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Elections Haiti - part II
The situation gets out of hand again. The weekend after the elections of the 7th of February was very calm and without incidents but today it is different. This Morning I left at 6.30 am to take the students from house Mamosa to school and except for two schools, I only found closed doors. On the way back there suddenly were barricades. Because of driving via byroads and finally thanks to the good will of the demonstrating people who recognized me, I passed two barricades and I was home little after eight am. The sequel of the elections could possibly result in a new crisis. These elections scored a large attendance and unexpectedly passed by very well in a calm atmosphere and without big issues. There were a lot of technical problems, like delay opening the polling stations, wrong lists at wrong places, etc… But during the day, everything turned out to be more or less all right. This 7th of February became a festive day. The Haitian people clearly demonstrated that they had enough of the political crisis. They put the traditional “classe politique” at once aside. The determination of the population to vote in big numbers and the way they did that shows that the population condemns the way in which Aristide was put out of the way by the higher classes and by the dictators.
The electoral counsel promised to announce the results of the election already last Friday, but until now, this has not happened yet. The people are losing their patience and they feel that they will be fooled. My prediction is will come out right. The initially convincing head start of Préval (they say more than 70%) started suddenly to decrease during the weekend when partial results were announced and rumours go around that the electoral counsel wants to send him to a second round. They calculated that the 24 candidates to become president got all together 46.23 % of all the votes, which would mean that Préval received the other 53.77%. His successor (Leslie Manigat) only received 11 % of all votes. Préval needs 50 % of the votes plus one to be elected in the first round. If he does not achieve this number of votes, he has to take it up against Leslie Manigat, who will then get the total opposition behind him, out of fear that Préval will win. Another element where questions are asked about is that more than 7% of all the votes would be abstentions, more than the number attained by the 3rd candidate. I cannot imagine that a Haitian is walking hours on foot or is waiting for hours to vote an abstention
This opposition; who are bad losers and who are represented by a minority, with money and support of lobby’s abroad does not want to accept Préval and tries to use all his power to make a fool out of him. The current (temporarily) government is coming out of the same class (as the opposition) as well as most of the member of the electoral counsel. A second round will give them the possibility to set up a strategy with big resources. Here, it is one against all people where one person wants to win.
It is 9 am. I can here the murmur of the manifesting people who are marching in the streets. If the electoral counsel will proceed with his deceitful behaviour, we will have some really difficult days to past. The population is tired to be fooled over and over again. The entire city has became car less in some hours time. A spontaneous strike which brings everything to a standstill. Till when? In one school, they told the children that the school will open again at the moment that the final results of the elections will be public. Also in the interior there are manifestations everywhere
Noon. Still z lot of demonstrating people pass the route de Delmas, the big road which links downtown with Pétion Ville. I can watch them from my desk. All together, it was a pleasant manifestation. There were dancing and singing people everywhere and many were dressed in a T-shirt with the picture of Préval. No information about violence or destruction. No police. But for the rest, the town is completely paralysed. There is no public transport and barricades block all the streets. On the radio I can hear that a lot of barricades of burning tires have been set up downtown.
In the slogans there also is a lot of hostility against the MINUSTAH (the blue helmets). It happens more often lately that people who do not know me have a rather hostile attitude against me and that they say that the white men are the cause of the entire political crisis, by their wrong intervention in service of a minority who wants a government with exclusion of the mass.
4pm. There are still thousands of demonstrating people in the streets. They want to get a clarification of the electoral counsel for the persistent postponement of the publication of the final results. Although there are no messages about violence and destruction by the demonstrators, I hear on the radio that the blue helmets have shot a group of demonstrators in Carrefour Feuilles, with one death victim.
Now it became 10 pm. The demonstration has stopped gradually to start (probably) again in the morning. On the radio I can hear that this early evening a meeting has taken place between Préval (they have collected him in Marmelade) and Boniface Alexandre in the palace, a meeting that only took 10 minutes. They would have asked him to keep the population off the streets. Préval would have replied that the current (temporarily) president knows what to do to calm down the people, because Préval did not stir up the people to start demonstrating.
There are still no official results. Hence, tomorrow there will be one more day of holiday for the children and of a forced stay at home for me…
With warm greetings
Jan Hoet
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