AFP:WASHINGTON — US and Haitian human rights groups put out a joint call Tuesday for this weekend’s presidential and legislative elections in Haiti to be postponed due to raging cholera epidemic.
“Cholera is a game changer in the most fundamental sense. It is an immediate and critical crisis that requires all hands on deck in response,” said Melinda Miles of the Let Haiti Live group.
“It is not for us to predict when the crisis will level off, setting the stage for credible elections to be held. What we can say, definitively, is that now is not that time, and no elections held in the midst of the current exploding cholera crisis can be considered credible.”
The organizations said they had been monitoring the situation on the ground to help with the elections but had decided the polls could not go ahead credibly in the current conditions.
“In light of the current epidemic of cholera and the inadequate response on the ground from the UN and the large NGO’s, the group deems it impossible for Haiti to hold elections that would meet even the most minimal standards of fairness and credibility at this time,” they said in a statement.
The groups, Let Haiti Live, The Louisiana Justice Institute and the Center for Economic and Policy Research have dispatched a delegation to Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas to monitor proceedings.
“While in Haiti the delegation will monitor the human rights and political situation surrounding the elections, including police and UN response to protests, possible voter boycotts, voter access and participation levels, the cholera epidemic and how it is affecting Haitians; and the status of overall relief efforts,” the group said.
Alex Main, a policy analyst from the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, said the elections were already “highly problematic” even before the cholera epidemic, which has now claimed more than 1,400 lives.
“Haiti’s electoral authority — the CEP — suffers from a lack of credibility; legitimate parties have been excluded from participating in the legislative elections,” Main said.
“Very few effective measures have been taken to ensure that Haiti’s over 1.3 million displaced people would have access to the polls.
“As a result of these problems, there was already a high probability that voter turnout would be very low and that the elections would be widely seen as illegitimate,” he said.
“Now, with an uncontrollable and fatal epidemic further complicating the lives of Haitians, it is patently obvious that the elections should be postponed and measures should be taken to correct the current flaws in the electoral process.”