Elections in Haiti

People lined up to vote in Port-au-Prince

Yesterday, after several weeks of rallies, concerts, and the occasional gunfight, thousands of Haitians turned out to vote. It was hard to believe yesterday that Haitians are politically apathetic. The atmosphere in the polling places was chaotic.People wandered from polling site to polling site, searching for their names. No one had been informed where they could vote. While the information was available on the internet, the internet is not accessible to most people in Haiti. In one school-cum-polling site, would be male voters stomped through the halls, shouting that their name didn't appear on the list since they were Martelly, rather than Celestin, supporters. Their agitated manner defined the mood, while those who were able to vote without problem passed silently around them. Even the president's chosen successor, Jude Celestin, was unable to find his name when he came to cast his vote.

Celestin himself seems harmless enough, but as Preval's chosen successor he represents continuity. Continuity is the last thing Haiti needs right now. However, since his campaign is funded by the government, his posters plaster walls all over the country, his campaign is broadcasted in 20 minutes slots on public television, airplanes fly his name through the sky. I've heard from many people that his cronies go into the camps and hand out money and pay people to register for his party. People take the money, but they assure me that their votes cannot be bought.

Jude Celestin posters in the gutter

There was much hand-wringing before the elections about whether or not they should go forward considering all the logistical problems of voter registration, polling sites, the of course the 200,000+ dead whose names were still on the voting lists. According to one person, the lists were both "bloated and incomplete". Some people are also angry that Lavalas, the party led by the exiled yet incredibly popular Jean-Bertand Aristide was excluded from participating from the elections. Many people who might have run on the Lavalas platform, for example front runner Ceant, ran with alternative parties. (Remember, in Haiti there are basically as many parties as their are candidates). People were also questioning the wisdom of having elections while so many people are living in tents and the cholera epidemic is spreading. All in all, the elections were being discredited before they happened

However, the consequences of not having the elections are also severe. The UN was pushing for the elections to illustrate that they had been doing significant work since the earthquake. The reconstruction process has been excruciating slow, in no small part because donors have been holding out until the new government is installed. Haiti politicians are notoriously corrupt and it seems foolish to hand millions of dollars over to a government that was on its way out of power. The peaceful installation of a new government is one of the most important elements to international support for reconstruction. Also, there is wistful possibility that new leaders might actually mean new governance in Haiti, and perhaps, even more wistful, a plan for the future. The government, the electoral counsel,and the UN, understanding the importance of stability for investment, probably hoped that a peaceful elections would be a litmus test for post-earthquake Haiti.

Too bad.

 

polling place in Port-au-Prince

Around 2 in the afternoon,12 of the 19 candidates came together in a press conference to denounce the elections as fraudulent.  Martelly, Manigat, Baker, Ceant, all the important front runners stood together and asked that the elections be canceled and that their supporters take to the streets. They claimed to have proof of voter intimidation and ballot stuffing, all part of a government plan to secure the election for Celestin. It would take some footwork on the government's part, for sure, considering hardly a single person in the past few weeks that I have met in the course of my interviews has expressed anything but disgust with Celestin and the present government.The press conference of the "group of 12," as some have called them, was played as a spontaneous intervention, but really, I wonder how long they had been planning this.  Why not call for the cancellation... before election day? 

Within a few hours, the streets of Port-au-Prince filled with people, mostly young men, chanting and dancing, waving Martelly posters high in the air. He was clear commander of the crowd (while it is easy to read this as Martelly winning the popularity contest, one has to keep in mind that those who support someone like the grandmotherly Manigat are probably more reliable to turn up at the polls and less likely to take to the streets). The march went up and down Delmas. At Place St. Pierre in Petionville the UN soldiers apparently used tear gas to disperse the crowd.  From what I saw, though, the mood of the crowd was wary and jubilant, but not angry. Some people even thought Martelly had already won.


The demonstrations lingered late into the evening. This morning, Martelly made a statement that the 12 candidates had made their demands, they had not been met, and the elections therefore would go on as planned. Basically, he backed down in order to allow the results of the election to still be valid. However, he did imply that the only means by which Celestin could win was fraud. Considering the massive public support this man is able to command, I suspect he has either been offered a position in the run off (this is just election round one, believe it or not), or knows that whether or not there was election fraud, he is still going to win. He is certainly distancing himself from the forceful statement he made the day before. Maybe it was a spontaneously organized (and quickly regretted) gathering after all.  However murky his motives, the fact that he did not call his supporters to further action may have spared Haiti a day of widespread violence.

UN soldiers prepare to meet the protesters

Does the Origin of the Cholera Matter?

Cholera is not native to Haiti. It's not a disease endemic to poor people the world over that spontaneously occurs when sanitation conditions reach a particular low point. The disease migration is actually a rather important historical pattern that has shaped the outcome of many a event: the infamous smallpox blankets that helped the British defeat the Native Americans in 1763; the decimation of the French forces by yellow fever in 1802 that paved the way for Haitian independence. Maybe I'm too optimistic here, but it seems that the cholera epidemic in Haiti today is not going to reach such catastrophic levels, but the point is, the introduction of disease matters. At the moment, all evidence suggests that cholera came to Haiti when a group of soldiers from rotated into a base on the Artibonite river. The sanitation system at the base leaves much to be desired: human waste is stored in large pools that are dug uphill from the river, and broken pipes on site have spilled untreated human waste into the environment. The people who live next to the base stopped drinking the water long ago.

Understandably, this is a very embarrassing situation for the United Nations mission in Haiti. At first they both denied the possibility that the base was responsible and insisted that their contractor was responsible for all matters of sanitation. Then the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)conducted tests and established that it was a South Asian strand of cholera, but insisted that the specific origin could not be established, and that energies should be devoted to prevention instead. Yesterday Dr. Paul Farmer of Partners in Health (also a special UN envoy) made a statement to the Associated Press, insisting that origin of the disease could and should be established, and that Harvard would be willing to do the tests. To claim that the strain could not be established, he said, was a political move to protect the UN from further possible embarrassment.

To date, approximately 442 Haitians have died. Its tragic but logical that the disease was introduced: its a natural consequence of migration, and the UN troop rotations are a form of migration. From beginning the UN could have just acknowledged that there might be unintended consequences to a influx of a large and diverse population of foreigners. Rather than denying the possibility and claiming infallibility, they could have devoted energy to making sure affected populations had access to clean water and rehydration salts. They could have used the blunder to make a show of UN compassion, coordination, and humanitarian assistance. It could have been an occasion from them to take the high road, and instead they did a cover up and hoped the questions of origins would go away.

Its too politically imprudent for many in the international community to take seriously, especially at a moment when Haitian disillusion with the military presence is high. And the lack of international outrage around this issue is very telling. The U.N. peacekeepers are suppose to be the good guys, so this is almost too horrible to contemplate. Hasn't any seen Erin Brochovich? The fact is the 430 deaths matter. Their families deserve an explanation. In this situation these people were not the causalities of their poverty, they didn't die of a lack of education, they died of cholera. Although from now on, cholera will be another way that poverty kills. And to claim that no one should worry about how they contracted the disease, that we would be wasting our time on "the blame game" or "pointing fingers" is tantamount to saying that their lives and deaths just don't matter. Which is maybe what the UN has been saying along. I didn't think so before, but now I am starting to wonder.

Haiti's Not Dying