22934: (Chamberlain) Haiti election plans threatened by lack of cash (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Haiti's plans to hold
high-tech and costly elections in 2005 are at risk unless international
donors rapidly provide promised funds, a senior election official said on
Tuesday.
     Five months after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in an
armed revolt, Haiti's electoral council needs $100 million to organize what
will be the most expensive ballot in Haiti's 200 years of independence,
council member Rosemond Pradel said.
     "But so far we have not received a penny," Pradel, secretary general
of the nine-member body, told Reuters.
     The Caribbean country's return to democracy after the ousting of
Aristide and appointment of an unelected, U.S.-backed interim government
could be delayed beyond December 2005, the current deadline, he said.
     Preparations for the election have been torn by infighting, and the
electoral council faces the further challenge of trying to organize
high-tech voting with digitized identity cards and electronic voting
machines in a country that barely has electricity.
     "To put the electronic system in place will require 12 months," said
Pradel, calling on donor nations to speed up the release of funds to help
organize the ballot.
     The United States, European Union and other donors including
multilateral lending agencies like the World Bank agreed at a donors
conference last month to pour more than $1 billion into Haiti over the next
two years.
     The aid is regarded as crucial if the poorest country in the Americas
is to pull out of economic stagnation and political crisis that culminated
in the bloody rebellion against Aristide, a former priest who championed
the poor but was deeply mistrusted by Haiti's rich and by Washington.
     Aristide, who became Haiti's first freely elected leader when he
initially took office in 1991, is in exile in South Africa after fleeing
Haiti on Feb. 29. A Brazilian-led U.N. peacekeeping force is on the ground
in Haiti.
     Aristide's Lavalas Family party has refused to participate in the
electoral council organizing the 2005 election.
     That has undermined confidence in the panel, and especially in the
government's plans for a computerized voting system that some analysts fear
could be manipulated to prevent Aristide's supporters among the poor
majority from determining the outcome.
     Council chairman Roselaure Julien recently accused her colleagues of a
"plot to hijack the electoral process."
     Julien  denounced a "fierce power struggle" among those who helped
oust Aristide and said she had come under under pressure to resign because
she had resisted attempts to influence her.
     "I won't kneel down. I say there should be a free and fair election,
not selection, nomination or plebiscite," Julien told Radio Solidarity last
week.
     Pradel told Reuters panel members had no intention of organizing
fraudulent elections. "We have had enough of that. We want to organize free
and fair elections," he said.