From: Kim Ives <kives@xxxxxxxxx>
"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI LIBERTE newsweekly. For
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HAITI LIBERTE
"Justice. Verite. Independance."
* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *
December 9-15, 2015
Vol. 9, No. 22
DECEMBER 11 AT UN HEADQUARTERS:
DIASPORA TO UNITE TO DENOUNCE FOREIGN MEDDLING IN HAITIAN ELECTIONS
by Kim Ives
Haitian partisans of different political currents and candidates are
coming together on Dec. 11 in front of the United Nations General
Secretariat in Manhattan to demand that foreign governments stop
meddling in Haiti’s municipal, legislative, and presidential
elections.
“We are calling for Sandra Honoré [the head of the United Nations
Mission to Stabilize Haiti or MINUSTAH] to leave, for the cancellation
of the Aug. 9 and Oct. 25 elections, and for a transitional government
to hold new, genuine elections,” said Eugenia Charles of the
Dessalines Children (Pitit Desalin) platform of former Sen. Moïse
Jean-Charles.
James Derosin, coordinator of the Lavalas Family’s New York chapter,
which procured the permit for the action, said that demonstrators are
coming from New York City suburbs, New Jersey, Connecticut, Boston,
and Washington, DC. “We are putting out the word and appealing to
compatriots far and wide,” he said.
The demonstration, to be held in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza from 1p.m. to
5 p.m., is being billed as an initiative of the “11th Department,”
referring to the diaspora outside of Haiti’s ten geographic
departments.
Haitians are outraged that the so-called Core Group – the ambassadors
of the U.S., France, Canada, Brazil, Spain, the European Union, and
the Special Representative of the Organization of American States
(OAS) – have been openly directing the elections and certifying them
as “acceptable” despite massive outcry from the Haitian population and
observers that they are fraudulent.
Kenneth Merten, the U.S. State Department’s Haiti Special Coordinator
and the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs’ deputy assistant
secretary, wound up a five-day visit to Haiti this week, during which
he met with Haitian government officials and candidates.
To the dismay of many, Merten met individually with Jude Célestin of
the Alternative League for Progress and Haitian Emancipation (LAPEH),
the supposed second-place finisher behind Jovenel Moïse of the ruling
party (PHTK) in the hotly disputed Oct. 25 presidential election’s
first round. Célestin is part of a coalition of candidates, known as
the “Group of Eight” or G8, which is demanding an independent review
of the election and President Michel Martelly’s resignation if he does
not overhaul the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) and the Haitian
National Police (PNH). If there was to be any meeting at all with
Merten, it should have been with the entire G8, many Haitians say.
Until now, Célestin has vowed not to go to a run-off if the G8's
demands are not met.
“I’m very proud of what the U.S. has done regarding Haiti over the
past 30 years,” Merten recently told the News is My Business blog. “We
have worked very hard, sometimes using some very heavy, blunt tools,
to ensure that the democratic tradition continues to live on in
Haiti.”
Some of those “blunt tools” of the past 30 years are surely the two
Washington-fomented coups d’état (1991 and 2004) and four military
occupations which belie his assertion that “we would like to see Haiti
more fully in charge of its own destiny." Add to that record U.S.
intervention in the 2010-11 elections and those of today.
Merten, who was the U.S. Ambassador to Haiti from 2009 to 2012, made
it known that the U.S. opposes an independent commission to review the
election results and any transitional government, but was amenable to
postponing the second round to mid-January from Dec. 27, the current
projected date. The U.S. has contributed about $33 million to the
elections, which have a total price tag of about $100 million,
according to Prime Minister Evans Paul speaking on Radio Vision 2000
last week.
“There should be nothing more sovereign than a nation’s elections,”
said Berthony Dupont of the Dessalines Coordination (KOD), which also
supports the Dec. 11 action. “Washington and its allies have been
meddling in Haiti’s elections for the past 25 years, since our last
truly independent polling on Dec. 16, 1990. When an election doesn’t
go the way they want, they orchestrate a coup d’état and then
militarily occupy the country, as with MINUSTAH today. We want the
North American and European imperialists, along with their handmaiden
the UN, to get out of Haiti and allow the Haitian people to pursue
their own self-determination.”
Numerous massive demonstrations in Haiti have also denounced the
meddling of the U.S., UN, and Core Group in Haiti’s current elections,
such as two huge outpourings last week on Thu., Dec. 3 and Sat., Dec.
5 in Port-au-Prince. Demonstrators did not carry posters of the
candidates they support to show their rejection of the Aug. 9 and Oct.
25 elections. They called for the resignation of Martelly, Paul, and
the CEP, and the formation of a provisional government to hold new
elections.
SURVEY CASTS DOUBT ON HAITI ELECTION RESULTS
by the Haiti Relief and Reconstruction Watch Blog, CEPR
A survey from the Brazilian Igarape Institute, released Nov. 19,
indicates that official results from Haiti’s Oct. 25 presidential
election may not reflect the will of the voters. In the wake of the
election, local observers and political leaders have denounced what
they claim was massive fraud in favor of the governing party’s
candidate, Jovenel Moïse, who came in first place with 32.8% of the
vote according to the final results. In second place was Jude Célestin
with 25.3%, and in third and fourth respectively were Moïse Jean
Charles with 14.3% and Dr. Maryse Narcisse with 7%.
