27088: Craig (pub) TIME: Kidnapping An Election (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

 From the Magazine | World

Kidnapping an Election

With gangs rampant in the streets, democracy in Haiti takes a backseat to chaos 
and insecurity
By KATHIE KLARREICH/PORT-AU-PRINCE
Posted Sunday, Jan. 01, 2006

The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere has a booming fast-cash industry: 
kidnapping. Ralph Charles knows this firsthand. In November he was held for two 
days in the slum of Cité Soleil, a square mile crammed with 200,000 people and 
unmanageable crime outside Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince. Charles, the 
owner of a soccer team, says his kidnappers never bothered with disguise. "I'm 
a big guy with a bad temper, but I kept my cool. They had guns bigger than me. 
They have lots of them," he says. The ring has hundreds of collaborators, 
including teenagers, and they get what they want. Charles shelled out several 
thousand dollars for freedom, but his was one of many payoffs. On the average 
day, 10 kidnappings occur; 20 on Christmas weekend alone. Security experts 
estimate that the criminals net $100,000 a day. One of the country's most 
charismatic radio DJs was kidnapped last week. The ransom demand: $2 million.

The crime wave coincides with Haiti's preparations for a crucial presidential 
election. Thirty-four men and one woman are vying for the hot seat, including 
two former Presidents, three former Prime Ministers, three former military 
officers, a guerrilla leader, two alleged drug traffickers and a sweatshop 
industrialist. Each wants to replace Alexandre Boniface, the interim President 
of Haiti, who assumed office after the forced February 2004 departure of 
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the controversial former priest who now lives 
with his wife and two daughters in South Africa amid allegations of stealing 
millions from Haiti's treasury and telephone company. (Aristide's lawyers deny 
the charges.) Aristide had been restored in 1994 after the intervention of 
20,000 U.S. soldiers; his close associate René Préval, a former President who 
served between the two terms of Aristide, is the front runner in the current 
race. Washington continues to exert influence, if in a less militant way. 
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Haiti last fall to nudge elections 
forward. They have been postponed at least four times, thanks to electoral 
incompetence, lack of security and the country's systemic chaos. There's no 
guarantee that the next scheduled vote will take place either.

Nearly 3.5 million people have signed up for the new voter-registration card, 
but it's unclear if they did so in order to vote or because the card is now 
required for all state transactions. The majority of the 40,000 pollworkers 
needed for election day have been recruited but not trained. And even though 
there are new measures to reduce fraud, including transparent ballot boxes and 
a new system to count and transmit results, the process may be undermined by 
inadequate surveillance, logistical trouble and bitter local political 
rivalries.

Two Haitian police officers are supposed to be stationed at each of some 800 
polling stations, but no one is looking to the 6,000-man force to provide 
security for the elections or anything else. Most consider the police part of 
the problem. "The nice officers are the ones who torture without leaving 
blood," says a human-rights specialist who spent months gathering data. 
"High-ranking police officers' involvement in illegal activities has become 
institutionalized," says Haitian national police chief Mario Andersol, who 
admits that he lacks the manpower, weapons and institutional credibility to 
provide the security his country desperately needs.

Everyone looks to the well-equipped 9,006-member United Nations Stabilization 
Mission in Haiti, led by Brazilian troops, as the guarantor of security. But 
the U.N. force, which was deployed in June 2004, is assigned to defend Haiti's 
constitution, not to take up arms against criminals. "When they leave, I will 
leave too," says Jean-Buteau Sévère, 34, who returned to his dicey 
Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Bel Air only after the Brazilians set up an 
outpost there. The gangs and private armies are likely to collude in 
controlling the streets--and thus the votes--in the walkup to the election. And 
unless that situation is eliminated, few experts believe any kind of 
humanitarian aid can be effectively dispensed, dooming the incoming government, 
regardless of who leads it.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1145229,00.html