Hundreds of thousands of Haitians still live under tarps and tents because their houses were destroyed in the Jan. 12 earthquake. Hundreds are dying every week from an epidemic of cholera caused by lack of access to clean water. Haiti is still occupied by Minustah, the U.N.’s armed force for the “stabilization” of this impoverished country.
So the “international community” — mostly the United States and its very junior partner France — decided this was a good time to hold elections for president, Haiti’s lower house and about a third of its Senate.
But the most popular party in Haiti, Fanmi Lavalas, was barred from running candidates.
The U.N.’s chief political officer in Haiti, Edmund Mulet, said the “elections were peaceable” with some “minor incidents,” and threatened to call out Minustah if protests continued. The New York Times said on Dec. 1 that the “elections in Haiti were sullied” but “fundamentally sound.” The general consensus in the U.S. State Department, the United Nations, the Organization of American States and CARICOM (Caribbean states) followed Mulet and the New York Times.
The Haitian people had a completely different reaction and held massive protests. They were outraged at the way the elections were held, especially the exclusion of parties by the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP).
“Frauds, Lies, Challenges and Betrayals” read the headline in one Haitian weekly. “A National Farce” read another headline, over a picture of a ballot box dumped in an open sewer. (Closed sewers don’t exist in Haiti.)
Voters couldn’t find their precinct or their names weren’t on the voting list. Even presidential candidates had to cast provisional ballots because they weren’t listed. Voting offices opened late or closed early. Some had 50 ballots for 5,000 voters. In some balloting offices, only President René Préval’s ruling party was allowed to observe the vote and count; in others, the ballot boxes were filled before voting began.
The general impression of election observers was that voter turnout was less than 20 percent. The preliminary vote totals won’t be reported until Dec. 7.
On the afternoon of election day, 12 presidential candidates held a joint news conference to demand that the elections be annulled because of massive and pervasive fraud and misconduct. Two of them, Mirlande Manigat and Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly, backed off from this demand a day later, both having been told by the U.N. that they were leading in the “count.” (Al Jazeera TV, Dec. 2) The other 10 took part in massive street demonstrations and denounced the elections as “tricks, filled with shenanigans, not expressing the will of the people.” (video, Haiti Press Network, hpnhaiti.com.)
One very telling criticism of the election came from Jacques Edouard Alexis, a presidential candidate who had served twice as President René Préval’s prime minister. He said, “The election is ruined. It needs to be canceled.”
Thousands demonstrate against ‘selections’
Thousands of people have come out into the streets every day since the election, overturning garbage dumpsters and setting up blockades of burning tires, making it difficult for Minustah to use its armored personnel carriers. They are not just supporting one or another bourgeois candidate. They are demanding true elections, “not selections.” They are protesting the undemocratic structure of the elections themselves, not just the undemocratic way in which they were conducted.
They demand the opportunity to vote for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas party, which the CEP ruled off the ballot. It was the U.S. that forced Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, into exile in 2004. Every time his party has been allowed to run in elections since then, it has won. A successful Lavalas candidate would lead a popular resistance to the U.S. neocolonial policies imposed on Haiti.
Aristide explained in an interview with filmmaker Nicolas Rossier, which appeared in the newspaper Haïti-Liberté in early November: “They are not planning to have free and fair democratic elections. They are planning to have a selection. They excluded the Lavalas party, which is the party of the majority.”
Cuban medics vs. cholera
Along with the elections and their manipulations, the cholera epidemic is another major issue. Most Haitians believe it was introduced in mid-October by Minustah troops, since, despite poor sanitation, there had been no cholera in Haiti for generations. Because these same armed forces protected the fraudulent election apparatus, a very popular slogan has been “U.N. and cholera out of Haiti.”
Columnist Robert Buddan pointed out in a Jamaican newspaper: “One great irony is that Cuba, criticized for not having ‘competitive’ elections, has really been putting people first in Haiti. At the end of the day, that is what the people of Haiti want right now. Almost 40 percent of the sick have been looked after by the Cuban medical brigade. At their rate of treatment, only 700 persons would have died, not 2,000, and as many as 70,000 would not have been infected. While the United States was the top funder of elections, Cuba is the top savior for cholera-stricken Haitians.” (The Gleaner, Dec. 5)
Cuba has just sent 300 additional medical personnel to Haiti from its Henry Reeve Brigade. It appears that the threat from cholera has increased dramatically, given that clean water and latrines are available for only a small minority of the Haitian people, certainly not for the 1.5 million still living under tarps or in tents.
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