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#138: CIP's Partial Translation of the Lissade Report (fwd)
From: Max Blanchet <MaxBlanchet@worldnet.att.net>
Complete report can be seen at CIP's site at:
www.us.net/cip/rapport2.htm
_____________________________________________
Presidential Commission in Support of the Provisional Electoral Council
REPORT TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIST OF PRINCIPAL ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THIS REPORT
AD : Assemblée Départementale,
AM : Assemblée Municipale
ASEC : Assemblée de la Section Communale
BEC : Bureau Electoral Communal
BED : Bureau Electoral Départemental
BIV : Bureau d' Inscription de Vote
BV : Bureau de Vote
CASEC : Conseil d'Administration de la Section Communale
CD : Conseil Départemental
CEP : Conseil Electoral Provisoire
CID : Conseil Interdépartemental
COREGA : Coordination de Résistance de la Grand'Anse
DV : Délégué de Ville
IFES : Fondation Internationale pour les Systèmes Electoraux
IRI : Institut Républicain International
MICIVIH : Mission Civile Internationale en Haïti
MOE / OEA: Mission d'Observation Electorale de l'Organisation des Etats
Americains
NDI : Institut National Démocratique
OPL : Organisation du Peuple en Lutte ci-devant Organisation Politique
Lavalas
PLB : Pati Louvri Baryè
SOPA : Solidarité Peyzan Ayisyen
USCE : Unité de Surveillance et de Contrôle Electoral
2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
A- Introduction
B- The electoral process in 1997.
C- Observations of the Presidential Commission in Support of the CEP
D- Exercise of power by the electoral council
E- Conclusions et recommendations.
A.- INTRODUCTION
By a decree on October 29, 1997 published in the Moniteur on Thursday,
October 30, 1997 your excellency created a Commission in Support of the
Provisional Electoral Council. You assigned it a number of
responsibilities:
?To give a legal opinion #) on the ongoing electoral process.
?To make appropriate suggestions for organizing and carrying out free
and democratic elections on the dates set by the CEP.
In carrying out these tasks the commission invited the political
parties, candidates, and organizations interested in the elections to
meet for an exchange of views and opinions on the elections of April 6,
1997. Certain of them did respond positively to this invitation and
have, besides making presentations, sent files and documents that the
commission has carefully examined and used to advantage. The commission
takes this occasion to thank all these important contributors to its
work. We especially wish to acknowledge the International Foundation for
Electoral Systems (IFES), the International Republican Institute (IRI),
and the Electoral Observation Mission of the Organization of American
States (MOE).
Before beginning the analysis of the complex problems of the
organization and execution of the electoral process two remarks may be
offered:
The first is that the recommendations here are strictly limited to an
evaluation of the electoral process and its results. The first goal of
the commission, which this text is consistent with, is to do a complete
examination of the challenges and disputes arising from the election to
determine whether they conform to the procedures set in the electoral
law and then verify the treatment of them by the CEP.
#) See the Moniteur, no. 89, November 13, 1997 (the official gazette of
the republic of Haiti).
4
In this regard the contribution this commission makes is quite limited.
It only takes into account the legal aspects of the decisions taken or
not taken by the CEP.
The second remark that needs to be made in this introduction is
cautionary. The electoral law sets the standards of conduct not only for
the electoral apparatus but also for the political parties, independent
candidates, electoral slates and the electorate as a whole. We ought not
consider this report a facile response to each and everyone's problem.
The task of the commission is more to formulate recommendations for the
future electoral process as a whole.
On the other hand the commission is convinced that its recommendations
can clear up certain misunderstandings and considerably clarify certain
clauses of the present electoral law, thus assisting political
decision-makers in the current difficult context.
Clearly one cannot grasp the whole complexity and dynamics of the
electoral process, with all its forces and tension, without looking at
the context in which it unfolded after the publication of the decree of
January 21, 1997 calling the people to elections and up to the
appointment of this presidential commission in support of the
Provisional Electoral Council on October 29 of the same year.
After this brief overview of the elections context the commission will
make its observations and reflections on the organization and execution
of the process including an evaluation of the complaints and disputes
and the announcement of the results, all from a legal point of view. We
will then offer an overall conclusion and recommendations.
B.- THE ELECTORAL PROCESS OF 1997
By the decree of January 21, 1997 published in the Moniteur no. 6 on
January 23:
1-The primary assemblies (Assemblées Primaires) were called to elect::
a) Five hundred sixty-four (564) communal-section assemblies (Assemblées
de Section Communale, ASEC) and one hundred thirty-three (133) groups of
city delegates (groupes de délégués de ville--DV) .
b) Nine members of the senate--one senator per department.
c) One deputy for the district of Port-Salut and one for la Plaine du
Nord.
