On the Topic of the 2006 Elections

[bcholmes]

Here's a blurb written by Carlo Dade, in the March, 2006 issue of the newsletter FOCAL Point, which is produced by the Canadian organization FOCAL:

As with past elections in Haiti, there were minor problems and charges of fraud. However, this time Haitians and the international community chose not to sacrifice the greater importance and utility of a largely free and fair election on the altar of minor grievances and pedantic fixation on following the absolute letter of the law.

FOCAL (the Canadian Foundation for the Americas) is pretty heavily involved in promoting pro-business agendas in Haiti in the name of "promoting democracy." Guess where it gets its funding. CIDA! When Canadian politicians talk about aid to Haiti, this is part of what they mean. "Promoting private investment."

But that's all snarky aside. What I really want to highlight and contrast is this attitude of "pedantic fixation on following the absolute letter of the law."

What's interesting is that the international community chose to pedantically fixate on the following the absolute letter of the law in the 2000 elections.

In 2000, there was an election for a large number of government positions, including many members of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies (the latter is approximately equivalent to the House of Commons or House of Representatives). Much later in the year, there was also a presidential election.

The U.S. State department has this to say on the topic:

First round elections for local councils--ASEC and CASEC, municipal governments, town delegates, the Chamber of Deputies, and two-thirds of the Senate took place on May 21, 2000. The election drew the participation of a multitude of candidates from a wide array of political parties and a voter turnout of more than 60%. Manipulated vote counting by the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) prevented run-off elections for eight Senate seats and gave the [Fanmi Lavalas] a virtual sweep in the first round. Although the flawed vote count undercut the credibility of the election, Haiti's new Parliament, including the contested Senators, was convened on August 28, 2000.

After this flawed election, Haiti's main bilateral donors re-channeled their assistance away from the government and announced they would not support or send observers to the November elections.

Haiti Progres sees things differently:

Over 60% of the registered voters (which encompassed 92% of those who were eligible to vote) carried out a peaceful, fair and fully democratic election. The OAS described the election in the following terms: “The day was a great success for the Haitian population which turned out in large and orderly numbers to choose both their local and national governments and for the Haitian National Police …Election Day proceedings on May 21 represented the high point of the electoral process. An estimated 60 percent of registered voters went to the polls. Very few incidents of violence were reported.” (Final Report of OAS Mission CP/doc. 3383/00 13 Dec. 2000 at p. 2)

The report noted some irregularities in the tallying of votes and the failure to count others but concluded that "since one political party [Fanmi Lavalas] won most of the elections by a substantial margin, it is unlikely that the majority of the final outcomes in local elections have been affected." (Id at p. 3)

Notwithstanding the above results, the May 21, 2000 election has consistently been described as "flawed" or "fraudulent" in the press and by U.S. and OAS officials. The "flaw" in the election was the methodology used to determine whether eight Senate races should have gone into runoff elections. Seven of those races were won by Fanmi Lavalas candidates, the other by a member of a minor party. Even if these seats had been discounted entirely or given to opposition parties Fanmi Lavalas still retained a majority in the Senate.

Nevertheless, the U.S. and the opposition continued to claim that the election was fraudulent and that Fanmi Lavalas “stole” the election. They also used it as a pretext to boycott the November 2000 election for the Presidency of the country. However, the real reason for the boycott was that no candidate had the slightest possibility of defeating Jean Bertrand Aristide.

This last point is so true. Randall Robinson talks about how, if there were an election in Haiti, today, and Aristide were running for President, he would win in a landslide. The guy is just phenomenally popular. Except with foreigners.

This argument about the "fradulent" 2000 elections had dramatic repercussions for Haiti. Hundreds of millions of dollars in aid was withheld which had a crippling effect on the country. It's also true that many people conflate the "fradulent" May, 2000 elections with Aristide's November, 2000 election, so that casual speakers make it seem like Aristide's election was flawed. It didn't matter that after Aristide took power, he asked for the resignation of the seven Lavalas senators to mollify his critics. The opposition didn't care; the allegations of fraud were too politically useful.

Interestingly, the U.S. Department of State also claims that only 5% of the population voted in the presidential election of 2000. Haiti Progres has this to say:

In November 2000, the national election was held for President. The opposition “boycotted” the election over the alleged "fraud" in the May 2000 election. No serious observer of Haitian politics believed that any candidate could beat Aristide, and the polls clearly bore that out. Because the OAS refused to monitor the election due to the claimed methodological dispute over the 8 senate seats, it did not send observers to the election. However, international groups that did observe the election stated that over 60% of registered voters went to the polls and the President won by 92% of the vote. The CEP [Provisional Electoral Council] confirmed that over 62% of registered voters cast their ballots in the election. However, a small group of journalists and “unnamed officials” from various embassies including the U.S. embassy, observing only several polling places in Port-au-Prince, concluded that 10% or perhaps 20% of the voters actually voted in the election. These fabricated numbers were later used by the opposition to undermine the legitimacy of Aristide’s election.

The election results (both in terms of who was elected and turnout) were consistent with US-sponsored Gallup poll about the Haitian presidential elections. And yet, the US State Department claims that only 5% of the population voted in those elections.

The Toronto Haiti Action Committee has talked, at times, about how, on the surface, it appears like things are finally okay for Haiti. The Haitian protests in 2006 saved the presidency. (And, according to Carlo Dade, it's also thanks to the magnanimity of the international community and their forbearance from pedantry). But most of the other government positions were affected. Lavalas lost its hard-won majority. And Canada helped make that happen. Both because we funded the elections, and because we directly funded the opposition.