27036: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti election to be delayed again -officials (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Dec 30 (Reuters) - Haiti's oft-delayed election
will be postponed again, election officials said on Friday amid growing
demands for the resignation of the troubled Caribbean nation's interim
government.
     Although Haiti's election council, charged with organizing the vote,
has not yet made an official decision, five of the nine members told
Reuters it was impossible to have credible presidential and legislative
election on Jan. 8 as scheduled.
     Election authorities were to meet with political parties and
candidates later on Friday to hear recommendations about new dates and to
discuss a detailed timetable for steps leading to an election.
     "We have to face the hard reality that the elections cannot be held on
January 8th and that the necessary corrections should be made to ensure the
holding of a credible vote," Max Mathurin, head of the council, said in a
telephone interview on Friday.
     Haiti is grappling with a host of technical problems including the
distribution of millions of voter identification cards and the hiring of
thousands of poll workers as it tries to hold its first election since
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was pushed from office in February 2004.
     An interim, U.S.-backed government headed by appointed Prime Minister
Gerard Latortue was charged with holding an election to put Haiti's fragile
democracy back on track. But the voting, originally set for November, has
been delayed several times.
     Mathurin and council members Rosemond Pradel, Jerson Richeme,
Pierre-Richard Duchemin and Patrick Fequiere said the problems will not be
resolved in time to hold the first round of balloting on Jan. 8.
     Mathurin said the primary concern is to organize a credible election,
rather than meet a deadline at any cost.
     "If it is materially and technically impossible, as is the case today,
to hold these elections on January 8th, do you think we should go ahead and
organize a farce?" Mathurin said.
     Mathurin said a new schedule would not be published on Friday. The new
dates will probably be known within the coming week, election officials
said.
     More than three dozen political parties have called for the
resignation of the government, accusing it of incompetence. Haiti's
constitution requires the inauguration of a new president by Feb. 7, a
deadline unlikely to be met.
     "The interim government had two years to organize elections and they
failed to do so," said Osner Fevry, a leading figure of the Political
Parties' National Council, a group of 30 parties.
     "Now, it is time for this government to step down so that a national
unity government may be appointed with the mission to organize elections in
90 days," Fevry said.
     Gerard Gourgue, the presidential candidate of the Patriotic Unity
Movement, a coalition of six parties and several grass-roots organizations,
called Latortue's government a symbol of failure.
     "This government has been failing every mission it was given," Gourgue
said. "The most important and fundamental one was to organize elections and
they failed."
     Political analysts say the repeated delays could cause voters to lose
confidence in the electoral process.
     Some 1.5 million voting cards, which are needed to cast a ballot, have
been distributed but 2.5 million registered voters still do not have them.
Most of the nearly 40,000 election workers, who will run polling stations,
have not been trained, officials say.