Averting Election Theft in Haiti, by Maxine Waters

[rumpel]

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The Bush administration worked with the Haitian elites to force President Aristide to step down. The International Republican Institute, which is affiliated with the Republican Party, funneled U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Aristide-haters, and Roger Noriega, President Bush's former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs and the former chief of staff for Sen. Jesse Helms, conspired with Andre Apaid to organize, train and finance the opposition.

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The U.S. government promised to help Haiti organize elections in order to restore democracy. The interim government was supposed to oversee these elections. However, the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), which had the responsibility for organizing the elections, did not include any representatives of the Lavalas Party, the party that represented the poor majority. The CEP refused to place any polling stations in several of Haiti's most impoverished areas, including Cite Soleil, a home to over 60,000 registered voters. It was a blatant attempt to disenfranchise the poor.

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Several of Haiti's political prisoners could have run for office if they had not been in jail. Yvon Neptune, the former Prime Minister of Haiti, and Annette August, a popular Haitian singer, have both been detained illegally for over a year. Both are prominent members of President Aristide's Lavalas Party, but neither was able to participate in the elections.

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Ironically, the Lavalas Party did have a candidate in the presidential election. The interim government certified a local politician named Marc Bazin as the Lavalas' candidate for president. This would be comparable to the U.S. government arresting John Kerry, John Edwards and Howard Dean before the 2004 New Hampshire Primary and then letting the Republican Party choose a Democrat to run against President Bush.

my comment: of things to come?

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Early results showed an overwhelming victory for Rene Prval, the candidate with widespread support among the country's poor. Many polling stations posted their results the day after the election, and Prval won between 60 percent and 90 percent of the vote in all of these polling stations. By Thursday, the CEP was reporting that Prval had 61.5 percent of the votes counted thus far. The candidate in second place, Leslie Manigat, had only 13.4 percent. A sample of the results by the National Democratic Institute predicted that Prval would win the election with 52 percent to 54 percent of the votes, and a survey by the Organization of American States showed Prval with an estimated 55 percent.

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The counting rules used by the CEP seemed to be designed to deny Prval a victory. About 125,000 ballots, or 7.5 percent of the votes cast, were declared invalid by the CEP because of alleged irregularities. Another 4 percent of the ballots were allegedly blank but nevertheless included in the vote count, thereby making it more difficult for Prval to exceed 50 percent. Who in their right mind would believe that 4 percent of the electorate would get up early in the morning and wait for hours outside of polling stations that failed to open on time in order to cast a blank ballot?

my comment: sound somewhat familiar....

more at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/32385/