Haiti changes date again for runoff election

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 11 (Reuters) - Haiti's electoral authorities on Saturday brought forward slightly the date for runoff elections to pick senators and legislators.

Originally due to take place on March 19 and then rescheduled for April 23, the second-round vote will now take place on April 21, a Friday, ostensibly to allow officials the weekend to prepare for classes on Monday the schools that will be used as voting centers.

"We finally decided to organize the second round on April 21, which is a Friday, for practical reasons," Max Mathurin, president of the Provisional Electoral Council, told Reuters.

Elections are usually held on Sundays in Haiti, the poorest and most unstable country in the Americas.

An exception was the presidential election on Feb. 7, the first national ballot since former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in February 2004 by an armed revolt and under international pressure to quit.

Mathurin said the council decided to hold the runoff on a Friday to give election workers the whole weekend to put desks, chairs and other equipment back in place in time for schools to open on Monday.

"When we have the election on Friday, at least they will have Saturday and Sunday to starting cleaning and reorganizing," he said.

None of the contenders in the races held alongside the presidential election on Feb. 7 for 30 Senate seats and 99 seats in the lower house appear to have won the majority -- 50 percent plus one vote -- needed for a first-round victory.

President-elect Rene Preval, a onetime Aristide ally and like him a champion of the Caribbean nation's poor masses, was himself originally awarded just under 50 percent of the votes after a week of ballot counting.

But, fearing angry protests by his supporters and mindful of growing allegations of vote fraud seemingly aimed at denying Preval a first-round win, the electoral authorities decided to change the way they counted ballots with no votes cast on them and thereby handed him a victory.

Preval was originally supposed to take office on April 29, but his inauguration is expected to be delayed because of the inability to hold the second round of the legislative election on time. He could take office in the first week of May.

The party that holds a majority in parliament will pick a prime minister and form a government.

No party seems likely to obtain an outright majority but Preval has been meeting other parties in hopes of building a governing coalition that can bridge the deep divides in the country of 8.5 million, in particular the deep distrust between the poor and the small, wealthy elite.

Build strong electoral framework

BY KATHIE KLARREICH--The lasting image I have of Election Day in Haiti last month was just after sundown. I was standing outside the hollow shell of a building where 43 tables, or polling stations, were located. Poll workers who had been on site for more than 14 hours were huddled around a single candle per table, the only light available for the polling booth president to read the ballot, pass it around to political party observers for confirmation and then have the secretary record the vote on a master tally sheet. I left before the last vote was counted, bleary-eyed and discouraged that after so many years, so many elections, so many battles to get to this celebratory day of democracy, this was the best that Haitians were going to get.

Election a disgrace

While I admit that it's hard to build an electoral framework without an infrastructure, this was the fourth presidential election I've witnessed in the last 18 years, and I know I am not setting the bar too high by saying that it was a disgrace.

The entire procedure, from the ill-conceived voting booths to the dismal tabulation process was an insult to the Haitian people. It's hard to understand how, with a $75 million budget covered by the international community, a bloated electoral calendar that included four postponements over three months and well-paid -- if not over-paid -- international experts from the United Nations and the Organization of American States, there could have been so much mayhem and magouy -- a catchall Creole word that means corruption, deceit and swindling.

Which begs the questions: Why? And then what, if anything, can be done to rectify the problem for the 129 parliamentary seats and numerous local spots yet to be determined? Although the runoffs were originally set for March 19, they have already been postponed. Unfortunately, the delay appears to be related to technical tally difficulties and the flight of the Provisional Electoral Council president rather than an aptly concentrated effort to identify and correct the massive fraud that took place in the first round.

What went wrong?

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would say that this is part of a master plan by the international community to undermine President-elect René Préval, who can't govern until he has a prime minister, chosen in conjunction with the parliament. Préval's previous record as president has the international community concerned that he will either realign himself with ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, or govern as an independent, truly democratic leader with an unprecedented popular mandate.

With no investigation into all that went wrong with the first round of voting, and because there will be far less attention paid to these upcoming elections now that the presidency has been decided, there will be an even greater chance for irregularity. Voters will trek long distances, confront incomplete registration lists and then cast their vote without knowing if it will be counted because poll workers with political agendas know precisely how much they were able to get away with already. Tinkering with tally sheets, allowing voters to cast multiple ballots and stuffing the ballot box will, in some places -- particularly those in the hard to reach areas in the countryside -- be the norm, rather than the exception.

Expose the problems

There were more than a thousand national observers and three international observation teams for Haiti's first round. These groups have been shamefully silent. Sending internal memos and holding backroom discussions on electoral discrepancies with foreign diplomats and Haitian officials without demanding changes or exposing the problems and their sources to the press serves only to massage their egos and pad their pockets. It does nothing to advance the democratic process in Haiti. If this is the best that they can do, they should stay home.

It doesn't have to be this way. We have to demand that our dollars are put to better use, propping up Haitian institutions that will hold the Haitian state accountable. We need to be selective but generous in supporting specific grass-roots groups, some of which trained local observers who did their best to try to ensure fraud-free elections. The vast majority of the 37,000 poll workers and nearly 2.1 million who voted want, and deserve, at least that much.

Kathie Klarreich is a freelance journalist and author of Madame Dread: A Tale of Love, Vodou and Civil Strife in Haiti.

Inauguration of new Haiti leader to be delayed

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 2 (Reuters) - The inauguration of Haiti's new president, scheduled for March 29, will be postponed because the legislative assembly that administers the oath will not exist by then, officials said.

The chaotic Caribbean country's electoral council said on Thursday that a run-off election for senate and lower chamber seats would not take place as planned on March 19, delaying the installation of a Haiti's first elected government since former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in 2004.
"We are already behind schedule. It is clear that the run-off election can no longer take place on March 19," said the president of the nine-member council, Max Mathurin.

"So that situation will affect the date set for the inauguration of the new president, because there'll be no parliament."

Ex-president Rene Preval, a one-time protege of Aristide, won a general election on Feb. 7 after fears of violence and widespread suspicions of vote fraud persuaded the electoral authorities to change the way they counted blank ballots and give him a first-round victory.

Backed by the poor masses in the slums where Aristide also found most of his support, Preval is mistrusted by the same wealthy elite who helped send Aristide into exile.

The electoral council did not set a new date for the second round of the legislative ballot, in which the two leading candidates for each of 30 senate seats and 99 lower house seats will compete.

Council members blamed the delay partly on street protests by President-elect Preval's supporters in the week it took for authorities to announce the Feb. 7 election result.

Preval's political platform called "Lespwa," or Creole for Hope, leads in the legislative election. Based on first-round results, Lespwa seems likely to gain 16 senate seats and 34 seats in the lower chamber. The party that holds a majority in parliament will pick a prime minister and form a government.

Preval has begun negotiations with rival candidates to try and form a governing coalition in parliament.

Preval on Thursday visited the Dominican Republic, Haiti's neighbor on the island on Hispaniola.

Bilateral relations have long been strained by mistrust and racism. Up to a million Haitian illegal immigrants work on Dominican farms or construction sites in conditions that human rights workers say are not far removed from slavery.

Preval is also expected to travel to Chile, Argentina and Brazil whose countries have deployed troops under the United Nations to help stabilize Haiti.