Despite government efforts to lure voters to the polls in the Senate run-off elections held yesterday in Haiti, voters stayed away in apparent protest against ineffectual leadership and worsening social and economic conditions. The election will fill 11 vacant seats in Haiti’s 30-member Senate, but results are not expected for at least a week. At stake is President René Préval’s hope of “overpowering uncooperative legislators and pushing through internationally backed economic reforms and constitutional amendments that would give his successors more power.” The first round of voting took place on April 19, more than a year after originally scheduled, but it saw only 11 percent of registered voters participate and was marred by sporadic violence. On Sunday afternoon, electoral council president Frantz Gerard Verret went on the radio to plead with voters to go to the polls. “If you don’t come out and vote, other people will vote for you,” he argued.
As polls closed at 4 p.m., however, those pleas appeared to have fallen on deaf ears. Polling stations in Port-au-Prince were practically empty. In some cases the onnly ones who had put their ballots into the transparent ballot boxes were the poll workers themselves. Early reports from the countryside confirmed the same level of indifference to the process, “with Haitian radio highlighting stories such as ballots arriving late to centers where no voters waited.” A very low turnout will be seen as a blow to Preval’s government, an indication that the people have lost faith in his ability to guide the processof national reconstruction and that, as opponents claim, he has failed in his bid to consolidate Haiti as a democracy.
[...] Repeating Islands says that “despite government efforts to lure voters to the polls in the Senate run-off elections held yesterday in Haiti, voters stayed away in protest against what they see as failed leadership and growing despair.” Cancel this reply [...]
By: Global Voices Online » Haiti: Run-off Elections on June 22, 2009
at 10:45 am
UN denials in Haiti
FULL: http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/6_30_9/6_30_9.html
After the Fanmi Lavalas party was barred from participating in Senate elections, they waged a highly successful boycott campaign of the first round held on April 19. Another successful boycott of the second round on June 21 would be a crushing repudiation of the U.N.’s attempt to legitimize their mission through ‘helping the Haitian people to realize democracy.’ If the U.N. cannot oversee a process of fair and inclusive elections in Haiti then there really is not much point in them continuing to press to extend their mission is there? The only thing standing between them passing off exclusive elections or “selections” as credible was the Lavalas movement. The message delivered by U.N. soldiers firing indiscriminately at the crowd during Jean-Juste’s funeral was to back off from the boycott and Lavalas’s political campaign or the killings and arrests would start again. Desecrating the funeral of one of Lavalas’s revered leaders and associating his cortège with violence would pave the way.
In the end, despite tremendous financial and political efforts by the U.N., Lavalas successfully boycotted the second round of Senate elections. Turnout was lower than the first round and other than inflated figures provided by the election council most observers admit that very few people showed up to vote in either election. Just like denials of firing at crowd level on June 18 and the head wound of the victim, the U.N. and the international press that feeds off them also continue to deny the successful boycott campaign. One can almost hear the collective mantra of Brazilian General Floriano Peixoto, Sophie Boutaud de la Combe, Michelle Montas, Jonathan Katz and others that the boycott had little to do with the low voter turnout. Voter fatigue, off-season elections, fatigue with ineffective government, a loss of faith in politicians and everything else under the sun except the boycott.
By: JH on July 3, 2009
at 3:36 am