#5279: Re: #5274: Former Haitian president Aristide makes bid for island's presidency (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Vivian Tortora <vtortora@capecod.net>

Bob and members of this list: I have recently re-registered to be a member
of this list after a fairly lengthy absence. Regarding this particular post,
I do not know if this was simply overlooked, or if members do not much care
about attributing their forwarded posts, but why do we not know where this
post originated? I wanted to comment on the sentence "Aristide, the likely
favorite in the
> upcoming presidential election that the opposition has boycotted, served
> as president of Haiti from 1991 to 1996", but did not know who to chastise
for the sloppy reporting!

Anyway, it's good to be back.
Pat


----- Original Message -----
From: Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>
To: Haiti mailing list <haiti@lists.webster.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2000 1:48 PM
Subject: #5274: Former Haitian president Aristide makes bid for island's
presidency (fwd)


>
> From: nozier@tradewind.net
>
> Former Haitian president Aristide makes bid for island's presidency
>
>
> PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) - -Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
> threw his hat into the ring on Monday as a candidate in the island's
>  November 26 presidential elections. As the 47-year-old Aristide
>  officially declared his candidacy before the  Provisional Electoral
> Council on Monday, several thousand enthusiastic supporters gathered
> around the building in eastern Port-au-Prince. The mission of the
> electoral council -- formed to oversee the legislative and municipal
> elections that took place May  21 and July 9 -- was recently modified to
> include the presidential vote. Aristide, the likely favorite in the
> upcoming presidential election that the opposition has boycotted, served
> as president of Haiti from 1991 to 1996. Despite efforts by the
> Organization of American States to smooth things over, no agreement
> could be reached between Aristide's party, the Lavalas Family Party, and
> the opposition, organized under the Democratic Convergence Party.
>  Four other candidates who are less familiar to the public at large,
> including the son of a former neo-Duvalierist official, have also
> entered the race to succeed President Rene Preval. Former Haitian
> dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier's regime lasted from 1971 until 1986,
> when he fled to France. Preval's term ends on February 7, 2001, the 14th
> anniversary of the Duvalier dictatorship's demise. Presidents here are
> elected to five-year terms and are not eligible for immediate
> re-election. The deadline for candidacy declarations for the upcoming
> presidential election, as well as for a third of the Senate seats, also
> up for grabs this election period, was originally set for Monday.
> The election council extended registration by a week due to the small
> pool of candidates. Lavalas won a sweeping majority of seats in
> legislative elections earlier this year. Those polls were widely
> criticized as unfair, and the United States and the European
> Union warned Haiti it could lose millions of dollars in aid if it
> ignored charges of election irregularities. According to diplomatic
> sources from Port-au-Prince, the deputy secretary general of the
> Organization of American States, Luigi Enaudi, is expected to return to
> the Haitian capital on Thursday in the hope of breaking the political
> impasse between Lavalas and the Democratic Convergence.
>