27158: Hermantin(editorial)Losing patience, OAS, U.N. prod Haiti on (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Leonie M. Hermantin

Posted on Sat, Jan. 07, 2006


HAITI
Losing patience, OAS, U.N. prod Haiti on election
International leaders are demanding that Haiti hold elections by Feb. 7.

BY JOE MOZINGO
jmozingo@MiamiHerald.com

Amid mounting violence and frustration over repeated delays in international 
efforts to restore democracy to Haiti, the U.N. Security Council and the 
Organization of American States Friday called on Haitian authorities to hold 
the first round of national elections by Feb. 7.

The two statements come after electoral officials last week postponed the 
election -- then set for Sunday -- for the fourth time since October, blowing a 
constitutional deadline to have a new government in place by Feb. 7.

Interim Haitian Prime Minister Gérard Latortue is pushing to hold the first 
round of balloting on that date, but the fractious nine-member Provisional 
Electoral Council has yet to make the official call.

U.N. and OAS electoral advisors in Haiti say Feb. 7 will give them enough time 
to wrap up the final preparations, distribute voter ID cards and train poll 
workers for the first balloting since an armed rebellion ousted President 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004 and sent this country into a state of 
near-anarchy.

While the advisors hope the election will bring a strong representative 
government to Haiti, the approach of elections has stoked the same divisions 
and intransigence that paralyzed the nation before Aristide's ouster.

`SAME OLD STUFF'

''Nothing has changed, it's the same old stuff,'' said Robert Fatton, a Haiti 
expert and political science professor at the University of Virginia. ``The 
election might polarize the situation even further.''

Leading the polls so far is René Préval, a former president who was often 
depicted as Aristide's puppet and is now backed by many of Haiti's urban poor 
-- the same people who brought Aristide to power.

Meanwhile, violence has surged and a wave of kidnappings has terrorized the 
capital, Port-au-Prince.

Police chief Mario Andresol told The Miami Herald Friday that the kidnappings, 
in part, are an effort by various political groups that ''have the feeling they 
will not win the election'' to further delay the balloting by destabilizing the 
country. He also said he suspected that some parties were financing their 
campaigns with ransom money.

U.N. peacekeepers launched a series of new security measures in Port-au-Prince 
on Thursday, including checkpoints at major intersections throughout the city.

On Friday, Haitian police blocked off a major road leading to Cité Soleil -- a 
lawless slum where kidnapping victims are regularly held.

In its statement Friday, the Organization of American States condemned the 
violence and urged ``the Haitian people to resolve their political differences 
through democratic mechanisms and procedures.''

The unusually strong statement, issued after a closed-door session at OAS 
headquarters in Washington, said it regards ''this latest postponement of 
elections in Haiti with grave concern'' and urged a vote be held no later than 
Feb. 7.

The previous delays have largely resulted from infighting within the 
Provisional Electoral Council. But there have been problems throughout the 
undertaking.

For instance, the OAS mission here first experienced lengthy delays registering 
3.4 million voters, and now lags in the distribution of the voter IDs, having 
handed out fewer than 1.9 million.

OAS advisors say the latter effort was ''significantly delayed'' because the 
electoral council did not approve the list of polling sites until Nov. 8., and 
the council wanted people who were picking up their cards to be informed of 
where they would later cast their ballots.

They are now doling out about 100,000 IDs per day, said the chief U.N. advisor, 
Gérard Le Chevallier, and could be done in 15 days at that rate.

ID CARDS READY

Louise Brunet, a spokeswoman for the OAS mission, said the advisors also need 
to get out the word that the ID cards are ready to be picked up. ''We need to 
motivate people to get their cards, and we have done promotion for that,'' she 
said.

Le Chevallier said the ballots are printed and most of the 804 voting locations 
have been designated. Of the 273 centers that are privately owned, officials 
are still working on lease contracts with about 10 percent of the owners.

POLL WORKERS

The big variable left is the hiring and training of 38,691 poll workers, who 
will handle the votes for the 35 candidates for the presidency and 110 seats in 
the Senate and Chamber of Deputies.

''We have the 97 percent of the names'' of the people who will be hired, said 
Le Chevallier.

Every voting center will have one manager and at least one deputy manager -- 
2,100 people who have already been hired and began training Monday. When they 
finish next week, they will in turn train the remaining workers.

Every one of the 9,212 polling desks will have four people -- a president, vice 
president, and two secretaries. To keep fraud in check, no two people at the 
same desk should be associated with the same political party.

Le Chevallier said the poll workers' training will not begin until two weeks 
before election day, at which point they will start getting paid.

The electoral council has been discussing several dates between Jan. 29 and 
Feb. 7. Runoffs would be held later in races where no candidate wins a 
majority.

''We've taken this week to work, we'll begin to decide on the date next week,'' 
Provisional Electoral Council member Louis Richeme said Friday.

Miami Herald staff writer Pablo Bachelet contributed to this report from 
Washington, and special correspondent Reed Lindsay contributed from Haiti.