But the survey, which is based on interviews with over 1,800 voters
from 135 voting centers throughout all of Haiti’s ten departments,
reveals a vastly different voting pattern than the official results.
37.5% of respondents indicated they had voted for Célestin while 30.6%
voted for Jean-Charles and 19.4% for Narcisse. The governing party’s
Jovenel Moïse was the choice of just 6.3% of survey respondents.
The official results have set up a potential runoff between Jovenel
Moïse and Célestin on Dec. 27, but Célestin has so far refused to
recognize the results or accept his second-place position ahead of the
second round of the elections. A coalition of eight candidates has
labeled the results “unacceptable” and called on the Provisional
Electoral Council (CEP) to form an independent commission to audit the
results and investigate allegations of fraud. After a meeting on Nov.
16 between the CEP and the G8, as the opposition coalition is known,
the CEP formally rejected the proposition, claiming that the electoral
decree did not allow it. Opposition groups responded by pledging to
continue a growing protest movement that has seen many thousands take
the streets since results were announced, threatening to derail the
costly and internationally backed electoral process.
A large protest was broken up by police on Nov. 18 near the CEP
headquarters. Police used tear gas and rubber bullets and Steven
Benoit, one of the opposition presidential candidates challenging the
results, suffered injuries to his head. Moïse Jean Charles, who was
riding on horseback, was also reportedly injured, and yet another
presidential candidate, Jean Henry Céant, was reportedly detained and
threatened with arrest.
The survey appears to support calls for greater transparency in the
vote counting process, which has come from not just protestors but a
diverse section of Haitian society. Though the CEP has held its
ground, it is facing a dire credibility crisis. In November, a
coalition of local civil society organizations released a 50-page
report on the Oct. 25 election, terming what occurred a “vast
operation of planned electoral fraud.” The group, which had observers
present in some 50% of voting centers across the country, found that
the fraud primarily benefitted the governing party and its allies, but
added that it “could not have been achieved without the active
participation of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP).” The
coalition is backing calls for an independent commission to
investigate further.
Jaccéus Joseph, one of nine members of the CEP, refused to sign the
official results, later telling the press that there were too many
doubts about the credibility of the vote for him to do so. In
November, Haitian Prime Minister Evans Paul, whose party, the
Konvasyon Inite Demokratik, is seen as a close government ally,
indicated in an interview with the Miami Herald that he would be open
to the idea of a commission. “For me we are obliged to engage in a
political discussion to find a solution to the problem in the
elections,” Paul told the Herald’s Jacqueline Charles, adding that he
was beginning to reach out to opposition candidates.
The fraud allegations are wide-ranging but most focus on mandataires,
or political party monitors. The CEP has said it distributed more than
900,000 accreditation passes to political parties for these monitors.
With the passes, monitors could vote wherever they were present, even
if they were not on the electoral list. In the run-up to the election,
a black market developed around these passes, selling for as little as
$2.00 on the morning of the election. Local observers documented
numerous instances of multiple voting and the European Union
observation mission also noted that not all procedures to prevent
multiple voting were followed. With only 1.6 million people voting in
the election, in some areas these political party monitors made up
nearly 50% of voters.
The true impact of these party monitors and other forms of ballot
stuffing remains unknown, however. In a letter to the CEP from
presidential candidate Charles Henri Baker released in November by the
Miami Herald, he describes in detail how the tabulation center did not
perform adequate checks to ensure that these types of fraud were
detected. Monitors and poll workers were able to vote without being on
the list and their names were to be recorded on a separate sheet of
paper; however Baker, who visited the tabulation center multiple
times, reveals that these were not properly evaluated to ensure fraud
had not taken place.
The new survey, however, may be able to shed some light on how big the
impact of party monitor fraud was. The survey excluded monitors from
the sample, meaning that the discrepancy could be caused by the
massive number of monitors who participated, legally or illegally, in
the election. With hundreds of thousands of passes circulating, the
impact is potentially enormous and, based on the survey results, could
have impacted who is headed to the December runoff.
Despite the concerns from local observer groups and political parties,
the international community has largely stayed silent after initially
backing the results. The Organization of American States (OAS)
indicated that the official results were consistent with a quick count
it had performed on Election Day and said it would send observers for
the second round vote in December. The so-called “Core Group” that is
made up of large donor countries, including the United States, as well
as the United Nations and OAS, also issued a statement supporting the
holding of a second round between Jovenel Moïse and Célestin.
Still, another coalition of local observers, l’Observatoire Citoyen
pour l’Institutionnalisation de la Démocratie, whose work is funded by
the U.S. and Canada, have backed calls for greater transparency. In a
statement released in November, the group urged the electoral
authorities to make every effort to prevent the electoral crisis from
continuing and to restore faith in the process.
The Igarape Institute survey also sheds light on how voters’
perceptions of democracy and elections have been impacted by the
current process. On Election Day, over 20% of respondents said they
were “completely” in agreement with the statement that their vote
counts, but after results were announced, this dropped to just 5%. A
similar phenomenon was observed in response to the question of whether
voting determines who leads the country; the number of respondents
agreeing completely dropped from 22% to 4%. “Perceived electoral
corruption has a corrosive effect on Haitian citizen attitudes and
faith in the democratic process,” said the survey’s lead author, Dr.
Athena Kolbe.
This article was originally published on the Haiti Relief and
Reconstruction Blog of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
(CEPR).
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