27346: (news) Chamberlain: No voting stations for Haiti's largest slum (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Haiti's election authorities
have decided not to put voting stations inside the nation's largest slum,
drawing accusations they are discriminating against the troubled nation's
poorest citizens.
     The teeming Cite Soleil slum, with between 300,000 and 600,000
residents, and other shantytowns in the capital were the bedrock of support
for former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was ousted in February
2004 after an armed revolt.
     They may now be a significant source of support for front-runner Rene
Preval, an Aristide protege who served as president from 1996 to 2001, as
the Caribbean country staggers toward a new presidential election on Feb.
7.
     The ability of slum residents -- who complained of being
disenfranchised by Aristide's ouster nearly two years ago -- to vote in the
presidential and legislative elections has become an important issue, with
critics denouncing what they see as an absence of voting stations near poor
areas.
     But Rosemond Pradel, secretary-general of Haiti's Provisional
Electoral Council, said officials decided to relocate voting centers to
help election workers and to avoid intimidation of voters by criminal
gangs.
     "We don't think the security conditions are met to organize a vote
inside Cite Soleil," Pradel told Reuters this week.
     The long-delayed election will replace an interim government appointed
after Aristide was pushed from power in February 2004 by an armed rebellion
and under pressure from the United States and France.
     A Haitian council of elders appointed an interim government under
Gerard Latortue, a Florida business consultant and former U.N. official who
became prime minister and has ruled without a parliament.
     Aristide, who was accused of despotism and corruption in his second
term and forced into exile in South Africa, is not running in the election
but remains a potent figure in Haitian politics.
     GANG VIOLENCE
     A U.N. peacekeeping force of 9,000 soldiers and police has been unable
to control gang violence in Cite Soleil, a sprawl of tin shacks and open
sewers on the edge of the capital.
     A top official with the U.N. peacekeeping force, Gen. Mahmoud
Al-Husban of the Jordanian contingent, said voter registration took place
inside Cite Soleil without incident.
     "It is feasible and we are ready to secure the people of Cite Soleil
to go to vote in Cite Soleil," said Al-Husban, whose troops are deployed in
the slum. Two Jordanian peacekeepers were killed and a third wounded by
gunfire in a clash with one of the gangs in the slum last week.
     But election officials, who have been critical of international
efforts to help Haiti hold elections, do not believe the U.N. has the
capacity to meet the challenge.
     "U.N. troops can't even provide security for themselves in Cite
Soleil, how could they secure the population there?" said Pradel, adding
that polling centers would be placed in areas close to the dangerous slum.
     Cite Soleil and other slums in the capital, which is home to more than
2 million of Haiti's 8.5 million people, were the heart of the grass-roots
Lavalas movement that swept Aristide to the presidency in 1991 and again in
2001. His Lavalas Family party was fractured after his exile and observers
say many Aristide loyalists have thrown their support behind Preval.
     Preval is not running under the Lavalas banner and has distanced
himself from Aristide, but the country's small and wealthy elite, which
fiercely opposed Aristide, fears his possible victory.
     "It is clear they want to prevent us from voting, because they know
our vote won't go their way," said Rene Lundi, a representative of a group
called Coordination for the Development of Solino, another slum in the
capital.