In its highly anticipated report on Haiti’s electoral crisis, the Organization of American States will recommend that the country’s electoral officials prevent government-backed candidate, Jude Celestin, from moving on to a second round run-off vote. Although the report has yet to be made public, the Associated Press – which obtained an advanced copy – says the OAS is suggesting the contentious Nov. 28 elections “neither be thrown out entirely nor recounted” (the AP’s words). Rather, the inter-American body says enough fraudulent ballots should be rejected so that that Mr. Celestin, the former head of the state’s construction company, be knocked from the runner-up position he currently holds and into third place.
That move would place popular carnival singer Michel Martelly in a second round run-off vote against one-time first lady and alleged poll frontrunner, Mirlande Manigat.
On Monday, the first issue for the OAS quickly became getting the Preval government to even receive the report. While the Wall Street Journal says CEP officials have been provided the body’s findings and recommendations, OAS Sec. General Albert Ramdin told the AP Monday that he was still awaiting word from the Preval government about when and where such an exchange might take place. Shortly thereafter, on Monday evening, President Preval gave a rare press conference in which he “dismissed news accounts of the report's contents and said that a copy had not been made available to him.” The Journal says the report may go public on Thursday, a day after the one-year anniversary of the quake.
In addition, Preval said Monday that he had been offered a plane out of the country during the unrest that followed the Nov. 28. Those words echo comments made by Brazilian OAS representative Ricardo Seitenfuis who has said such an idea was floated on Nov. 28 at a meeting which included Asst. Sec. General Albert Ramdin. Seitenfus was recently told to leave Haiti by OAS officials after criticizing the international community’s efforts in Haiti during an interview with Swiss media. Ramdin has denied allegations that any discussion about Preval’s exit ever occurred.
In his weekly opinion in Britain’s The Guardian, Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research says the entire process – from the exclusion of Fanmi Lavalas to “massive irregularities” on election day (which his organization documents in a new report) to a lack of “professionalism” and transparency on the part of the OAS – has destroyed the vote’s democratic legitimacy. Thus he suggests the whole process be invalidated and a new free and fair vote be held. Weisbrot on the issue of electoral exclusion:
“One reason that most Haitians did not vote is that the most popular political party in the country, Fanmi Lavalas, was arbitrarily excluded from the ballot. This was also done in April 2009, in parliamentary elections, and more than 90% of voters did not vote. By contrast, in the 2006 presidential elections, participation was 59.3%. And it has been higher in the past, even for the parliamentary (non-presidential) election in 2000. Haitians have taken great risks to vote when there was political violence, and have been pragmatic about voting even when their first choice was not on the ballot (as in 1996 and 2006). But the majority won't vote when they are denied their right to choose. This is the big story of the election that most of the major media have missed entirely.”
No word yet from any of the top three candidates – Manigat, Celestin, nor Martelly.
With more on Haiti:
· The Washington Post examines the much-discussed issue of foreign aid in the country, writing that while international donors have patted themselves on the back for aid contributions (or aid promises), aid recipients remain “weary at the lack of visible progress and doubtful that the billions of dollars promised will make their lives better.” The Post on the issue of jobs – or the lack thereof – one year after the quake:
“Every few weeks, a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development who pays ‘cash for work’ comes by and hires a dozen people, who earn less than $5 a day to shovel soggy garbage off the streets. This is the largest jobs program in Haiti, having employed 350,000 people. But the work is short-term, usually a week or two. Total cost for the year: $19 million, or less than $50 a worker after overhead.”
Also, much on growing mistrust of international NGOs which, in the words of a Haitian barber interviewed by the paper, are perceived by many to be “making money in Haiti…and using the Haitian people to raise money and pay for their big cars.” The single significant reconstruction project in the capital, the paper says: the rebuilding of Port-au-Prince’s old “Iron Market” by the private telephone company, Digicel – a project journalist Pooja Bhatia writes on in detail in today’s New York Times.
· The Miami Herald says new House Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman, Rep. Ileana-Ros Lehtinen (R-FL) will be in Haiti Tuesday – her first trip since taking over the committee and a visit which, incidentally, corresponds with the expected release of the OAS’s election report.
