté
newspaper have argued that, following the storms of
October and November, large segments of the Haitian
electorate would be unable to take part in the Nov. 20
elections and have urged President Privert to postpone
them to a later, more suitable date.
The Haiti Election Blog also
reports that “CEP
member Jean Simon Saint-Hubert admitted to having some
doubts about elections occurring as scheduled, but
stated that missing the Nov. 20 date would place the
country in ‘an extremely difficult situation.’”
President Privert apparently feels too much pressure
from Washington and his many enemies and rivals in
Haiti’s “political class” to call for a prudent delay.
The fact that U.S.-ally Léopold Berlanger heads the CEP
and Rosny Desroches Haiti’s “national” observers gives
even more reason to worry that the results of Nov. 20
may not end up reflecting the will of the Haitian
people. |