25801: (news) Chamberlain: Impending electoral fiasco (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

(Miami Herald, 23 July 05)


An election without voters

BY SUE ASHDOWN and OLIVIA BURLINGAME GOUMBRI



Less than four months before the start of Haiti's elections, it is getting
hard to conceal the signs of an
impending fiasco. But Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (known by its
French acronym CEP) and the U.N.
Peacekeeping Mission in Haiti are trying anyway.

Faced with out-of-control violence and the impossibility of registering 4.5
million Haitians by Aug. 13 (60
days before the first election on Oct. 13), the two institutions keep
issuing upbeat but unsubstantiated
statements about the electoral process.

By the end of May, out of 436 planned registration offices, the
Organization of American States admitted that
only 14 had opened. (For Haiti's 2000 elections, the CEP opened more than
2,000 registration centers.)

By early June, less than 2 percent of eligible voters had registered, so
the CEP and the U.N. escalated their
public relations. Every few days, one or the other would announce the
opening of new voter registration
centers and the registration of additional Haitian voters with numbers
almost impossible to verify in the face
of the skyrocketing violence in the country.

As a tidal wave of kidnappings struck Haiti, leading to the evacuation of
the Peace Corps and non-essential
personnel from the U.S. Embassy, the U.N. enthusiastically reported that
voter registration centers in Haiti
had doubled. Several days later the CEP reported that the number of centers
had quadrupled again. But by June
21, the registration rate was a still-insignificant 3.5 percent.

One might think that the average Haitian voter -- too poor to make a
kidnapping target and desperate for
change -- would be lining up to be fingerprinted and photographed in return
for the right to vote. But he or
she would need to get out of the neighborhood first. There are no
registration centers in the poor
neighborhoods and no plans to open any either.

Even getting out of the house can be a dangerous ordeal in the poor
neighborhoods of the capitol,
Port-au-Prince. Police and paramilitary groups, often backed by U.N.
troops, routinely raid these areas,
considered bastions of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, purposely
killing or arresting suspected
dissidents and killing or maiming bystanders as collateral damage. When the
political violence subsides, gangs
filling the void left by the police's conversion to a political force take
over, imposing economic terror.

Meaningful participation in election activities is impossible. Aristide's
Lavalas movement, which has won
every fair election in Haiti's history by a landslide, refuses to join the
elections unless the attacks
against it stop. This includes freeing the hundreds of political prisoners
in Haitian jails, from grassroots
activists to Haiti's last constitutional prime minister, Yvon Neptune. It
means ending the routine police
practice of managing legal, nonviolent demonstrations by shooting at them.

The response of the countries that pushed Aristide out of Haiti to exile in
Africa 16 months ago is to hope
for the best. They will support some tinkering -- more guns for the Haitian
police, a few more U.N.
soldiers -- but will not face up to the fact that Haiti's interim
government is unable to control the country
and unwilling to establish the conditions necessary for free and fair
elections.

The U.S. government appears willing to accept a deeply flawed election with
low turnout, no Lavalas
participation and no effective campaigning. That will provide a window of
opportunity for the opposition,
which has managed to attract millions of U.S.-taxpayer dollars but few
Haitian votes over the past decade. It
will also allow the Bush Administration to say that its regime change
strategy in Haiti bore fruit. The one
thing it will not do, is to make life more free, democratic or in any way
better for the millions of poor
Haitians who have suffered for too long from too many undemocratic
governments.


Sue Ashdown is a member of the Women's International League for Peace and
Freedom in Washington, D.C., and
Olivia Burlingame Goumbri is executive director of the Ecumenical Program
On Central America & the Caribbean.