· The AP reports on a series of arrests related to migrant kidnappings in Mexico. The first: the arrest of five individuals for their suspected involvement in the abduction of some 30 migrants from a train in Oaxaca on Dec. 16. The arrests came through information provided by 12 migrants who say they escaped kidnapping. No word from the Mexican Attorney General’s office yet, however, about who the detained suspected are believed to have been working with. In a separate case, the AP says two others were arrested for kidnapping another group of nine migrants on Dec. 22, also in Oaxaca. And in a third case, a woman has been arrested for guarding abducted migrants in neighboring Veracruz.
· In Venezuela, EFE reports that the government’s Minister of Agriculture says more than 500 Colombians have been working in “near-slave conditions” on recently expropriated ranches in the country’s northeast. Venezuela’s National Land Institute expropriated some 47 properties last month and says, on 27 of them, officials have documented “terrible labor conditions, including the violation of human rights and the Labor Law.” On a related note, the AP reports that Chavez government is calling the burning of a government building used by officials carrying out land expropriations an act of “terrorism” by large landowners. Over the weekend the National Land Institutes offices in Zulia state were “doused with gasoline and set ablaze.”
· In Colombia, a recent uptick in guerrilla attacks being attributed to the FARC. Just the Facts recounts while Adam Isacson, in a new Just the Facts podcast offers more details. The National Security Archive’s Michael Evans, meanwhile, writes on new declassified materials from the US Embassy in Colombia, tying former Colombian army commander Gen. Rito Alejo del Río to right-wing paramilitary death squads in Urabá. The trial of the general is expected to resume this month in Bogotá, says Evans.
· In Honduras, El Heraldo made brief mention earlier this week about a new community policing program that will go into effect in particularly violent Tegucigalpa neighborhoods in the coming weeks. The programs apparently have the support of the Japanese and that country’s “Japanese International Agency for Cooperation.” Also, news that MUCA/FNRP activist Juan Chinchilla has been found alive after reports of his disappearance in Bajo Aguan over the weekend.
· BBC Mundo today has a multi-part series on Chile’s Mapuches, who, the BBC says, have been engaged in the “longest resistance” anywhere in Latin America. An article here, interviews on the subject here, and a video here.
· BBC Mundo also writes on the official beginning of presidential campaigning in Peru. Monday marked the deadline for candidate registration and the BBC says twelve candidates will compete to replace outgoing President Alan Garcia on April 10.
· The LA Times, by way of reporting in Mexico’s Proceso, says turf battles between three cartels – Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel; remnants of the Beltran Leyva cartel which have formed the “South Pacific Cartel;” and a third offshoot group now calling itself the “Independent Cartel of Acapulco” – are to blame for a spike in violence in Acapulco.
· The AP with more on South America’s wave of diplomatic recognitions offered to an independent Palestinian state.
· At Upside Down World, Rights Action’s Annie Bird with her take on the on-going state of siege in Guatemala’s Alta Verapaz, which, she argues, is preventing agrarian social movements from “carrying out community consultations” to express “opposition to hydroelectric dam projects that are planned throughout Alta Verapaz, without the consent of affected Qeqchi communities.”
· Bloomberg with a few details on a referendum process being pushed by Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa. Among the matters likely to be presented before voters: issues related to prison sentences; new banking regulations; and the issue of whether or not media enterprises should be allowed to own non-media enterprises.
· Finally, opinions. At the Huffington Post, Christopher Sabatini of Americas Quarterly with a piece that merits more debate and discussion – regarding the author’s belief that US policy toward Latin America should move away from “Big Ideas” (the Good Neighbor Policy, the Alliance for Progress, the FTAA, etc.) and toward policies that better grasp the region’s diversity, as well as the “shifting” and “complex” international coalitions of which it’s states are now a part. Moving in the opposite direction in discussing Haiti (along with Ivory Coast and Sudan), the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens explicitly calls for a return of 21st century colonialism. And author Edwidge Danticat, in the New Yorker, with her thoughts on Haiti one year after the quake, and the unpredictability of the future.
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