This week in HaitiHaïti Progrès
7 - 13 June 2000
Haitians Rise Up Against OAS "Interference""OAS, OAS, when I am hungry, I don't fool around, and my vote is not negotiable!" So chanted hundreds of protestors marching through the streets of Port-au-Prince on Jun. 5, primarily in front of the headquarters of the Organization of American States (OAS), the United Nations (UN), the U.S. Consulate, and the French and U.S. embassies.
They were protesting the May 31st letter of Orlando Marville, the Barbadian head of the OAS Electoral Mission in Haiti, to the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP). In the letter, Marville claimed that, in reviewing the CEP's vote count, his team had found "a serious error affecting the number of parliamentary races won in the first round." The electoral-operations office had "decided to add up only the votes of a small number of candidates who obtained the most votes" and therefore "got the wrong percentages," Marville alleged.
Like lemmings, the mainstream press agencies have taken up the call, asserting, like the AP, that "Haiti counted votes for the top four contenders and not all votes cast." This is simply false. But nobody bothered to check the OAS's calculations.
Let's do the math. In the departmental Senate races this year, for example, voters had to choose two senators on their ballots. But some voters put an "X" by only one choice. So the CEP adopted the same method used in all three previous legislative elections since the 1987 Constitution. Every vote was tallied up. Then the total was divided by the number of seats up for grabs, in this case, two. So this year the candidate's percentage was determined against half of the total. As in previous elections, the field is narrowed to two top candidates for each seat. This year, that meant the top four candidates.
For example, in the West Department, there were a total of 1,528,349 votes cast for 25 candidates running for two Senate seats. In other words, there were statistically 764,164.5 voters. Dany Toussaint of the Lavalas Family (FL), the party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, received 536,802 votes (70.24%), the FL's Yvon Neptune 483,782 votes (63.22%), the Mirlande Manigat of the Assembly of Progressive National Democrats (RDNP) 81,381 votes (10.64%) and the Marie-Laurence Lassegue of the Open the Gate Party (PLB) 64,121 votes (8.4%). Because both Toussaint and Neptune had an absolute majority (more than 50%) of the vote, they won in the first round.
"The current CEP did not invent this system of calculating the percentage for which it is now being reproached," explained CEP President Léon Manus in a five page official response to Marville, "it is only following the precedents established since 1990." Never before has the calculation method been questioned, so it stands to reason, Manus noted, that "the international community accepted this principle" (emphasis by the CEP).
CEP member Carlo Dupiton reinforced this position saying: "There was no error at all. This is a formula which has been accepted since 1990."
Luciano Pharaon, the head of election operations, was equally unrepentant. "Not only have we done our job correctly, but this is the same method used in the elections of 1990, 1995, and 1997, and everyone accepted it," he said. "I don't see what the problem is this time, unless it is a false problem and they really are after something else."
Manus also explained in his letter that the results released so far "are only partial results furnished to calm the nation's impatience. Other results will continue to arrive... but no final results have been proclaimed." Clearly, "your analysis is getting ahead of the process," Manus told Marville.
Most interestingly, Manus went on to say that " I consider the fact that a foreign observer publishes in the Haitian press a letter openly criticizing a national institution (in this case the CEP) as an act of interference. The interference is made even more serious by the fact that this foreign observer, speaking in the name of a very respected international organization, through reckless declarations, on questions of national importance, has induced the Haitian people into error and sought to discredit, in the eyes of the nation, the CEP..."
Similar indignation came from other CEP members. "It is a slap across the face of the country, and we cannot accept something like this under any circumstances," said CEP spokesman Macajoux Médard. "We have to rely on foreign aid, but this does not give anybody the right to tell us what to do when that isn't their role... Mr. Marville has allowed himself to give the CEP orders, to tell us that he is waiting for us to correct something. I think this is very serious."
Popular organizations and progressive parties also responded bitterly to the OAS letter. Charles Suffrat of the peasant organization KOZEPEP called the OAS letter "impertinent" while Poitevien Jean Philippe of Popular Power Youth (JPP) suggested that "we declare [the OAS] persona non grata."
"Those observers always treat the developing countries as if they were children," said Ben Dupuy, secretary general of the National Popular Party (PPN). "When those observers are ready to observe the elections held in the U.S. and Canada, to discern the irregularities there, only then should we consider inviting them to observe our elections."