2.- The indirect electoral assemblies (Assemblées électorales
indirectes) were called to elect:
a) One hundred thirty-three municipal assemblies (Assemblées
Municipales) and nine departmental assemblies (Assemblées Dé
partementales).
b) Nine departmental councils (Conseils Départementaux) and one
interdepartmental council (Conseil Interdépartemental).
These elections, set for April 6, 1997, were to be carried out in
conformity with the electoral law of February, 1995.
The new Provisional Electoral Council, installed in November, 1996, had
immediately begun to prepare for the elections. It began with a press
conference on December 9; on December 22 it began organizing the
training of the members of 133 communal electoral bureaus (BECs) in each
of the republic's communes.
In the middle of January 1997 new voter registration was begun. They
included youths attaining the age of 18 since the last elections and
voters with lost or damaged electoral cards. The new registrations
entailed a revision of the electoral rolls of 1995.
The candidate nominations began at the end of January, i.e., after three
weeks. A number of political parties boycotted the elections and did not
offer candidates. The following week was devoted to receiving and
reviewing challenges to the candidacies.
The final list of candidates was made public and the campaign began at
the end of February, to continue until April 4. There were no problems
in this process.
In the opinion of the international observers there was no major trouble
during the day of April 6. The voting took place with calm, except for a
few attemps here and there to tamper with the vote or intimidate
electoral personnel, and some arrests of people attempting to vote
fraudulently. The level of participation was low, in particular in the
urban centers. Certain voters had trouble finding their polling places,
or, if they found them, there name was not on the roll.
In the evening the tallying of the vote took place in general without
trouble except for some small and isolated incidents caused by the
protests of party representatives citing discrepancies between the
number of voters and the votes recorded.
The electoral challenges began the next day, directed both at the
departmental councils and the CEP in all nine departments, questioning
senatorial, town, and ASEC elections. A significant number of challenges
were mounted. The main ones, organized below as illustrative cases, are
grouped as: stuffing the ballot box, falsification of the returns,
missing returns, more than one vote per voter, exclusion of party
representatives from the polling sites, electoral corruption, use of
fake electoral cards, intimidation of voters and candidates, illegal
electioneering, theft of ballot boxes or returns, intrusion of armed
persons into the polling places, unpublicized relocation of the polling
places, incomplete voter rolls, abuse of power by the electoral
authorities, obstacles to voter registration.
Ballot-box stuffing
Department of the South:
1) Ballot-box stuffing before the opening of voting in the commune of
Anglais (BIV of Galètes Sèche).
Polling places of Damassin and des Côteaux: armed men dressed in black
stuffed the ballot box with at least 1,500 ballots that they got from
the wife of a policeman.
Department of the West
3 ) In Delmas, the head of one polling place altered the returns in
favor of one slate of candidates.
4) In Fonds-Verrettes, voters threw bunches of fifteen or twenty ballots
into the ballot boxes.
Department of the Southeast
5) In polling place number 1 in Adieu-au-Monde, 161 votes were recorded
in favor of a Lavalas candidate although after the hurricane no
registered voters remained in this district. In voting place no. 161,
where no one had voted, 250 votes were recorded for this candidate.
6) In the sixth section of Jacmel the head of the polling place of Kava
was caught stuffing the ballot boxes in favor of the candidates of Fanmi
Lavalas.
7) In the polling place of Kaskaré (La Montagne), even though no more
than thirty people voted the winning candidate claimed more than two
hundred votes.
Grand'Anse :
8) In Dame-Marie and Anse-d'Hainault armed men took advantage of the
absence of party representatives to stuff the ballot boxes.
9) In Beaumont, the members of certain polling places stuffed the ballot
boxes to favor one candidate.
Department of the North
10) In Milot, member of OPL deposited ballots in the ballot box of a
polling place after marking them with an X.
11) In la Plaine du Nord, the member of a polling place stuffed the
ballot boxes to favor one candidate.
12) In Cap-Haïtien, the leaders of one party were seen stuffing ballot
boxes with hundreds of ballots.
13) In Limbé, a group of fifteen men stuffed the ballot boxes.
Central Department
14) At the polls in Grand-Boucan (Mirebalais), the number of voters
increased from 38 at 5 p.m to 266 by 6 p.m. At other polls 58 voters
were counted over four hours, but at closing the vote was 296 in favor
of one candidate.
