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Haiti

Haiti reschedules presidential runoff for January 24

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Supporters of Jude Célestin prior to the first-round vote in October. (Facebook)
Supporters of Jude Célestin prior to the first-round vote in October. (Facebook)

What if Haiti rescheduled a presidential election and no one showed up?Haiti

With outgoing president Michel Martelly due to leave office on February 7, the government last week rescheduled a delayed presidential runoff for January 24 — potentially the last possible date, according to government officials, to ensure a smooth transition from Martelly to a successor.

But the legitimacy of the new runoff isn’t assured. The first round’s runner-up has not yet committed to participating in the campaign, given doubts about fraud and unfairness from the prior round, leaving in question the January 24 vote’s integrity. The runoff was also set, after July and October voting, to finalize the composition of a new parliament after nearly a year of legislative vacancy.

The decision leaves banana exporter Jovenel Moïse, the winner of the first round, a political neophyte close to Martelly, as the only candidate running and, accordingly, even more likely to win the runoff. Under such dubious conditions, however, his presidential mandate will be virtually meaningless if the opposition’s supporters boycott the vote in a country where only about one-quarter of all voters even bothered to turn out in the first round in October.   Continue reading Haiti reschedules presidential runoff for January 24 →

Haiti

Haiti’s postponed elections mar troubled Martelly administration

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It wasn’t supposed to be this way.Haiti

Nearly five years ago, when Haitians elected political newcomer Michel Martelly, a well-known compas singer also known to Haitians as ‘Sweet Micky,’ there was every expectation that a new government, backed by massive amounts of international aid and a renewed commitment to transcend the devastating January 2010 earthquake’s destruction, might finally end Haiti’s cycle of poverty, corruption and dependence.

Instead, nearing the sixth anniversary of that earthquake, tens of thousands of Haitians are still displaced after Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, was leveled. A standoff with Haiti’s congress ultimately delayed 2012 legislative elections for years, forcing Martelly to spend the last year in office governing without a valid legislature in a state of quasi-permanent constitutional crisis.

Elections on August 9 and October 25 were supposed to fix that by electing both houses of the Parlement Haïtien (Haitian Parliament) and the October election was set to select Martelly’s successor. The October voting initially seemed to go well, and the first reports gave no signs of massive fraud or political violence,  both of which have marred elections in recent years.

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But as it became clear that the December 27 runoff would feature Martelly’s preferred candidate, Jovenel Moïse, and 2010 contender Jude Célestin, a former minister with close ties to Martelly’s predecessor, René Préval, many of the remaining candidates cried fraud. With protests on the rise, the Haitian government announced last week that it was postponing the December 27 runoff indefinitely pending the report of a five-person electoral commission, hastily appointed by Haitian prime minister Evans Paul last week.

Jean-Charles Moïse, running as something of a newcomer and a fierce critic of the Martelly administration, placed third, and he and Célestin have railed against the government’s allegedly fraud, along with many of the other candidates (54 in total) who failed to make the runoff. Even the initially sanguine reports of international observers gave way to gloomier verdicts about the October vote’s integrity:

Not only were voting procedures inconsistently applied at poorly designed polling stations, the report notes, but the widespread use of observer and political party accreditation led to people voting multiple times and potentially accounts for as much as 60 percent of the 1.5 million votes cast.

Martelly’s administration, however, has little time to investigate and find any conclusions about fraud. Per the terms of the Haitian constitution, Martelly must hand over power to his elected successor on February 7, which means that, according to Paul, the last safe date to hold the runoff is on January 17. Continue reading Haiti’s postponed elections mar troubled Martelly administration →

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Haiti’s tragic, disgraceful Duvalier era is now over

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Many Haitians believed that bad spirits were behind the devastating January 2010 earthquake that leveled Port-au-Prince.Haiti

Those beliefs may  have been confirmed almost a year to the day later when, on January 16, 2011, Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier returned to Haiti after a quarter-century in exile in France, forced from office in 1986 after his family’s nearly three-decade rule of mismanagement, terror and oppression. His return came in the middle of two rounds of the most recent Haitian presidential election, which Michel Martelly, a Haitian singer, won, however improbably, against government favorite Jude Célestin and former first lady Mirlande Manigat.

The best thing that can be said about Duvalier’s death today, at age 63, is that he won’t be alive to interfere in Haiti’s upcoming 2015 presidential election, which can now be conducted without the shadow of perhaps the most pernicious of Haiti’s many unfortunate governments since its 1804 independence.

Unlike many deposed tyrants, Duvalier had the good fortune to die in his native Haiti.

Though he had his supporters, some of whom are too young to remember the brutality of the Duvalier era and some of whom look back with nostalgia on a time of greater security, Duvalier won’t die with much love from among the Haitian people, who are still living with the repercussions of his brutal rule.

His father, François Duvalier, was elected in 1957 on a populist platform and soon took the title of ‘president for life,’ with the support of an abusive and terrorsome rural militia known as the Tonton Macoute and the backing of a pliant US government more concerned about the anti-communist bona fides of its allies during the Cold War than the massive human rights abuses that ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier committed.

When Papa Doc died, suddenly, in 1971, Baby Doc took power at the age of 19. He held power for 15 more years before Haitians revolted, at long last, catalyzed by the brutal deaths of three student activists in Gonaïves in 1985 at the hands of Duvalier government forces. After three decades of exiles, murders and persecution, Haitians simply decided they’d had enough. Duvalier, for his part, lived a lush life in France off the proceeds of three decades of the family’s graft and outright theft.

Two days after he returned to Haiti, he appeared in court to face charges that he pilfered millions in funds. Rumors abounded that his rationale for returning to Haiti in the first place was to lay claim to $4 million in frozen Swiss bank account funds.

Though he was ultimately forced to stand before a court in 2013, the case against Duvalier atrophied under Martelly’s government. Though no autocratic, Martelly’s ministers were always  sympathetic to Duvalier — and less of his opponent, two-time president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who also returned to Haiti from South Africa shortly after Duvalier’s return in March 2011 and who may run once again for the presidency in 2015.

In the years between his return to Haiti and his death, Duvalier spent much of his time carousing in nice restaurants and living in a palatial home in the hills above the Haitian capital, far removed from the desperation and poverty that his 15-year rule helped create.

Though his crimes may have gone unpunished by a woefully inadequate justice system in Haiti, the country, which has faced its share of bad spirits since its 1804 slave-led revolution, will wake up tomorrow with at least one less malicious spirit haunting its future.