I read a couple of articles a few days apart by 2 different reporters with 2 different newspapers from 2 different countries. You put the 2 articles together and you get a funny complete story! (sort of). Find out by reading the next 2 articles.
Karen Bultje
RISK OF VOTE RIGGING ADDS TO WOES OF ALREADY DEVASTATED HAITI
(Globe and Mail) - Sonia Verma
Charles Henri Baker, a wealthy, light-skinned industrialist who has pledged to lift Haiti from poverty if elected president, currently ranks an uninspiring fifth in popular polls.
But in the hellish slum of Cité Soleil, in a neighbourhood known as “Palestine,” he is No. 1.
Proof of Mr. Baker’s benevolence came to the people of Palestine last week, when one of his associates gave Dejour Mario, a slight, 24-year-old “crew boss,” the equivalent of $4,300 (U.S.) to distribute to his 50 followers allegedly in exchange for their support on election day.
After the earthquake, the hurricane and disease, the potential for vote-rigging has become especially potent in the run-up to the Nov. 28 ballot, where there is no clear front-runner in a colourful field of 18 candidates – including a popular singer who used to perform in drag and a former first lady whose husband was overthrown in a military coup.
All are vying for votes from a population plunged ever deeper into poverty by nature’s devastation and an outbreak of cholera, which has so far killed more than 1,250 people.
Haiti’s electoral authority insists the vote will go ahead, despite calls by four candidates to postpone the vote until the cholera can be contained.
The anguish is most apparent amongst the 1.3 million people who still live in makeshift camps and in Cité Soleil, the worst slum in the western hemisphere, with an illiterate population of more than 200,000 people.
The International Crisis Group said in a recent report that the earthquake and epidemic have exacerbated problems such as voter apathy and campaign violence which threaten to undermine what are “perhaps the most important elections in Haiti’s history.”
The campaign has so far focused on personalities rather than issues, prompting the ICG to warn:
“Candidates should begin to articulate substantive platforms that address national problems.”
Instead, candidates seem to have resorted to the graft to secure votes from Haiti’s most vulnerable.
The Baker campaign’s gift worked out to about $85 per vote in Palestine, a fortune where life is a daily scramble for survival.
“If he becomes president, the people of Cité Soleil will work in his factories. We’ve had bad presidents who were raised poor. Now it’s time to give it to someone who is not poor,” reasoned Mr. Mario, dressed in a brand new T-shirt bearing the likeness of Mr. Baker above his party: “Respect.”
“He gave me money to pay the rest of the crew. They believe because he has given money before, when he becomes president he will give them more,” Mr. Mario explained with a thin smile, squatting on a cinderblock beneath a tattered tarp.
Last month, Mr. Baker stood in the very same place to deliver a boisterous speech where he promised the unemployed people of Palestine streetlights and jobs. He took direct aim at the front-running candidates, Jude Celestin – who runs the state construction agency and is the protégé of current president René Préval – and Mirlande Manigat, whose husband, Leslie, was president for four months in 1998.
Residents of Palestine said their crew boss doled out money and Baker T-shirts several days later. Some said they were scared to refuse.
“You know people are watching,” said one man, while tending his modest garden of plantains and collard greens.
Mr. Baker warned during his rally in October that support for his rival candidates would simply prolong Cité Soleil’s status quo of misery.
Yesterday, in an interview with The Globe and Mail in the manicured courtyard of a downtown hotel in Port-au-Prince, the silver-haired politician denied orchestrating the buying votes, and accused his rivals of trying to “steal the elections.”
“We don’t have the money to pay for votes, ma’am,” he said. “You probably met with some of Celestin’s people telling you that I’m paying because they are paying for votes,” he charged.
Michel Martelly, the charismatic singer who is polling in fourth place, warned of fraud on election day after a press conference last week.
“All of the stealing happens from noon to six, when the vote slows down. If their candidate has a thousand votes, they can put a one in front of it. It becomes 11,000,” he said.
Cité Soleil is divided into neighbourhoods, such as Brooklyn, Boston and Palestine, which correspond to rival gangs and crew bosses. During election season, tensions rise between gangs with different political affiliations.
Some of the campaigns have semi-official satellite offices in some of the roughest corners of the slum, orchestrating parades, posters and graffiti campaigns.
Luckner Desire, an unemployed father of four, said a representative from Mr. Celestin’s camp approached him offering the equivalent of $800 if he could deliver two dozen votes.
Mr. Desire, whose seven-year-old son, Stanley, began showing symptoms of cholera this morning – vomiting on the concrete floor that is his bed – said he refused the money.
“I am not going to vote because I have no belief in anything,” he said, throwing a worried glance toward his son.
“With the cholera, we don’t think about voting,” he said, echoing a widespread sentiment that has led analysts to believe there may be an especially low turnout on election day due to voter apathy.