In the section of Crête Brùlée (Mirebalais), there were 62 votes
recorded by 5:30 p.m., but according to the returns there were 280 votes
by 6 p.m., or 218 votes in 30 minutes.
In the first section of Belladères, eight voters voted in one polling
place, but at closing time the OPL candidate had got 168 votes. At
another poll 66 persons voted but the returns showed 179.
Falsification of the returns
Department of the South
1) The returns from polling site no. 56 in "La Colline" d'Aquin: the
number given for the number of ballots received did not match the total
number of votes including those marked with an X, the blank votes, and
the unmarked ones.
2) The same for polling site 14-A in Cayes.
Department of the West
3) In Cité Soleil, those in charge of the polls changed the results
before sending them to the communal office.
4) In Delmas the slate of town delegation no. 8 got 193 votes by faking
the returns.
Artibonite :
5) The vice-président of the communal electoral office (BEC) Saint-Marc
was seen in Estère falsifying the election results.
6) In Desdunes, armed men in favor of senate candidates forced those in
charge of the polls to falsify the returns in favor of their candidates.
Grand'Anse :
7) According to the returns that one challenger of the results had, the
Corega candidate got 83 votes but the communal elections office gave him
283 votes, and another 125 votes obtained were changed into 225.
Northeast
8) In Trois Palmistes (Vallières), the head of a pollsite was caught
falsifying the returns.
Northwest
9) Thehead of the communal election office (BEC) in Môle Saint-Nicolas
was accused of changing the returns of a polling place in Mare-Rouge.
10
Missing returns
Artibonite :
1) A first review said there were 73 returns for 87 polling sites in
Gonaïves.
2) In one section of Marchand-Dessalines, six returns were missing.
3) In Grande Desdunes, the returns from nine polling places were
missing.
4) Two returns were missing from the sixth section of Gonaïves and three
from the fifth section.
5) In Anse-Rouge, eleven returns were missing, with no explanation.
Department of the North
In the third section of Ranquitte, three returns were received from four
polling sites.
More than one vote per voter
Department of the South
1 ) The members of the polls in de Bercy (Cavaillon) were ordered by the
president of the CASEC to let people vote eight or ten times.
Department of the West
2) In Delmas, the voters voted six or seven times at the same polling
site.
3) In Fonds-Verrettes, a small group of people voted in all the polling
places under different names.
Artibonite :
4) In Petite Desdunes, a former candidate to the Lower House marked the
ballots in favor of a candidate to the senate of the Lavalas Family
party.
Department of the North
A party representative of Lafanmi Lavalas was caught voting with a bunch
of ballots, was arrested but then released by order of the president and
secretary of the communal electoral office (BEC).
Department of the Northeast
6) In Vallières, the voter rolls common to many polling sites allowed
voters to vote many times.
Central Department
Centre :
7) In Hinche, a voter was caught voting in many polling sites.
Exclusion of party representatives from the polling sites
Department of the West
1 ) In Delmas, the top delegate of slate no. 1 and his partisans came
into the polling sites and chased the PLB party representatives away.
2) A party representative of the town-delegate Fanmi Lavalas slate was
chased out of one polling site in Carrefour.
3} In Fonds-Verrettes, those in charge of the polls forbade the
candadates' party representatives from entering the polling sites in
order to make it easier to stuff the ballot boxes.
Department of the Southeast
4) In Belle-Anse, party representatives and U.S.C.E. members were barred
from the polls.
Artibonite :
5) In Grande Saline, the police chased the party representatives of
other candidates out of the polls so that they could mark the ballots in
favor of a Fanmi Lavalas senate candidate.
Grand'Anse :
6) Armed men made the party representatives of one senate candidate in
Dame-Marie leave the polls.
A vice-delegate in Beaumont threatened a candidate's representatives
with his gun and made them leave the polling-sites.
12
Department of the North :
7) A bunch of fifteen men chased OPL's representatives from the polling
sites.
Electoral Corruption.
Department of the South :
1) Torbeck's mayor distributed 500 voters' IDs to peasants and paid them
one dollar each to vote for the Fanmi candidate.
2) The head of the communal election office (BEC) of les Anglais
threatened the polling sites' personnel, saying that he wouldn't pay his
taxes if the Fanmi candidate didn't win.
Artibonite :
3) At Grande Saline, some Fanmi and OPL supporters were paying for votes
for their candidates.
Department of the Northeast :
4) The head of the communal election office of Ouanaminthe was accused
of giving IDs and money to voters so they would vote for his friends'
candidates.
