Dec 2nd 2010 | PORT-AU-PRINCE | from PRINT EDITION THE ECONOMIST
NOBODY expected Haiti’s general election on November 28th to be perfect. But it was far worse than the outsiders who are trying to help the stricken country feared. It featured stuffed ballot boxes and repeat voting, ballot slips scattered in gutters, trashed polling stations and intimidation. Polling stations opened hours late. Many Haitians, including lots displaced by January’s earthquake, roamed around trying to find out where to vote. Some of them eventually gave up. A dozen presidential candidates, including several presumed front-runners, cried fraud and called for the election’s annulment. Protests, some of them violent, flared across the country.
Nevertheless, Edmond Mulet, the United Nations’ top official in Haiti, declared it “a fairly good election in many ways.” Observers from the Organisation of American States and the Caribbean Community said cautiously that they did “not believe these irregularities, serious as they were, necessarily invalidated the process”. In other words, the show goes on. The electoral authority, which opponents claim is beholden to René Préval, the unpopular outgoing president and his candidate, Jude Célestin, is due to announce preliminary results on December 7th. The expected run-off is scheduled for January.
All hope in the election is not lost. The two leading opposition candidates, Michel Martelly, a rap musician, and Mirlande Manigat, a former first lady, have retreated from their initial call for the vote to be declared invalid. But there may be trouble if Mr Célestin, who has little or no discernible support among voters, is declared by the electoral authority to have reached the run-off.
With a cholera epidemic raging, and more than 1m earthquake survivors still living in tents, there were fears that turnout would be low. In the event, a lot of Haitians wanted to vote but were prevented from doing so by disorganisation. Some 250,000 identity cards, required for voting, remained undistributed shortly before the election. Much is at stake. Aid donors see the election of a legitimate and popular government as an essential step in Haiti’s reconstruction. And so, it is clear, do Haitians themselves.
The Americas
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COMMENT:HAITIAN-TRUTH.ORG
How can an Honest count solve anything, when the election is totally fraudulent from the beginning…in fact, before the beginning??
The entire voting process had been adulterated.
How can you tell the good from the bad votes. Especially when the CEP brought in 2,000,000 counterfeit ballots from the Dominican Republic? 1,000,000 of these were intercepted by some police who were not working for Preval.
If the world community persists in trying to “ Make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” Haiti will have nothing other than a criminal continuation of the Preval dictatorship, a dictatorship imposed by MINUSTAH when they gave Preval the presidency in 2005. He did not get 50% in the first round but MINUSTAH decided to give him 51% and avoid the expense of a run-off.
THE ELECTION MUST BE ANNULED EVEN IT THIS MEANS CREATION OF A TRANSITIONAL GOVERNMENT – WITH PREVAL DEPARTING.