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Haitians Begin Vote in Key Election

Posted on: Tuesday, 7 February 2006, 09:00 CST

By MICHAEL NORTON

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Haitians jammed polling stations Tuesday as U.N. peacekeepers fanned out to guard the country's first presidential election in nearly six years, a vote widely viewed as a key step toward steering this bloodied, impoverished nation away from collapse.

Polls opened at 6 a.m. EST, but voting had yet to begin at several stations in the capital, Port-au-Prince, said U.N. spokesman David Wimhurst.

Clutching newly minted voter ID cards, about 1,000 people lined up before dawn at a polling station in the Port-au-Prince area of Delmas, waiting for electoral officials to open the doors.

Outside another polling station in the downtown slum of Bel-Air, hundreds of waiting voters snaked along rutted, trash-strewn streets, some pushing and shoving to keep their place in line.

"Haitians are mobilized for change, that's why there's so many people in the street this morning," said Jean Joseph, 44, on his way to vote.

The front-runner is former president Rene Preval, a 63-year-old agronomist who led the country in 1996-2001. The other top contenders among the 33 candidates are businessman Charles Henri Baker and Leslie Manigat, who was president for five months in 1988 until a coup ousted him.

The field also includes a former rebel in the insurgency that forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from office in February 2004 and a former army officer accused in the death of a Haitian journalist.

If no candidate wins a majority, the top two finishers would compete in a March 19 runoff. Hundreds of candidates also are running for 129 parliamentary seats.

Authorities urged Haitians to vote in large numbers under the protection of thousands of U.N. peacekeepers, calling Tuesday's election a key step to reversing Haiti's cycle of despair. The nation is the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the 9,300-member U.N. peacekeeping force "will do all it can to support the Haitian authorities in ensuring that the vote is held in freedom and safety."

Helicopters, trucks and even mules ferried election supplies into remote corners of the Caribbean nation on Monday. U.N. officials said 92 percent of the 3.5 million people who registered to vote had collected their identity cards, a sign that turnout could be high.

"Haiti's future depends on this vote," said Jacques Bernard, director general of the electoral council. "Good elections are the only solution to saving our nation."

Jose Miguel Insulza, secretary-general of the Organization of American States, told The Associated Press late Monday he expected a strong participation.

"We have seen ... a lot of enthusiasm to vote," he said in the capital of this Caribbean nation, which has never seen democracy fully take root. Only one elected president, Preval, has served a complete term in office.

In Bel-Air, walls and shops once adorn with images of Aristide are now plastered in a sea of yellow posters bearing Preval's face.

Aristide, once backed by the United States and seen as a beacon of hope in this desperate country, was driven from power after being accused of corruption and of using thugs to attack his opponents. He lives in exile in South Africa, while an interim government has led the country for the last two years.

However he still enjoys wide support, and many Haitians believe that if Preval wins, he will bring Aristide back.

James Jeudi, a 21-year-old unemployed laborer, said Monday he'd still like the ousted leader to return, but called voting for Preval the next best alternative.

"We loved Aristide, but Aristide is there in exile, and we are here. We have to carry on," Jeudi said. "Preval knows the suffering of the poor, and that is why we're going to vote for him."

The presence of foreign troops is a reminder of Haiti's political turmoil and misery.

Bernard defended a decision not to put voting stations inside the sprawling, seaside slum of Cite Soleil, a base for armed gangs loyal to Aristide who are blamed for a wave of kidnappings in the capital. Residents of Cite Soleil accused officials of trying to disenfranchise them, but officials say they can vote at polling stations outside the slum.

"It's a moral question. I couldn't ask an election worker to go into an area that I myself wouldn't go," Bernard said.

The election has been billed as a move to restore democracy, but it is a daunting task. With decades of brain drain, capital flight and crippling judicial, security, health and corruption problems, the nation needs more than a quick electoral fix, experts say.

Underscoring the difficulty of holding elections in a country with a ruined infrastructure - including roads - mules transported some election materials to areas where U.N. helicopters were unable to land. The vote has been postponed four times since October because of security problems and trouble distributing elections materials.

The 70-mile drive from Port-au-Prince to the northern town of Gonaives takes four hours, and the roads are far from Haiti's worst.

Deforestation is widespread, leaving topsoil vulnerable, and when hurricanes hit, catastrophic floods often follow. Land plots grow smaller as the population increases, and poor farming methods exhaust an already-tired soil.

Haiti has long suffered from oppression and instability. The country was ruled for nearly 30 years by dictators Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who fled to France in 1986 amid allegations of human rights violations, mass killings and stealing millions from the national treasury.

Efforts to restore democracy have faltered. Soldiers aborted Haiti's first attempt at free elections in a 1987 bloodbath.

Aristide, then a priest who preached rebellion to slum-dwelling Haitians, won elections in 1990 but served only seven months before the military overthrew him. Aristide was re-elected in 2000.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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