Report on Haitian Elections

[bcholmes]

This report on the upcoming Haitian elections is a pretty critical assessment:

The upcoming November 28, 2010 Haitian elections have caught international attention with the proposed candidacy of an American rock star, the fragility of the Haitian government after the January 12, 2010 earthquake, and the country’s first cholera outbreak in decades. Voters will choose all 99 members of the House of Deputies for four years, a President for five years, and one-third of the Senate for six years. Forces both international and domestic are looking for these 110 leaders to emerge with the ability to give direction to the shattered country. These forces, however, have placed so much pressure on the upcoming elections that the only option is to have an election regardless of its outright illegality.

The most basic and fundamentally democratic process established in the Constitution requires the formation of an impartial electoral council that ensures fairness of the elections. Unfortunately, the establishment of this electoral council is fragrantly unconstitutional. Instead of the Constitutionally required impartial electoral council, there is a body of persons hand-selected by President Preval rendering decisions that are in favor of him and his political party -- INITE. Therefore, all of their decisions have been fundamentally flawed, disorganized, and fly in the face of the best interest of the people.

This report details the upcoming elections and analyzes the written law against the reality of how the elections are unfolding in Haiti. The specific geographical and socio-political focus of the report is the community of Bwa Nef, a neighborhood within the greater slum of Cite Soleil in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where our organization, the Lamp for Haiti foundation, is based. Like the rest of the country’s 10 million people, Bwa Nef residents will soon participate in two elections: November 28, 2010 for the National elections and March 2011, for the local elections.