Meanwhile Yvon Neptune of the FL declared that "the majority of the people know that there was absolutely no error made in the quantity of ballots cast for the Lavalas Family" and warned the Haitian people to "keep their eyes peeled so that no one steals even one of the people's vote or tries to make 2 plus 2 equal 5."
"Once the Haitian people have decided, can someone just come and alter that decision?" Neptune asked.
Not surprisingly, Washington supports the OAS critique of the CEP's calculations, according to a communiqué released by the US Embassy. The Haitian opposition has also responded with glee, using the letter as a final excuse to pull out of the second round of elections, as KONAKOM, MOCHRENA, and MPSN did this week, joining OPL and RDNP. Most also say that they will not participate in the Grande Anse elections, now scheduled for June 11.
The opposition's rhetoric has become more strident and violent, all but calling for the overthrow of the government of René Préval. As progressive Senator Wesner Emmanuel observed this week: "I think there are people who want to arrive at option zero by any means, so they are creating a situation of tension." "Option Zero," long proposed by Haiti's extreme right, calls for the removal of the government and the CEP, and then new presidential elections from which Aristide would be barred.
For example, Gérard Pierre-Charles of the Organization of People in Struggle (OPL) declared that "President René Préval cannot remain in power." Despite his party's pathetic performance in the elections, Pierre-Charles saw no irony in asserting that the Préval government "has no legitimacy." His sidekick, Sauveur Pierre Etienne declared the government "a fascist power" responsible for the "deaths of at least 100,000 people in the country."
Not to be outdone, the National Democratic Movement (MDN) of the neo-Duvalierist Hubert Deronceray issued an analysis from his party's "information service " which began: "The preparations for civil war are accelerating." With unparalleled irony, this frontman for putschist death-squads during the coup today accuses "the Lavalas barons " of planning a seven-point "operation to cut off heads and burn down homes." Their plan, according to Deronceray, is to: "1. Arrest and lynch Ambassador Orlando Marville...; 2. Demand the immediate expulsion of all members of the OAS Observer Mission; 3. Burn down the locales of the UN, USAID and the OAS in Port-au-Prince and Pétion-Ville; 4. Burn down the U.S. Consulate and Embassy 5. Burn down the locales of all the opposition parties; 6. Assassinate all the opposition leaders; 7. Block the departmental roads North and South and the principal arteries of Port-au-Prince, Cap-Haïtien, Gonaïves, Jacmel, Petit-Goâve, etc. to facilitate the extermination of their populations."
To complete the picture, Lionel Chamblain, co-leader with Emmanuel "Toto" Constant of the death-squad FRAPH, emerged from the shadows this week to "take the occasion to extend his moral support and commend the patriotism of all the leaders of the Haitian opposition." He went on to accuse the Lavalas movement of drug trafficking, incompetence, and subservience to foreigners.
In this theatre of the absurd, the larger geopolitical maneuvering of imperialism must not be lost. This past weekend, during an OAS meeting in Windsor, Ontario, Washington and Ottawa managed to arrange for Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy and OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria to travel to Peru to meddle in the elections there, even though the OAS Charter explicitly forbids the body from involving itself in the internal affairs of member states.
Of course, the eventual target of such a mission is not Peruvian President Albert Fujimori, who is a faithful US ally, but a countries like Venezuela or Haiti, which are not precisely models of the U.S. plan in Latin America. Venezuela, which is also holding elections soon, vigorously opposed the OAS meddling in Peru, arguing that it could set a precedent for the body to interfere in other elections.
"Venezuela would like to send out a warning about this risk so we don't open the door for questioning of an election where the OAS becomes a key player," said Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jose Vicente Rangel.
In fact, there is a crisis in the current U.S. formula for controlling Latin America. Two decades ago, the US used dictators like Duvalier with armies like the Macoutes. Today, imperialism uses "election engineering" - thanks to organizations like the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) - to install civilian facade regimes, supervised by election observers, guarded by peace-keepers, and run by all shades of "development workers," who usually work for governments even though they belong to "non-governmental organizations."
Elections in Haiti, Peru, and Venezuela are not going as "election engineers" planned, hence the need for more OAS involvement. But as one demonstrator protesting the OAS in Hait said this week: "This past May 21, the people voted in a Lavalas sense and we will win the battle in a Lavalas sense. We don't have potatoes, we don't have plantains, we don't have boats, we don't have planes, but we are not going to be stopped."