5) The head of a departmental election office (BED) allegedly promised
to elect a CEP consultant to a post in the departmental assembly (A.D.)
if the consultant would let him stay in office.
Use of fake voters' IDs
Department of the South
1 ) The Fanmi Lavalas candidate bought 3,000 voters' IDs and gave them
out to some peasants from Torbeck and Saint-Jean to vote in Port-Salut.
2) The head of the communal electoral office of Torbeck allegedly
prepared voters' IDs in the names of nonexistent people to favor certain
candidates.
Department of the West
3) In Delmas, personnel of the polls allowed people to vote with IDs
that didn't belong to them.
Department of the Southeast
The head of the polls in Douré (Bainet) kept voters' IDs after they
voted and, after erasing the name, it to another person who used it to
vote again.
Artibonite :
5) The day before the election about three thousand voters' IDs were
found in the possession of a party representative of a Fanmi Lavalas
senate candidate.
Department of the North
6) The head of the departmental election office (BEC) in Dondon was
caught voting with an ID that didn't belong to him.
7) In Mathador (Dondon), fifty IDs were seized from a communal election
office employee.
Central Department
8) In Maïssade, a civil servant was caught with many voters' IDs.
Thousands of IDs were given out to children who went into the polls to
vote.
Intimidation of voters and candidates
Department of the South
1) Heavily-armed bands accompanying a Fanmi Lavalas senate candidate
intimidated voters anintimidated voters and candidates, particularly
those of the ca
Department of the West
1) In Fonds-Verrettes, armed supporters of a candidate threatened voters
who would not vote for their slate, the no. 2 ASEC slate.
Grand' Anse :
2) The vice-delegate of Corail showed up with a gun in his hand at the
polls in
Beaumont and ordered the head of the polling site to stuff the ballot
box in favor of the Corega candidate.
Department of the North
3) At Dondon, some people threatened people with guns; the local
inhabitants who wanted to go to the polling sites were chased away.
4) At Limbé, some party leaders, friends of the head of the communal
election office, threatened the other parties' representatives and the
heads of some polling sites.
Central Department :
5) At Belladères, the vice-delegate and the deputy went around the city
with arms and forced voters to vote for a certain candidate.
Illegal electioneering.
Department of the South :
1) During the night before the elections, a deputy still in office
continued electioneering, attacking the candidate LAROSILIERE.
Department of the West :
2) During the night before the elections, a senate candidate covered the
walls of the city with pictures of himself.
Artibonite :
3) In Gonaïves, a TV channnel broadcast electioneering messages all day
during April 6, election day.
Department of the North :
4) The vice-president of the communal election office in Limbé led an
intense public campaign in favor of the Fanmi Lavalas candidate.
Central Department :
5) A radio station based at Hinche continued the electioneering after
the legal end of the campaign.
15
Theft of returns and ballot boxes
Department of the South :
1 ) At Camp-Perrin, some men in a car stole ballot boxes.
2) At Roche-à-Bateau, the candidates of the second slate for the ASEC
acompanied an armed group of thieves who stole the returns before the
ballots could be counted.
Artibonite :
3) The coordinator of a senator's office stole the ballots from a ballot
box.
4) At the sixth section of Petite Rivière de l'Artibonite, some ASEC
candidates stole the ballot boxes.
Grand'Anse :
5) At Anse d'Hainault and les Irois, an unidentified band of thieves
took away the ballot-boxes.
Department of the North :
6) At Chabot, in communal section of Limbé, a party representative
accompanied by a vice-president of the communal election office emptied
out the ballot boxes and the tally sheets.
Intrusion of armed persons into the polls
Department of the Southeast
1) A senate candidate accompanied by armed agents went into the polls at
the Pinchinat high school in Jacmel, guns in hand, and made the
electoral personnel let them vote.
Artibonite :
2) In Grande-Saline, well-armed men from the Lavalas Fanmi and the OPL
circulated around the polls, brandishing their arms against one head of
a polling site.
3) In Petite Desdunes, a former candidate to the legislature burst into
the polling site, revolver in hand.
Grand'Anse :
4) In Dame-Marie, heavily-armed men spread panic among many voting
stations. In
Anse-d'Hainault, other armed men broke into two polling sites and
manhandled a city-council candidate.
Department of the North
5) In Limbé, a communal election office delegate and a local civil
servant entered many polling sites with pistols.
6) In Milot, an armed candidate harassed the polls.
Sudden relocation of the polls
Department of the West
1) The BIV was relocated without apparent reason and without prior
notice.
