27506: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Elections (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By JOSEPH B. FRAZIER

   GONAIVES, Feb 6 (AP) -- Mules laden with sacks of ballots were led into
Haiti's countryside Monday to reach a remote village on the eve of
elections aimed at putting Haiti's experiment with democracy back on track.
   Hours before polls open Tuesday, thousands of U.N. peacekeepers fanned
out to guard against attacks by heavily armed gangs, some of them loyal to
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the president ousted in a rebellion two years ago.
   In his northern hometown of Marmalade, the presidential front-runner,
Rene Preval, said he was satisfied with his campaign. "I'm tired but I am
happy," Preval said Sunday night in an interview with AP Television News.
"It is an important election for the Haitian people."
   Authorities on Monday urged Haitians to turn out in large numbers to
vote, and rejected the possibility that fraud could taint the results.
   "Haiti's future depends on this vote," Jacques Bernard, director general
of the electoral council, told reporters in Port-au-Prince, the capital of
this nation of 8 million people. "Good elections are the only solution to
saving our nation."
   He defended a decision not to put voting stations inside the sprawling,
seaside slum of Cite Soleil, a base for armed gangs blamed for a wave of
kidnappings in the capital.
   Residents of Cite Soleil accuse officials of trying to disenfranchise
them, but officials say they can vote at polling stations just over a mile
outside the slum.
   Bernard said Cite Soleil, an area that even heavily armed U.N.
peacekeepers using tank-like vehicles have not fully penetrated, is too
dangerous for election workers.
   "It's a moral question. I couldn't ask an election worker to go into an
area that I myself wouldn't go," he said.
   Underscoring the difficulty of holding elections in a country with a
ruined infrastructure -- including roads -- mules transported some election
materials to areas where U.N. helicopters were unable to land. The vote has
been postponed four times since October because of security problems and
trouble distributing elections materials.
   At dawn Monday, a dozen U.N. peacekeepers from Uruguay loaded five mules
with sacks stuffed with ballots, ballot boxes and other election materials
in the rural town of Archaie, just north of the capital. The mules trotted
off on a seven-hour trek to a polling station in the mountains.
   There are 33 candidates in the presidential election, including two
former presidents, a former rebel in the insurgency that forced Aristide
from office, and a former army officer accused in the death of a Haitian
journalist. If no candidate wins a majority, a March 19 runoff would be
held between the top two candidates.
   Preval, an agronomist who led Haiti from 1996-2001 and was an ally of
Aristide, is the only elected Haitian president to finish his term in
office. He has vowed to crack down on hardened criminals blamed for
spreading terror in Port-au-Prince, but is coy on whether he would welcome
back his one-time ally Aristide, who is in exile in South Africa.
   Hundreds of candidates are running for 129 parliamentary seats.
   The election has been billed as a move to restore democracy, but it is a
daunting task. With decades of brain drain, capital flight and crippling
judicial, security, health and corruption problems, the Western
hemisphere's poorest nation needs more than a quick electoral fix, experts
say.
   The 70-mile drive from Port-au-Prince to the northern town of Gonaives
takes four hours, and the roads are far from Haiti's worst.
   Deforestation is widespread, leaving topsoil vulnerable, and when
hurricanes hit, catastrophic floods often to follow. Land plots grow
smaller as the population increases, and poor farming methods exhaust an
already-tired soil.
   Robert Rotberg of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government says the
solution may be in the hands of others -- perhaps the United Nations or the
Organization of American States. "Basically the only thing that can alter
Haiti's projection is to put it under some OAS or U.N. total supervision,
something akin to a trusteeship," he said.
   But even in a teeming Gonaives marketplace, where women hunkered over
small piles of fruit, bags of salt, tinware or skull-buster chili peppers,
people looked forward to progress.
   "I hope the elections go in a good way and that the president changes
the country," said Rosseleine Jeanbaptiste, who guarded piles of garlic and
okra. "We don't want to keep living like this."