Elections, again

[bcholmes]

WELL before the first ballot was cast, Haiti's Nov. 28 elections were becoming the nation's third catastrophe of 2010, after the earthquake and cholera epidemic.

The decision by the Haitian government, under pressure from the United States and United Nations, to go ahead with voting in the absence of conditions for free and fair elections has shaken an already fragile Haitian democracy. Now electoral aftershocks threaten to undermine the battered country's reconstruction.

The elections were not fair because the electoral system was far from ready to ensure that all Haitians could participate as voters and candidates. This was due in part to slow progress in rebuilding after last year's earthquake, which caused three times as many deaths in proportion to population as the United Kingdom's losses during World War II.

[...]

The elections were not free because the Conseil Electoral Provisoire (Provisional Electoral Council) excluded Haiti's largest party, Fanmi Lavalas, from participation on technicalities. FL's exiled leader, former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was deposed in a 2004 coup supported by the United States.

The Haitian democracy movement, which overthrew the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986 and supported Aristide with huge majorities in the '90s, has fragmented. But the ex-president still enjoys strong support in the countryside and shantytowns, and FL is still widely seen as the broadest-based political force.

— "Haiti's election undermines democracy", Seattle Times editorial

Nothing in this is new, per se. But it is encouraging to see that more and more media outlets are reporting on sham elections in pretty direct language.