#4863: Haiti Sets Date for Presidential Elections (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: nozier@tradewind.net

Saturday August 12 11:17 AM ET
 Haiti Sets Date for Presidential Elections 

 PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haiti's President Rene Preval issued a
 decree on Friday, saying that presidential and senatorial elections
would be held on November 26. Preval also said that Haiti's electoral
council, which has been criticized both abroad and at home for
miscounting results for the Caribbean nation's recent parliamentary
 elections, would organize the vote. Eight of the 27 senatorial seats
will be up for grabs in the election, after 19 were filled in recent
 legislative and local elections. The scheduled vote comes after Haiti's
earlier parliamentary elections that international observers
 declared flawed. The Organization of the American States said the
electoral council had given an undue victory to Fanmi Lavalas, the
political party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which won 18
of the 19 of senatorial seats. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said
this week the botched elections would cast a shadow over the
``Parliament's democratic legitimacy.'' The elected president is
scheduled to take office on February 7 and the senators in early
January, Preval's decree said. President Aristide, a former Catholic
priest who was ousted by a coup in 1991 and restored by a U.S.-led
invasion force in 1994, is widely expected to run for and win the
presidency. Elections held in 1997 were declared fraudulent and have
paralyzed Haiti's government for much of the last three years. After
dismissing Parliament in 1999, Preval has ruled by decree.