Department of the North
2) The polling sites were relocated by the communal elections office of
Dondon.
3) The personnel of the communal election office of Plaisance moved the
office without notifying the population.
4) Polling places were moved in Bois-Cadet, Tortue et Chiron.
Central Department
5) In Hinche, voters had trouble finding the polls or the registration
list.
Incomplete voters' lists
Department of the South
1) A number of voters with voters' IDs did not go to vote because their
names were not on the lists displayed at the polls.
Department of the Southeast
2) In two polling sites of the First Section, only the Fanmi Lavalas
supporters had their names on the registration list and the names of the
OPL voters were missing.
3} At the Kaskaré (La Montagne) polls, the supporters of slate no. 1 for
the ASEC could not vote because their names were not on the registration
list even though they had IDs issued by this polling station.
Department of the North
4) In Bassin-Caïman (Dondon), regular voters with their voter ID's could
not find their name on the registration list at the polling site.
Department of the Northeast
5) In Ouanaminthe, the registration lists were falsified to skew the
vote toward certain candidates.
Abuse of power by the electoral authorities
Department of the Southeast
1) In Belle-Anse, the examiners from the election control office
(U.S.C.E.) reported the dismissal of an office worker who tried to keep
an adult from voting with the ID of a voter of sixteen years, and the
arrest of another who refused to let a fifteen-year-old person vote.
Department of the North
2) The secretary of the communal election office of Pilate invalidated
the credentials of party representatives of the PLB party and
confiscated those of a delegate from Baudin who protested this action.
He expelled a representative of the PLB to the electoral control office
under the pretext that his credentials were not valid.
3) In Bassin-Caïman (Dondon), the party representative of one slate who
protested a fraudulent action and requested the head of the polling site
to take necessary action was threatened with arrest.
18
Placing obstacles to voter registration
Southeast
1} A senate candidate denounced the fact that voters who had abstained
from registering in 1995 were refused in 1997 the right to exercise
their civic duty to vote as provided in the constitution and reiterated
in article 14 of the electoral law.
Department of the North
2) The electoral office in Bassin-Caiman (Dondon) prematurely closed off
registration
Despite the challenges enumerated above, the results were announced and
the process pursued regardless. Two senators and one deputy were elected
in the first round. The second round was planned for the departments
that did not elect candidates. However, this second round was postponed
sine die.
Following the cancellation of the election in certain areas the
elections for city councils (DV) and the ASECs were held again on July 6
in the Departments of the Northeast, the Artibonite, the Central
Department, the West, and Grand'Anse. They took place in an atmosphere
of indifference and the turnout can be characterized as insignficant.
This was probably due to the absence of get-out-the-vote efforts and
lack of information to the concerned population. The elections were only
announced by the CEP five days in advance. Few challenges were recorded
except from slates who were disqualified for failing to comply with
certain legal requirements.
The indirect elections were held on various dates in an atmosphere of
challenges and lack of knowledge by the public. The members of the
communal-section assemblies and the city-council delegates were gathered
to elect the members of the municipal assemblies, then these members
were convened to elect the departmental assemblies from which were
formed the departmental councils and the interdepartmental council. This
marks the end of the electoral process which the commission sought to
examine with the available data, which are far from complete. This
examination produced the following observations which are not complete.
Observations and reflections of the commission:
1.1 Registration lists
Altogether, a careful review of the various reports written by Haitian
and foreign observers on the organization and execution of the April 6,
1997 elections, the information received from the observers, and the
testimony of candidates and personnel of the various electoral offices
(BIV, BEC and BED) do not permit us to say that the recent elections
took place with transparency and perfect impartiality.
The fact is that although it was mandatory to post the registration
lists outside all the polling sites (10,258) throughout the country,
this rule was not respected as fully as it should have been.
When the lists were posted they were often incomplete and changes were
made on them by hand without any verification.
Furthermore, the decision to deny the right to vote to some categories
of the population deserves criticism.
For instance, the only people eligible to vote in these elections were
those who had reached the age of 18 before the holding of the election,
those who had lived abroad but had lived in Haiti for at least three
months before the election, or those who had lost their voter's ID or
changed their address.
Clearly these failings plus the abstention of some parties are partly
responsible for the low turnout in the election. These measures,
inconsistent with the constitution, deprived a significant number of
citizens who did not vote in 1995 of their right to register and vote in
these elections. Not being able to vote they could not fulfill their
duty as citizens, a situation that negatively affected the conduct of
the elections.
...