Haiti Elections News Roundup - December 11

After a long meeting on Wednesday December 9, the Group of Eight (G8) reaffirmed its unified stance to the current crisis, putting forward a list of clear postulates: yes to an independent investigative commission, no to a December 27 second round, and Martelly must leave office at the end of his term on February 7, 2016. G8 members Sauveur Pierre-Étienne and Steven Benoît said that the group is favourable to Evans Paul staying on as Prime Minister in the interim, if necessary.

  
The statement of unity came after tensions emerged when LAPEH coordinator Jean Hector Anacasis claimed that all 7 other presidential candidates in the G8 were prepared to support Jude Célestin in the second round. Pitit Dessalines candidate Moise Jean-Charles clarified on the radio that while he and Célestin were allies in the fight for democratic rights, he could not support the LAPEH candidate.  since his party was fighting for the “economic independence” of Haiti, while Célestin was allied with elements of “the traditional economic elite that has held the country hostage for over 200 years.” 

On December 10, International Human Rights Day, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, protesting against “electoral impunity.” Marking the sixty-seventh anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, activists called on the President and the CEP to respect the civil and political laws.  They demanded the respect of the people’s “right to vote” and the establishment of an independent investigation commission.  Pierre Espérance of RNDDH (National Human Rights Defense Network) was unequivocal in his assessment of the current situation, denouncing President Martelly as “an apprentice dictator.” 

SOFA (Solidarity of Haitian Women) also took to the streets demanding the respect for women’s civil and political rights. It was only in 1950 that women were granted the right to vote in the Haitian Constitution. 65 years later, they are still an underrepresented and marginalized political group, despite mandatory quotas. SOFA called for an end to impunity and decried the CEP’s attempt to hide the scale of electoral violence, not least President’s Martelly’s verbal abuse of a female citizen earlier this year, during a campaign event in Miragoâne (Nippes Department).

A G8-led march to the CEP headquarters on December 5 was broken up by police with tear gas and water cannons. Several incidents of vandalism occurred at the end of the demonstration, leading organizers to cancel a planned December 7 strike out of concern that pro-government infiltrators would instigate violence.

Kenneth Merten, the U.S. State Department’s Special Coordinator for Haiti, visited the country from December 3 to December 9 in an attempt to broker a resolution to the electoral crisis. Merten, a former U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, is said to have met with Jude Celestin and Jovenel Moïse, as well as human rights groups and the business sector. Yet despite the American envoy’s visit and multiple assurances of U.S. support for “honest and inclusive elections,” a resolution of the electoral crisis still seems far away, with civil society organizations calling his trip “a failure.” 

U.S. involvement in the elections has been widely criticized in Haiti. In an earlier interview with The Tico Times, Merten claimed that “this is a Haitian election,” and was hesitant to publicly take a stand: “We’re in a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ position. ... We can’t say the elections were great and the outcome was perfect because we don’t know yet. It would be premature for us, in my view, to prejudge this election as terrific or awful until we see this process run its course.”

On Saturday, December 5, the Electoral Councillor Jacceus Joseph confirmed that “the results published by the CEP do not correspond with the reality of the ballot box,” echoing earlier accusations of fraud made by civil society organizations. The Group of Eight (G8), human rights’ activists, the Haitian-American diaspora and professional networks such as the National Lawyers Guild - International Association of Democratic Lawyers have all condemned the recent elections, pointing to the low voter turn-out, widespread fraud, and other procedural irregularities. His visit to the Vote Tabulation Center allowed him to uncover the evidence and expose the scale of the problem, though he has yet to provide details.

Two religious groups recently added their voices to the large number of sectors denouncing widespread fraud and electoral irregularities in the October election. The Bishops of the Catholic Church called on the CEP to investigate the fraudulent results and to apply the electoral laws to guarantee a level of credibility of the electoral process. The Conference of the Haitian Pastors called the publication of tainted results an act of “high treason.”  

On December 7, the National Coordination of Demobilized Soldiers declared that their members were impatiently awaiting their integration into the newly revived Haitian Army.