Haiti ruling party says candidate out of presidential run-offThe Unity party said it was dropping Jude Célestin from election race to appease the international community and to avoid further unrest, London’s Guardian reports.
Haiti’s ruling party last night withdrew its candidate from a presidential election run-off following intense international pressure, signalling a controversial potential end to a political crisis.
The Unity party said in a statement it was dropping Jude Célestin from the race to appease the international community and to avoid further unrest following last November’s chaotic, inconclusive first-round.
However Célestin, a protege of the outgoing president, René Préval, did not make any statement and was reportedly considering fighting on to stay in the contest.
The UN, US, France and Organisation of American States (OAS) pressured Préval and his aides to dump Célestin on the basis of an OAS-sponsored investigation of tally sheets which showed him coming third rather than second in a crowded field.
Célestin’s apparent pipping of Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly, a musician-turned politician, amid a low turnout, shambolic polling and widespread fraud prompted riots in several cities, with protestors saying Célestin would be a puppet of the unpopular Préval.
Célestin dropping out would put Martelly into the run-off to face Mirlande Manigat, a former first lady who came first. That would cheer many Haitians but also fuel accusations of western meddling in a Caribbean country shattered by last January’s earthquake.
The Unity party’s statement, written in Creole, said: “Even though we are certain Jude Célestin received the necessary number of votes and was therefore through to the second round, INITE (Unity) has agreed to withdraw his candidacy for the presidency.
“Unity understand the game very well. Because Unity does not want the people to suffer even more, we chose not to provoke the international community over the election. We thank Jude for understanding the situation, though neither he nor we agree with the way things have occurred.”
Party officials told reporters that legally only Célestin could drop out of the race and one source told AFP he was refusing to sign the document. The Provisional Electoral council said it had received no word from Célestin’s campaign.
The UD embassy in Port-au-Prince said it was not sure if he was out of the race.
“We’re still monitoring the situation which is very fluid and we’re continuing to seek an electoral outcome that reflects the will of the Haitian people,” spokesman Jon Piechowski told AP.
The US intensified pressure in the past week by threatening aid cuts and revoking the visas of about a dozen Haitian officials linked to Préval.
“It’s not that we are picking one (candidate) over the other. It’s that there are strong indications that there was significant voter fraud, that the preliminary findings do not reflect the actual voting of the Haitian people,” a state department official said yesterday before the Unity party’s announcement.
The Centre for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington-based advocacy group, said its own polling analysis showed grave flaws in the OAS investigation and called for a fresh election.
“The US, France, Canada and other actors in the international community have no justification to demand that the Haitian government adopt the OAS mission’s conclusions,” the CEPR said in an email to journalists.
Haiti’s electoral council is considering the OAS report and is due to give definitive election results later this week. The run-off was due earlier this month but shelved because of the crisis.
For the original report go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/27/haiti-ruling-party-jude-Célestin-out-of-election-race
