Haiti’s
electoral council announced on Jun. 6 that new
first-round presidential elections would be held in
October after a commission found widespread fraud and
irregularities in the previous vote. The prospect of the
new vote – to be held alongside dozens of parliamentary
seats still up for grabs – has raised questions about
how it could be funded. The previous elections —
determined to be too marred by fraud and violence to
count — cost upward of $100 million, with the bulk of
the funding coming from international donors.
But now, donors are balking. Last week the State
Department’s Haiti Special Coordinator Ken Merten
said that if
elections are redone “from scratch” than it would put
U.S. assistance in jeopardy. It “could also call into
question whether the U.S. will be able to continue to
support financially Haiti’s electoral process,” Merten
added.
In a separate interview, Merten
explained: “We still
do not know what position we will adopt regarding our
financial support. U.S. taxpayers have already spent
more than $33 million and that is a lot. We can ask
ourselves what was done with the money or what
guarantees there are that the same thing will not happen
again.”
So, what was done with the money? Could the same
thing happen again?
To begin with, that figure seems to include money
allocated in 2012 – years before the electoral process
began. Local and legislative elections, which former
president Michel Martelly was constitutionally required
to organize, failed to happen. A significant share of
this early funding likely went to staffing and overhead
costs as international organizations or grantees kept
their Haiti programs running, despite the absence of
elections. It’s also worth pointing out that many
millions of that money never went to electoral
authorities, but rather to U.S. programs in support of
elections.
In April 2013, USAID awarded a grant to the
DC-based Consortium for Elections and Political
Processes. In total, $7.23 million went to the
consortium before the electoral process even began. An
additional $4.95 million was awarded in July 2015, a
month before legislative elections. The consortium
consists of two Washington, DC-based organizations, the
International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES)
and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) of the
National Endowment for Democracy (NED). In a
January report to
Congress, the State Department explained further what
some this money went towards:
1.
“the creation and implementation of 26 Electoral
Information Centers (EICs) … to provide information to
the general public on the electoral process.”
2.
“training more than 100 journalists in several
departments on topics such as the international
standards for elections …”
3.
“Funding through INL supported election
security.” [INL is the State Department of State’s
Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement
Affairs - HL]
4.
“USAID also supported the creation of a new
domestic election observation platform that helped build
greater transparency into the electoral process by
establishing a grassroots coalition of reputable and
well-trained domestic observers …”
Some funding also went to increasing women’s
participation in the electoral process. But it’s
questionable what the return on that $12.18 million
really was. Not a single woman was elected to parliament
— though it now appears as though
at least one was elected,
only to have her seat stolen through the bribing of an
electoral judge. In terms of providing information to
the public about the elections, participation in both
the legislative and presidential elections was only
about a fifth of the population. The money spent on
local observers may have been more successful, but not
for U.S. interests. The local observer group, the
Citizen Observatory for the Institutionalization of
Democracy, led by Rosny Desroches, agreed with other
local observation missions that a verification
commission (opposed by the U.S.) was needed to restore
confidence in the elections. The U.S. spent millions
training local observers, only to later ignore their
analysis. Instead, the U.S. has consistently pointed to
the observation work of international organizations such
as the Organization of American States (OAS) and the EU.
The U.S. also provided $1 million to the OAS for their
observation work.
Perhaps it’s not a surprise the funding didn’t
have the intended effect. A 2012
evaluation of NDI
conducted by Norway’s foreign development agency found
that about “4 out of every 10 dollars” went to overhead,
staff in Washington, DC, or to the expatriate country
director who made more than a quarter of a million
dollars.
The U.S. contributed $9.7 million to the United
Nations Development Program (UNDP) “basket fund” for
elections. The UNDP controlled the pooled donor funds
and also funds contributed by the Haitian government
(more than any other individual donor). Funds were used
to print ballots, train workers, and for other
logistical operations. However, it’s important to note
that $3 million of these funds were distributed in 2012
and 2014, well before any election would take place.
An additional $7.57 million went to the United
Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) for
logistical operations for the elections, mainly
distributing and picking up ballots before and after the
election. After the August legislative elections were
plagued by violent groups that shut down voting, UNOPS
shifted strategy for the October election. In certain
“hot spots,” ballots would not follow the normal
procedures for transportation to the tabulation center.
Instead, UNOPS would bypass the chain, picking up
electoral information at 67 voting centers and bringing
the materials straight to Port-au-Prince. According to
diplomatic sources, UNOPS threatened to pull out
entirely if additional funds for this measure were not
given. The U.S. awarded $1.8 million to UNOPS on Sep.
29, 2015.
An additional $1.77 million was given to UNOPS in
December, but the second-round presidential election
never took place. Though it was clear to many that the
elections would not be held given widespread
condemnation by local observers and civil society
groups, the U.S. and others in the international
community insisted the second round go ahead. With
protests increasing, they moved forward and distributed
electoral materials for an election that was never going
to happen. This strengthened Martelly’s bargaining power
over the opposition, but meant millions of dollars were
spent for no reason.
In total, funding to UNOPS, UNDP, OAS, IFES and
NDI totaled $30.45 million. This is the vast majority of
the $33 million the U.S. says it contributed to the
electoral process. Additional funds were also awarded
through the State Department for election-related
security.
So yes, the U.S. spent over $30 million on
Haiti’s elections, but not all of that went directly to
the elections or was even spent wisely in supporting
them. It’s clear it would take far less for the U.S. to
support a Haitian-led electoral process next October.
And perhaps the best reason for the U.S. to continue to
fund the election, if Haiti requests such support, is
that it was the U.S. and other actors in the
international community that pushed ahead and put
millions of dollars into a fatally flawed electoral
process that Haitians have now determined was
irreparably marred by fraud. The problem is not that
Haitian’s wasted U.S. taxpayer dollars by scrapping the
election results; it’s that the U.S. was throwing good
money after bad. That’s something that can be fixed.
All
grantee funding data is from USASpending.gov. This
article was originally published on the CEPR’s Haiti:
Relief and Reconstruction Watch blog.
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