Granma on the Haitian Election
YANKEE GOVERNMENT ORDERS SECOND ROUND UN BLUE HELMETS REPRESS THE HAITIAN PEOPLE
(This Editorial was published the February 14 issue of Granma, the daily newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.)
After two years of foreign occupation after the coup d’état against Jean Bertrand Aristide orchestrated by Washington with French collaboration, long-suffering Haiti held elections one week ago to proclaim a new president.
There was a good turnout for the elections in spite of some acts of violence and delays in the polling stations in the poorest districts. More than 60% of registered Haitians cast their vote in the hope of change in a country where constant U.S. invasions and successive dictatorships have cut it off from two centuries of development.
More than 80% of the eight million Haitians live in poverty and a similar percentage are unemployed, the illiteracy rate is extremely high, the life expectancy rate is no more than 50 years and diseases such as AIDS are rapidly expanding.
The recent elections in Haiti were acknowledged by the international community as a positive step toward stability and peace in that nation. From the first minute, surveys at the polling station gave the victory to former president René Préval.
The initial results announced by the electoral authorities showed Préval with a comfortable advantage of 61% of votes cast, many more than those needed to win the elections in the first round. The Haitian press and the international media reflected his ample victory.
However, as days passed, the Haitian elections, postponed for months with U.S. consent, have fallen under the mantle of manipulation and suspicion. Seven days after the vote, the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) has not concluded its work, in spite of being supposed to announce the results 72 hours after the polls closed.
Surprisingly, on Sunday, the Council president announced to the media that the votes for Préval had dropped to 49%, while the web page of that institution reflected 52% in his favor. Yesterday, Monday, the Electoral Council stated that with 90% of the votes counted, the former premier and candidate for the Espoir (Hope) Party now had 48.7% of the vote.
The manipulation of the results has been evident and shameless. Two of the members of the Electoral Council have exposed tampering with the vote count. Pierre Richard Duchemin, representative of the Episcopal Conference of the Catholic Church on the commission body, informed a Haitian radio station that “there has been an insane manipulation of the data, there is no transparency.”
Another member of the board, Patrick Requière, publicly criticized Jacques Bernard, CEP general director, for not consulting with the other members of that agency or of disclosing where he was obtaining the results that he has announced to the press.
This Monday, the presidential candidate Jeune Jean Chavannes, fourth to date in the polls, acknowledged Préval’s win and stated that the situation created is the result of a conspiracy mounted in pursuit of social chaos. Chavannes called for guaranteeing national sovereignty and not bending to base interests as certain people want.
Everyone is pointing to something that is absolutely clear and has been leaked through various channels: Mr. Bernard, general director of the Council, is fulfilling the U.S. mandate of forcing a second round. A number of analysts have taken it on themselves in the last few days to recall that Préval is not the favorite of the White House given his former links with the deposed President Jean Aristide, removed from power by force by U.S. troops and sent into enforced exile.
In January, the New York Times published a thorough investigation that demonstrates the efforts of the Republican International Institute, closely linked to the Bush administration, and various State Department officials to destabilize Aristide’s government and expel him from the country.
In the face of the evident attempt to steal away his victory from René Préval, a man of much prestige who has taken great pains to serve the people, his followers ˆ most of them from the poorest barrios of the capital ˆ have taken to the streets in the last three days demanding respect for their vote. Thousands of demonstrators protested yesterday outside the headquarters of the Electoral Council and the government chanting the slogans: “Préval is president” and “Thief, you don’t know how to count,” in a clear reference to the action of the general director of the electoral body. The protesters accused the CEP of manipulating the votes and expressed their opposition to a second round, shouting “We’re not voting twice.”
The demonstrations on Monday were repressed by the UN blue helmets stationed in the country, provoking various injuries and at least one death. Violence has returned to that impoverished country after various days of post-electoral calm and new confrontations are predicted if attempts continue to falsify the election results.
Meanwhile, from Washington and with total cynicism, a State Department spokesperson stated after a meeting between Bush, Condoleezza Rice and the UN secretary general that whenever a vote count is challenged it is important for the parties to come together and cooperate over and above allegiances in the interest of the country. Nobody knows exactly to which elections Sean McCormack was referring, as in the Haitian case the second candidate in the elections did not even gain 12% of the vote.
What is happening in Haiti comes as no surprise. It is not the first time that the United States has intervened at its whim in the destiny of that nation, nor the first time that it is barefacedly manipulating the electoral results in another country to its own advantage.
The international community must demand respect for the majority will of the Haitian people expressed at the polling stations and that that suffering nation is not led into a worse period of chaos and violence as a consequence of the malign interests of the United States and specific Haitian power groups.
The world cannot allow the imperial power to guide the reins of the entire planet. The Haitian people, patient but selfless and heroic, will fight for their rights, let nobody be in any doubt as to that. Full responsibility for any such an outcome will fall on the U.S. government and the occupying forces that do not hesitate to fire on the people.