27055: Hermantin(news)2 foreigners abducted as election hopes fade (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Posted on Sat, Dec. 31, 2005
HAITI
2 foreigners abducted as election hopes fade

A pair of foreign election workers and one of their wives were kidnapped amid 
increasing violence that has forced another delay of planned elections.

BY JOE MOZINGO
jmozingo@MiamiHerald.com

Two officials with the Organization of American States working to prepare Haiti 
for elections have been kidnapped in Port-au-Prince, the OAS announced Friday, 
as violence surged around the capital and election officials conceded they 
would have to delay the vote for a fourth time.
The Haitian electoral council was meeting Friday afternoon to discuss new dates 
for the first of two rounds of national elections, meant to restore democracy 
to Haiti following the armed rebellion that ousted President Jean-Bertrand 
Aristide in February 2004.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the interim government in September 
that it must put a democratically elected government in the National Palace by 
a constitutional deadline of Feb. 7 in order to assure its political 
legitimacy.
But infighting and disorganization kept pushing the dates back, from October to 
November to the most recently set date of Jan. 8. Now at least one council 
member says Feb. 7 is not even realistic for the first round.
''I think we need two or three months at least,'' said Patrick Fequiere.
The U.S. Embassy in Haiti declined comment.
Meanwhile, a wave of shootings and kidnappings for ransom is showing just how 
precarious the situation is in Haiti. Two OAS officials working to set up 
technical equipment for the election -- and one of their spouses -- were 
kidnapped Thursday.
''The OAS is working at the highest level with Haitian authorities and 
international partners to secure the safe and timely release of the kidnapped 
individuals,'' according to an OAS press release. Two of the victims were from 
Peru and Guatemala. The nationality of the third is unknown.

LAWLESS SLUM

Just last week, a Jordanian soldier and a Canadian police officer, both members 
of the U.N. peacekeeping mission, were shot and killed in a lawless part of 
Port-au-Prince surrounding the Cité Soleil slum.
Peacekeepers have tried to seal the slum off, but checkpoints and shootouts 
with gangs -- fights that often wound and kill dozens of innocent bystanders -- 
have failed to curtail a rise in violent crime emanating from the area.
Kidnapping victims are often held there, including a Haitian-American deejay 
and a documentary filmmaker from North Carolina who were snatched Wednesday 
from a wealthy hillside suburb. As of Friday evening, their families were still 
negotiating for their release.
''At this point, the wave of kidnappings is not a purely criminal activity and 
I am convinced this is politically motivated,'' Mario Andresol, director of the 
Haitian National Police, told the Associated Press.
He did not elaborate, but many observers speculate that drug traffickers and 
various political groups are working to sow chaos to maintain a lawless 
environment.

ELECTION PROBLEMS

The election preparation has been dogged by problems and controversy from the 
start. OAS, which is responsible for the voter registration effort, had only 
distributed 1.4 million of 3.5 million vote cards by midweek, electoral 
officials said. At the same time, the group is trying to work out a problem in 
the registration database resulting in people being listed at wrong addresses.
Poll workers are yet to be hired or trained for the 804 polling centers around 
the country. Gérard Le Chevallier, the U.N.'s chief electoral advisor in Haiti, 
said the workers have been identified, but they won't be officially hired and 
put on the payroll until two weeks before the election. To do that, he said, 
the date must be set.
But Rosemond Pradel, secretary general of Haiti's Provisional Electoral 
Council, told the Associated Press that the new date might not be announced by 
the time the official date passes.
''In public, the date is still Jan. 8, but in private, everybody knows that 
this won't be the case, and that we probably won't even be able to announce a 
new date for the elections by then,'' he said.