#4390: Driver answers Carey about rushing to judgment (fwd)

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: Tom F. Driver <tfd3@columbia.edu>

I'm replying to thiis from Chip Carey:

    Tom Driver comments "With regard to the method the CEP used to 
    tally the votes, it seems to me there's been quite a lot of rushing to 
    judgment."  
    
    Is that why the OAS complained that the vote counts were not 
    finished? The electoral commission admitted that it was not counting 
    all the names, even though the 1999 electoral law requires it. I 
    suspect Leon Manus will name a few others who have been rushing 
    the tally in his press conference expected in Boston later this week.  
    
The ones I think have been rushing to judgment are many members of the 
press, Kofi Annan at the UN, and some contributors to Corbett's list.  As for 
the OAS, its error was to have been too slow.  That is to say, if the OAS 
wanted properly to challenge the methods of the CEP's computation of vote 
results, it should have raised the point BEFORE the elections.  How so?  
Because the same methods had been used in previous elections from 1990 
on without challenge.  Therefore, the OAS, as a knowledgeable body, should 
have known what to expect.  

It's my guess, purely a guess, that if the opposition to Lavalas had done well 
in the May 21 elections, the method of calculating the results would never 
have been questioned.  The OAS timing of its challenge has, as Gerard Jean-
Juste said to the Corbett list recently, "made a chaotic situation worse."  
There are those in Washington as well as Port-au-Prince who are glad of that.


-------------
Tom F. Driver
Sheffield, MA
<tfd3@columbia.edu>