Haiti's election chaos creates US dilemma

[Judi Lynn]

Haiti's election chaos creates US dilemma
Having backed an electoral fiasco, Washington must reckon now with the uncertain future of its principal asset, René Préval
Kim Ives guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 December 2010 19.30 GMT

On 7 December, Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced the deeply flawed 28 November general elections' "preliminary results". The top three presidential candidates were former Senator Mirlande Manigat (31.37%), ruling Unity party candidate Jude Célestin (22.48%), and former compas performer Michel Martelly (21.84%). Abstentionist Haitians were the real winners because only 1.087m, or 23% of Haiti's 4.7m registered voters, turned out.

~snip~
Supporters of Jean Henry Céant, the leading Faux-Lavalas candidate with supposedly 8.18% of the vote, and nine other candidates, who have banded with Céant in an informal front, have also held large demonstrations in recent days calling for the election's annulment, the CEP's replacement and Préval's resignation.

"The UN and the international community will never accept that a legitimate Haitian president leaves under pressure from the street," responded UN Mission to Stabilise Haiti (MINUSTAH) chief Edmond Mulet on 3 December. "It would be a coup." Ironically, Mulet leads an occupation force that entered Haiti following the February 2004 coup – backed by Washington, Paris and Ottawa and involving "pressure from the street" – against "a legitimate Haitian president" Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Over the past six years, MINUSTAH has killed dozens of Haitians militating for Aristide's return. He remains exiled in South Africa, and his Lavalas Family party, Haiti's largest, has been barred from all post coup elections.

In fact, the current electoral fiasco is merely the 2004 coup's continuation. Préval and Washington became bedfellows because both seek to exclude Haiti's poor majority, who are overwhelmingly pro-Lavalas. But their plot is failing, and, like thieves falling out, they increasingly distrust each other, despite Mulet's profession of support.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/09/haiti-usforeignpolicy

[Billy Burnett]

1. A **Provisional** Electoral Council banned the most popular party in Haiti.

That Haitian party being Famni Lavalas party (a socialist party).

A lot of media window dressing on most all news out of Haiti, as demonstrated in the Guardian article, rarely is this mentioned (and IS mentioned in your posted article - a rare mention).

Much like an occupier creating a Provisional Electoral Council here and banning the Dem (or Repug) party - of course it would create an uprising.


Thanks for posting. :hi: