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Change Your Life! |
Haitians
vote for new government after violent campaign |
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May 23, 2000
PORT-AU-PRINCE,
Haiti, MAY 22 (AP) - Haitians voted peacefully in massive numbers
for the first time in years - a cry for democracy by a people defying
fears of violence at the polls and a history of persecution. "This was a tremendous victory for the Haitian people," said U.S. Congressman John Conyers, who was observing Sunday's vote. There were no official participation figures, but Conyers estimated that up to 60 percent of the 4 million-member electorate voted. Despite
widespread relief at the relative peace, hundreds of thousands
of people were unable to vote because of alleged technical difficulties
that opposition leaders claimed were evidence of fraud by the dominant Lavalas Party. The results will not be known for days because of a primitive and meticulous counting process. After polling stations closed late Sunday, officials counted ballots by candlelight and then painstakingly read the results of each ballot paper, squinting to read and displaying each slip for a crowd to behold. Some 29,490 candidates were competing for 7,625 posts in the legislature, mayoral commissions, and local and rural councils.
Runoff elections are scheduled June 25 for legislative contests in which no candidate wins more than 50 percent of votes. Most voters interviewed said they were choosing candidates of Lavalas supported by former president Jean-Betrand Aristide, the charismatic and controversial former slum priest who remains the pivotal figure in Haitian politics.
"Aristide is going to give us jobs," said Wilbert Genty, an unemployed 23-year-old. "Aristide is our father. The people he told us to vote for can only be good people."
Voters began lining up at dawn Sunday and were kept waiting for hours at many balloting stations. Electoral officials said unspecified security concerns delayed the distribution of voter rolls and ballot papers. Some
stations never opened, prompting brief protests and leaving hundreds
of thousands unable to vote; officials postponed voting by 200,000 people
in southern Grand Anse district to a future date, citing "technical difficulties." Opposition leader Gerard-Pierre Charles condemned the difficulties as "sabotage" to prevent opposition supporters from voting. Electoral
council president Leon Manus expressed his joy and said "the
country welcomed the end of the day with calm, serenity, and perhaps a
kind of happiness." But the electoral council told reporters late Sunday that police were investigating reports that a red pickup truck had been stealing voting materials. "There was massive fraud," said opposition senatorial candidate Marie-Laurence Lassegue. "People were allowed to vote without voting cards, people were arrested with ballot boxes stuffed with votes. Police arrested people illegally carrying ballot boxes away from poll stations (and) some opposition party monitors were barred from balloting stations." Lassegue said Lavalas opponents would ask for the elections to be annulled on Gonave Island, where opposition parties boycotted the vote, charging that all poll officials were exclusively Lavalas supporters. Legislative
and local elections in Haiti, delayed four times in the
past two years, would install a constitutional parliament to replace the
legislature disbanded in January 1999 by President Rene Preval in a prolonged power struggle triggered by fraudulent legislative elections in 1997. Such a parliament could approve a government, which would almost certainly free a half billion dollars in foreign aid that is badly needed in a country where 65 percent of the work force is unemployed, those with work earn an average of $350 a year, and 80 percent of the people go hungry. Campaigning was marred by at least 15 politically related slayings since March 27, arson attacks on opposition offices and rumors that violence would erupt at the polls. There were two reported fatalities; a police officer killed by supporters of a candidate arrested on fraud charges and the man who killed the policeman, shot by police. Aristide was constitutionally barred from serving consecutive terms and hand-picked Preval as his successor. But few doubt that Aristide, whose fiery rhetoric helped inspire the overthrow of the 29-year Duvalier dictatorship in 1986, will win presidential elections planned for November.
Sunday's election was a test of whether his popularity could carry lesser-known candidates and produce a Parliament of Lavalas loyalists. Concerned about the possibility of violence, voter Micheline Blaise sought safety in numbers, coming with a group of friends to join more than 100 voters lined up along a stinking drain running with sewage in Cite Soleil, where people live beside pigs and goats rooting in garbage. "We were scared," said the unemployed 50-year-old mother of two. "But we overcame our fears. We have to vote because we have to have change in this country." |