12041: James Morrell replies to Kevin Pina

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: James R. Morrell <james.morrell@verizon.net>

Mr. Pina writes that I have an obvious axe to grind with President Aristide.
Not so. When I first met President Aristide in 1992, I kind of liked him. I
saw him many times during 1992-94 while we were working to restore him to
Haiti, and counted him as a friend.

When I saw him in 1996, word of the split was coming out, and I quoted for
him Benjamin Franklin's famous aphorism about America's founding fathers,
"Either we hang together, or we will assuredly hang separately." I still
think that's true.

The last time I saw him in 1998, I entreated his aides to arrange a meeting
with his former colleagues Gerard Pierre-Charles, Micha Gaillard, and the
others to work the whole thing out.

Mr. Pina asks why didn't the OAS negotiate its complaints about the
ballot-counting process instead of going to the press. Answer is it did
attempt to do so, but was initially rebuffed by the election commissioner
himself, Leon Manus. Manus subsequently changed his mind by 180 degrees. For
that he was forced to flee for his life.

Mr. Pina is right that many among Haiti's poor majority voted for Lavalas.
Not so overwhelmingly, however, that the other parties were completely
swamped. FL won a third of the seats outright, but the other two-thirds
needed to go to a second round. That shows some diversity among the
electorate. What would have happened in that fair second round? Would the
remaining FL candidates, who were leading but short of an absolute majority
in the first round, have won? Or would the French two-round system have
created an enforced unity for the non-FL candidates by narrowing them down
to one candidate? If the voters had voted linearly, FL or non-FL, first
round to second round, there would be a non-FL majority in both houses. But
voters don't vote linearly. I don't claim to know. But clearly, Aristide
didn't want to take the risk of finding out.

Mr. Pina asks whether the initial appraisals of the elections were positive
until it became apparent that Lavalas had won. Our appraisal of May 20 was
positive because voting was orderly and there was little violence. We (the
OAS observers) knew FL had won because we witnessed the counting in our test
precincts that very evening. That didn't affect our reporting, which
responded to detailed criteria in the OAS questionnaires such as the secrecy
of the ballot, the distance of campaigners from the polling site, presence
of political advertising on the polling site, presence of party
representatives, and integrity of the count.

Finally, Mr. Pina wonders whether I have benefited personally from my Haiti
stance. How little does he know!
James R. Morrell
Haiti Democracy Project
2303 17th St., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009
(202) 588-8700
e-mail:  james.morrell@inxil.com
web page:  http://haitipolicy.org