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25318: Hermantin(news)Obstacles abound in Haiti vote (fwd)




From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Wed, Jun. 08, 2005


HAITI
Obstacles abound in Haiti vote
More than a year after Haiti's elected president was forced out during an armed revolt, officials are now facing daunting obstacles to prepare for elections in the fall.
BY JOE MOZINGO
jmozingo@herald.com

PORT-AU-PRINCE - Facing persistent doubts and a litany of obstacles, international and Haitian technocrats are scrambling to prepare for elections this fall in a country still convulsing with political violence after an armed revolt last year.

The electoral headquarters has been hit by a grenade and machine-gun fire. The nation's electoral council is paralyzed by infighting. A campaign to register up to 4.5 million eligible voters has signed up only 113,000 in a month and a half.

And violence in the capital is causing such bloodshed that the U.S. State Department's top official for the Americas, Roger Noriega, has planned a hasty visit to Port-au-Prince today to assess the situation. On Tuesday, his boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said the U.N. peacekeepers here need to boost their 7,400-member force to ``really get ready, so that these elections are a success.''

Yet even if the security situation does somehow improve, a thunderhead of political animosity looming over Haiti could douse the whole electoral effort.

A CREDIBLE VOTE?

The only party with proven widespread support among Haiti's abjectly poor majority is the Lavalas Family of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who fled the country during the revolt in February 2004. Furious at his ouster, the party has so far refused to participate in the electoral process, threatening to undermine the legitimacy of the elections.

That could be a devastating blow to the country's hopes for political stability, and an embarrassing turn for Washington, which refused to rush to Aristide's help during the revolt and then propped up the interim government that replaced him.

''The U.S. believes strongly that elections not only need to take place this year, but will take place,'' U.S. Ambassador James B. Foley told The Herald last month.

`LOGISTICAL NIGHTMARE'

U.N. and Haitian election officials say they plan to hold local, parliamentary and presidential elections as scheduled, in three rounds between Oct. 9 and Dec. 18. As Haiti's first elections since Aristide won the presidency in 2000, they will see some 10,000 posts up for grabs, and at least 95 parties registered.

''It's a logistical nightmare, but it's moving ahead, it's happening,'' said Gérard Le Chevallier, a Salvadoran citizen and chief of electoral assistance for the U.N. Mission in Haiti.

At an expected total cost of $61 million -- pledged by international donors -- officials plan to open more than 600 voting centers in even the most isolated villages, miles from any road.

But the European Union is holding up nearly $10 million until the Provisional Electoral Council pulls itself together after it fell into disarray when its president resigned in November. Just last week, the council's operations chief said the group had no functioning administration and would, at earliest, be able to hold the first election in December.

Le Chevallier said the council is resolving its problems. And Elizabeth Spehar of the Organization of American States, which is running the registration campaign, said the effort should quickly accelerate as new registration centers open up. While only 26 of the 424 needed centers have been opened, she said she expects a majority to be up and running by the end of the month.

INSTABILITY A THREAT

But many fear Haiti, perennially battered by political violence, is simply not stable enough to hold free and fair ballots.

Pro-Aristide gangs are openly fighting U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police in the capital's sprawling seaside slum of Cité Soleil. Common crime is surging, particularly kidnappings and carjackings.

''Elections are a dangerous thing. If they are poorly handled, it could be a disaster,'' said Robert Fatton Jr., a Haiti expert and political professor at the University of Virginia.

Critically, Lavalas' refusal to take part in the process on the grounds that its supporters are being summarily shot or arrested by police poses a significant threat to whether the elections are seen as credible. The party is using the same tactic that Aristide's opponents used in 2000, when they boycotted the presidential election and largely convinced the international community that his victory was fraudulent.

Now the interim government, backed by those rivals, has done little to bring Lavalas into the process. Most notably, Haitian authorities have refused demands -- by Lavalas, the United Nations and even their U.S. benefactors -- to release Aristide's jailed prime minister, Yvon Neptune.

He was arrested nearly 11 months ago on charges that he orchestrated a massacre of political opponents. He has been on an on-and-off hunger strike, but so far prosecutors have not publicly presented any evidence against him.

Human rights groups say Neptune is simply the public face of a broader trend in which hundreds of lesser-known Aristide supporters are locked up. In sharp contrast, Haitian judges have exonerated dozens of military and paramilitary officers accused of killing Aristide supporters during the 1991 military coup that sent him into exile for three years.

''That is certainly not the way you're going to draw even moderate Lavalas people into elections,'' Fatton said. ``And it's inconceivable that you have credible elections without Lavalas.''

LAVALAS SPLIT, TOO

But Lavalas is increasingly divided between hard-liners and those who have expressed interest in moving forward with the elections as candidates from other parties begin to emerge.

Evans Paul, a one-time confidant of Aristide and Port-au-Prince mayor who became one of his most vocal opponents, said the lack of a dominant party leaves a fair and open playing field never seen before in Haiti.

''There is no illegitimate force to violate the election like in the past,'' said Paul, secretary general of the United Democratic Convention. ``The police are still too weak to do that. . . . There is no political party that can do it.''

ELECTIONS CRUCIAL

He and others say it is crucial that Haiti elect its own government and free itself of foreign control by U.N. peacekeepers, the third occupation in the past century.

''We have to have elections,'' said Guy Philippe, a likely presidential candidate and one of the leaders of the revolt that pushed Aristide out. ``If we don't, it will be chaos and more international intervention.''

On a recent morning at a registration center in the suburb of Carrefour, Senatus Gerald, 21, was in line before it opened. Like many Haitians, he wants the new national ID card that comes with registration. And he wants to vote.

''I would like for the young people to have a chance,'' he said. ``The country needs to change. I just hope security tightens up.''

Le Chevallier, the U.N. elections advisor, notes elections have been held in far more violent environments, from the Middle East and Africa to his native Central America.

''People were shooting at the lines in Salvador,'' he said. ``There was shooting here in 1986 and 1987. Democracy is a gradual process.''