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#2507: Just weeks away, Haiti's election cloaked in doubt (fwd)
From:nozier@tradewind.net
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - Just over three weeks away from
scheduled legislative and local elections, few in Haiti can say with
certainty that the long-delayed vote will really take place. Haiti's
first nationwide elections in nearly three years are scheduled for
March 19 and April 30. Some 29,300 candidates have registered to contend
10,000 available posts. But a troubled program to register millions of
voters and supply them with picture identification cards
has politicians, diplomats and voters questioning whether
Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) can stage the elections as
scheduled. "(The CEP) chose March 19 as the date, they must
respect it," said Suzy Castor, senate candidate from the opposition
Organization of People in Struggle (OPL). "A lot of people have not
been able to register and there is rampant fraud." The Western
hemisphere's poorest nation, Haiti has struggled to shake off decades
of dictatorship since 20,000 U.S.-led troops ousted a military regime
in 1994 and restored then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, its first
freely elected president, to power. When Aristide's term ended in 1996
he handed power to his protege, President Rene Preval. His term has
been scarred by a government crisis since a 1997 legislative election
which was declared fraudulent by international observers. Preval shut
down parliament 13 months ago and has been ruling by decree. The
upcoming elections are expected to fill two-thirds of the Senate and
the entire Chamber of Deputies, which together make up Haiti's
parliament. After postponing the date twice, officials worked in
an atmosphere of almost daily protests to meet the deadline.
Protesters are angry about insufficient voter registration offices and
a lack of cameras and film to make the laminated picture cards that
Haiti adopted to prevent fraud. Numerous cases have been reported of
people registering more than once or using false birth
certificates to get cards.In the hills of Petionville above the capital,
Viana Calixte, 32, said she registered without going to an office. I
just gave a friend my picture and they made the card for me," Calixte
said, explaining that she had been unable to get away from work to
register. An estimated 3,500 to 4,000 voter registration offices were
set up in the nation of 7.5 million people, election officials said.
Yet many people complain there is no bureau near them. A recent report
by the International Foundation for Election Systems, a
Washington-based advisory group, said shortages were caused by logistic
mishaps. IFES distributed 105 tons of election materials but 25 percent
of the film and 10 percent of laminated materials were lost, stolen or
ruined, according to Micheline Begin, IFES' Haiti project
director. There is a lot of losses overall, much more than
anticipated," Begin said. Some experts say officials botched the
registration by underestimating the number of eligible voters and their
eagerness for the free photo cards, a novelty in Haiti where few have
legal identification. Jean-Paul Poirier, a Canadian consultant whose
contract was not renewed in February by the CEP,said officials used an
old number when they estimated eligible voters at 4.5 million. "That
figure is from 1987 and should have been
updated to correspond to Haiti's population growth,"Poirier said on
local radio stations this week. A recent poll of 9,000 people by the
think-tank Economic, Finance, Management Society and financed by the
Haitian Chamber of Commerce, found 81 percent were likely to vote.
On Wednesday, the grass-roots St. Jean Bosco organization, loyal to
Aristide, said elections could not be held March 19 because of the
large number of people unable to register. Electoral officials say 2.7
million people have registered. The U.S. embassy refused comment on the
elections.But Canada's ambassador Gilles Bernier said he was
optimistic the vote would occur on schedule despite the problems.
"It is a Haitian decision, but at this moment I don't believe there will
be a delay," Bernier told Reuters. In an unscientific poll of 10 people
in Port-au-Prince and Petionville, only four had voter cards. The
others said registration offices had shut down or run out of
film. "A place was opened for a week or two, the film finished and
they just shut down," shop owner Matheu Brutus, 38, said. "When the
19th comes I won't be able to vote.