27576: Craig (news) AP Blog on Haiti Elections

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dan Craig


February 8, 2006

AP Blog on Haiti Elections
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:42 p.m. ET

This is the third of periodic dispatches by Andrew Selsky, the AP's Chief of 
Caribbean News, who is in Haiti covering the first elections held since 
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in a February 2004 rebellion.

------

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 8, 10:15 a.m. local

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti

I was impressed by the huge turnout of voters who waited with incredible 
patience when many found their polling stations were not open on time, and then 
stood in neat lines for hours to fill out their ballots to elect a new 
government in Haiti.

There were some scuffles, some shoving, and in at least one polling station, 
the crowd of voters stormed into a polling station, overwhelming the few police 
officers there before order was restored.

Haiti is the only place in the world where slaves successfully rebelled and 
threw out their colonial masters, the French. But democracy has never fully 
taken root in Haiti, the most impoverished nation in all the Americas and the 
Caribbean.

Only one president, Rene Preval, has been elected and then finished his turn in 
office. The others have been ousted in military coups or rebellions.

But today, the people in Haiti have hope that their individual ballots will 
make a difference.

Not everyone could vote though. There were some foulups.

As I was standing amid lines of voters at a large polling station outside the 
Cite Soleil slum yesterday, an elegant woman was loudly complaining to no one 
in particular, her patience having finally boiled over.

Her name was Adrienne Francois, 53, who has six children and eight 
grandchildren. She was dressed in a blue satin-like dress. A wide-brimmed straw 
hat warded off the sun's rays. She had walked for miles, from one polling 
station to another, to vote. At each one, and she said she had been to five, 
she was told her name was not on the rolls and was directed to another polling 
station. At each polling station, she had to endure waiting in long lines 
before finding out she was not registered there.

''Every place I go, I'm getting the runaround,'' she told me. ''I'm giving 
up.''

She had walked such a distance -- probably eight miles -- that her open-toed 
shoes were coming apart. She had done a quick repair job on one with a safety 
pin, and the other with a piece of red plastic tied into a knot.

Like millions of other Haitians, this is what she wants for her country, and 
what she hopes a new leadership can bring:

''I'll be happy when there is security, so that when I'm sick in the middle of 
the night, the person that will take me to the hospital won't be afraid to 
drive me. If I'm sitting by the side of the road selling used clothes, I won't 
have anything to worry about. There won't be shooting or anything. I'll be in a 
place of peace.''

-- Andrew Selsky

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Haiti-Blog.html