Deconstructing Another Right-Wing Victory in Haiti
December 6, 2016
Deconstructing Another Right-Wing Victory in Haiti
by Kim Ives
The largest and most important percentage to emerge from Haiti’s Nov. 20, 2016 election is that 78.31% of the country’s 6.2 million eligible voters did not vote.*
Some could not obtain their National Identification Card (CIN) or find their name on the long voter lists posted on the gates of huge voting centers. Others could not get to their assigned center because they live or work too far away, perhaps in another part of the country. In fact, the whole “voting center” system, which is different from that used in the 1990s when participation was much higher, has objectively suppressed the votes of many poor, itinerant Haitians.
Nonetheless, it appears that the vast majority of Haitians remain disenchanted with or unmoved by the candidates offered in the last four presidential contests in 2010, 2011, 2015, and 2016, or have lost faith in elections as a means to change their miserable lot. Participation in all those contests lurked at about one quarter of the electorate. The November 2016 polling is one of the lowest turnouts for a presidential election in Haiti and the Western Hemisphere.
Of the 21.69% of voters who did turn out, preliminary results of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) gave: 55.67% to Jovenel Moïse of former president Michel Martelly’s Haitian Bald Headed Party (PHTK); 19.52% to Jude Célestin of the Alternative League for Progress and Haitian Emancipation (LAPEH), an affiliate of former president René Préval; 11.04% to Moïse Jean-Charles of the Dessalines Children (Pitit Desalin) party, a Lavalas break-away; and 8.99% to Maryse Narcisse of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Lavalas Family Political Organization (FL). Final results are scheduled to be announced on Dec. 29, 2016.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/06/deconstructing-another-right-wing-victory-in-haiti/