Haitian Elections: No Voters, No Problem

http://www.blackcommentator.com/145/145_guest_haiti.html
The elections planned by the U.S. and its allies for Haiti in the fall are a
fiasco that is becoming impossible to conceal. Faced with the hopeless
prospect of registering 4.5 million Haitians by August 13th (60 days before
the first election on October 13), Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council
(known by its French acronym CEP) and the U.N. Peacekeeping Mission in Haiti
have taken to issuing surreal and unsubstantiated statements about the voter
registration process.

By the end of May, out of 436 planned registration offices, the Organization
of American States admitted that only 14 had been set up. The 436 offices,
were they to exist, would still stand in sharp contrast to the Haitian
elections of 2000, where more than 12,000 registration centers and polls
served the Haitian people.

Observing this logistical nightmare, the National Council of Electoral
Observers expressed grave doubts about the feasibility of registering
Haitian voters: "It would take 6 months to register 4 million voters in the
436 registration offices projected across the country - that is assuming
that the offices were functional today, open 7 days a week, 10 hours a day
and staffed by competent technicians."



In early June, with the lack of registration centers becoming a public
relations disaster, and with less than 2% of eligible Haitians registered to
vote, the CEP and the U.N. appeared to agree on a joint communications
strategy. Every few days, one or the other would announce the opening of new
voter registration centers, and the registration of additional Haitian
voters - after all, the numbers would be almost impossible for anyone to
verify, especially in the face of the skyrocketing violence in the country.

So, during a tidal wave of kidnappings which encouraged the U.S. to withdraw
its entire Peace Corps contingent as well as non-essential embassy
personnel, and issue a travel warning, the CEP and U.N. reported that within
the space of one solitary week in June, voter registration centers in Haiti
doubled, and then quadrupled again, with a concomitant increase in voter
registration that brought the claimed total registrants to 3.5% of the
potential total.

One might argue that the average Haitian, having nothing to lose, and
therefore nothing to fear from kidnappers, might choose to spend his or her
practically nonexistent free time hunting down a registration center in
order to be fingerprinted and photographed in return for the right to vote.
But it seems unlikely.



The average Haitian would have to get out of her neighborhood first. There
are no registration centers in the poor neighborhoods and no plans to open
any either. Poor Haitians have been terrorized in their own homes by police
and ex-militaries backed up by U.N. forces. They have been fired upon by
those same forces when they gather in peaceful demonstrations demanding the
return of the president they elected last time, with 92% of the vote, Jean
Bertrand Aristide. Neither Aristide, nor his party, Fanmi Lavalas, is on the
ballot this fall, thanks to the U.S./French/Canadian supported coup, which
removed him to Africa last year, and Lavalas has sensibly refused to join
the elections unless the attacks against it stop.

Of course this is not to be discussed. With Aristide out of the way, the
whys and wherefores are of little interest to the international community,
who treat the democratic Haitian elections of 2000 and the coup that
overturned them as though it were all a bad dream, better forgotten. Time to
move on!

An election result more favorable to foreign business interests has been in
the works since long before Aristide won in 1990 and again in 2000. As in
Venezuela, the U.S. has funneled millions of dollars to Haitian opposition
parties through the pleasingly named National Endowment for Democracy. The
fall elections planned for Haiti are the fruit of that investment; designed
to give those opposition parties the platform they have always desired, free
of competition from the 900 pound gorilla, Lavalas, but just to cover the
bet, free of potential Lavalas voters as well. Just last week, a diplomatic
source told Agence Haitienne Presse that the international community was
prepared to accept a Haitian election with only 200,000 to 300,000 voters,
or less than 7% of the electorate.



And why not? Evidence continues to emerge that the same international
community that howled about the invasion of Iraq was not only untroubled,
but supportive of the 2004 coup in Haiti. Yet, coups are by their nature,
nasty affairs that tend to leave lingering doubts about the legitimacy of
the replacement government. An election is the tried and true method for
erasing those doubts. That the Haitian election is totally rigged seems to
trouble no-one. International election observers are already being prepared.

Sue Ashdown is affiliated with the Washington, DC branch of the Women's
International League for Peace and Freedom, and can be reached at
sashdown@xxxxxxxxxxxx Olivia Burlingame Goumbri is Executive Director of
Ecumenical Program On Central America and the Caribbean, also in Washington.


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