Updated Aug 14
HAITI DEMOCRACY PROJECT
Jul 13, 2015 | Elections, November 2010
Pierre-Louis Opont, president of the election commission, has been going around peddling the story that the CEP originally eliminated Martelly but restored him under foreign pressure. This is false. The Tabulation Center originally eliminated Célestin, but put more votes back in for him under President Préval’s pressure as transmitted by none other than Pierre-Louis Opont. The Verification Commission sent by the foreigners restored the Tabulation Center’s original order.
Thus, it was not the foreigners who tampered with the CEP’s count, it was René Préval and Pierre-Louis Opont.
Indeed, very few Haitians are aware that the Tabulation Center, in its original compilation in the days preceding the first announcement of results on December 10, 2010, ranked the top three finishers as Manigat, Martelly, and Célestin in that order. It discarded some fraudulent votes for each to reach this conclusion. Only the first two would go to the second round.
Then on December 6 President Préval met with Opont, the election commission’s administrator, and Gaillot Dorsinvil, its president to complain about all the votes taken from his favored candidate, Jude Célestin. Opont then restored 19,596 of Célestin’s fraudulent votes to put him in second place for the December 10 announcement of results – in the process, eliminating Martelly.
There was broad protest in Haiti. In the United States, when the elections were just getting underway amidst widespread suspicions of President Préval’s control of the apparatus, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised the Haitian people that the United States would be by their side. She was as good as her word. Immediately after the December 10 announcement the U.S. embassy issued a statement strongly doubting the results. The U.S.-organized Verification Commission found 17,220 votes for Célestin to be requarantined. When Préval resisted, various bigwigs had their U.S. visas pulled and Clinton went to Haiti herself to press the findings home. Finally, the fraudulent votes were discarded.
In short, Préval and Opont were caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
Two important findings emerge:
1. It was a Haitian body, the Tabulation Center, that originally set the order as Manigat, Martelly, Célestin. The foreigners did no more than restore its original findings.
2. Pierre-Louis Opont revealed himself to be a pliable tool of René Préval.
Data
The Tabulation Center originally eliminated Célestin. Four sources for this statement:
Source 1: E-mail from Colin Granderson to James Morrell, December 28, 2010: “Winning results of 225 and subsequently 150 were the control thresholds used to identify PVs for visual verification by the Legal Control Unit of the CTV.”
Posted at http://haitipolicy.org/2010/12/oas-responds-to-haiti-project-research
Source 2: Complete.dbf, a database of the presidential vote as of December 22, 2010. 11,171 records. Twenty-nine fields including MAE (mis à l’écart) and CELESTIN.
Source 3: The following database queries:
sum celestin for celestin >= 150. Result: 57,933 (the number of votes Célestin lost in the Tabulation Center’s original calculation using a cutoff point of 150)
sum celestin for mae = ‘X’. Result: 38,377 (the number of votes Célestin lost after Opont made the change demanded by Préval).
Source 4: James Morrell, “Haiti-Elections : Analyzing the work of the Expert Mission,” Alterpresse, January 14, 2011 at http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article10529#.VZ7yPl9VhHw
Then on December 6 President Préval met with Opont, the election commission’s administrator, and Gaillot Dorsinvil, its president to complain about all the votes taken from his favored candidate, Jude Célestin. Ginette Chérubin, Le ventre pourri de la bête (Port-au-Prince: Editions de l’Université d’Etat d’Haïti, 2013), pp. 262–4.
Opont then restored 19,596 of Célestin’s fraudulent votes. Result 1 less Result 2 in The Tabulation Center originally eliminated Célestin, above. For Opont’s control over the Tabulation Center, see Le ventre pourri de la bête, pp. 289–295.
–James Morrell
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No worries-the Venezuelan System brought in to help tabulate this election’s result will also validate the results of August 9th. With the Venezuelan electoral processes being an international model of transparency and fairness, that should settle things.
THEY GAVE US AN ” ELECTION A L’HAITIENNE ” BECAUSE THEY REALIZED HAITIANS DON’T DESERVE ANY BETTER. THEN WHEN THINGS START TO GET WORST, PLEASE DON’T BLAME EITHER DOMINICANS , FRENCH OR HAITIAN BOURGEOISIE FOR OUR FAILURE . IT’S ABOUT TIME FOR US TO LEARN FOR GOD SAKE !!!
To MARC- Yes, personal accountability, and National accountability seem absent in Haiti often. I don’t criticize out of any hate, or malice. We are far worse off here in the USA, but for the most part, the International Community is the real one failing here- Haitians are, for the most part, helpless. Diaspora is even more so. Politics are ruled by the gun barrel, or the flame of a match and gasoline. One thing that might help Haiti- If everyone in the world quit doing cocaine right now, there would be no incentive to turn Haiti into a Narco-state, but I am just someone who is not being realistic unfortunately.