Daniel O'Neil

What if the Haitian Elections were not so bad?

Yesterday, I wrote a post entitled "The Haitian Elections are Disputed...now what?" At that point, it looked like Haiti was headed towards a major crisis. 12 of the Presidential candidates had held a press conference to denounce the elections as fraudulent. Crowds had gathered in Petionville to protest against the elections. A well-connected friend of mine told me that the only solution was for President Preval to quit and leave the country. There were all the makings of a major crisis.

But then the tide changed. The top two opposition presidential candidates retracted their earlier allegations. Then the OAS came out saying that the elections were valid. It seems that the early returns had Mme. Manigat and Michel Martely as the top vote getters. It is hard to claim that the government had rigged the elections if their candidate was losing! Although it is too early to close this affair entirely, it does seem that we all jumped to the wrong conclusion.

So what happened? Assuming that no new information comes to light and the final results are legitimate and accepted, why were we all so ready to believe that they were fraudulent? I am afraid that this might turn out to be a case where we all chose to look at the world through our own filters rather than waiting for the facts. Haiti has had so many failures that it was easy to assume that the elections were yet another one. Rather than holding out for facts, we went with the easy story that Haiti had failed once again. 

I hope that am left humbled by this situation--that the final results show that Preval and his electoral council, with help from the OAS and the UN, did pull off the impossible and manage to hold relatively free and fair elections. I will happily apologize for having been a doubter.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11870013udd

The Haiti Elections are disputed...now what?

Twelve of the candidates for the Haitian Presidency gathered today before the polls had even closed to denounce the widespread fraud that they claimed was happening. The candidates included all of the top candidates with the exception of the one in Preval's party who had been trailing a distant second in the pre-election polls. As I write this entry, there are reports of protests in Port-au-Prince, Gonaives, Cape Haitian, and elsewhere. So what comes next?

It would be wonderful if the reported cases of fraud were untrue--if the stories of stuffed ballot boxes and blocked voters were just exaggerations. There are always logistical problems at elections--we have this problem in the US as well. If it turns out that the actual vote count matches the pre-election polls, then perhaps the twelve candidates over-reacted.

A second possibility is that the fraud happened, but that the Electoral Council and the International Community decide that it was within an acceptable range. A candidate has to get more than 50% to avoid a second round (scheduled for January 16th). If the results show that no candidate won the required 50%, even if Preval's candidate (Jude Celestin) was in first place, then a runoff will have to happen. This might be acceptable to the Haitian political parties, if they could be assured that the runoff would be cleaner. Many would claim that the Celestin only made it to the second round through fraud, but it would hold out the hope that the opposition could still win in the second round. Note that Mme Manigat refused to run in the runoff elections in 2006 because she felt that the first round was too flawed. She might take the same route again.

The worst case would be to have the fraud so blatant that the results would be completely unacceptable--for example if Jude Celestin was declared to have won more than the 50% required to avoid a run-off election. This would force a confrontation and would force the international community to take sides.

The international community trumpeted these elections as an important milestone in Haiti's progress. Instead of providing a clear path forward, the elections have created many more questions and doubt. Haiti desperately needs clear leadership to allow it to rise from the rubble. I hope and pray that somehow this mess ends well.