In recent weeks, rivals have scuffled in Cité Soleil, throwing stones and bottles at each other, though there are fears that the violence could turn serious on voting day.
Complicating matters, MINUSTAH, the United Nations mission in Haiti responsible for providing security and logistical help during the election, has come under direct attack over the cholera outbreak.
Many Haitians believe a contingent of Nepalese peacekeepers introduced the epidemic to Haiti. The rumours have fuelled violent protests last week at which two people were killed.
The people of Palestine, who drink water from an open spigot and live alongside a narrow canal that doubles as their lavatory, believe MINUSTAH poisoned their water source.
“Two weeks ago, hundreds of fish washed up dead in the water. MINUSTAH dumped the disease,” said Reggie Jean-François, a toy-maker who constructs model trucks from salvaged tin cans in his workshop on a dead-end road he’s dubbed Mount Zion.
Mr. Jean-François doesn’t involve himself in politics, but is angry at the United Nations. “If they mess with us, there’s going to be a war,” he said.
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SKIRMISHES RAISE SPECTER OF VIOLENT HAITI ELECTION
(AP)
PORT-AU-PRINCE — The impromptu campaign rally ended not with cheers but panic as armed men on motorcycles, some wearing yellow-and-green T-shirts of a rival presidential contender, pulled up to the small crowd and fired into the air.
Nearly everyone ripped off the red-white-and-blue T-shirts of their candidate and fled down the pitted side streets of the Cite Soleil slum, rally organizer Pierre Joseph Laimay said. He got people to campaign for Charles Henri Baker, a factory owner who is one of 19 candidates in Sunday's presidential election, by handing out T-shirts and money for water and bus fare — and had hoped to make a little money himself from the campaign for his efforts.
As the others fled, he stood his ground.
"If they were going to kill me, they were going to have to do it with my T-shirt on," said the 45-year-old father of three. He looked nervously down the street.
The U.N. representative in Haiti, Edmond Mulet, called the "volatile political climate" a Haitian tradition. Multiple candidates have reported attempts on their lives — a credibility-building boast in a country where election days have long been synonymous with voter intimidation and massacres.
Recent elections, including the 2006 vote that put President Rene Preval in power, have been notably calmer, though not free of violence. But any disturbances could derail this year's vote, which already must contend with a rapidly spreading cholera epidemic and the fallout from the devastation of last January's earthquake.
The next president will oversee billions of dollars in U.S. and other foreign reconstruction aid.
The front-runners are divided on what should be done with it. Nearly all are criticizing the post-quake inaction of Preval, who was barred from running again.
His new Unity party has put up Jude Celestin, the head of the country's state-run construction company, who would be expected to carry on Preval's policies, and possibly retain the current prime minister and much of the Cabinet.
"This period coming up is going to be critical for the nation state to make some decisions about how this country rebuilds itself over the coming years," U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten said. Washington, which is Haiti's largest international donor, has backed the decision to go forward with the elections and provided $14 million in support.
On Monday night, Baker's supporters clashed with Celestin's supporters near the southern coastal town of Jeremie. Conflicting reports said one, two or three people were killed by gunfire.
Sen. Joseph Lambert, the head of Celestin's campaign, said in a Wednesday interview that the attack was an attempt to kill the candidate, who was in a convoy of campaign vehicles. He said Celestin is a target because he is likely to win. Baker has said two of his supporters were killed "in reaction to the success" of a recent Baker rally in nearby Jeremie.
Celestin's campaign said the incident should not affect the timing of the vote.
"Obviously, we have seen elections held in Afghanistan and Iraq ... a small incident like this won't stop ours," Lambert said.
More clashes were expected as campaigning winds down. Haitians are often paid small amounts, or get a little gas money or other small gifts, to attend and cheer on candidates. And with so many people in the race, even a small percentage of votes can propel someone into a runoff or make them a spoiler, provoking fierce contests even among those who have little chance of becoming president.
Violence has been a factor in Haitian elections throughout its history. From 1957 to 1986, the country was ruled by the father-and-son Duvalier dynasty, which maintained itself through fraudulent elections, executions and torture. The year after the son, Jean-Claude, fled Haiti, elections were canceled when the dictator's loyalists massacred at least 23 people waiting to vote.
Bernice Robertson, a senior Haiti analyst for the International Crisis Group, said violence persists partly because there has been little punishment in a country that has long lacked a reliable justice system.
Robertson and other observers fear that if the violence and protests get any worse, people will be too scared to vote in large numbers. "For the elections to be a success we need some level of peace so that people can go out to vote to get a reasonable turnout," she said.
The causes of the most recent violence are murky.
Protests broke out last week against the Haitian government and the United Nations, whose peacekeepers are suspected of inadvertently bringing cholera to Haiti. The disease, never before found in Haiti, has killed more than 1,400 people and sickened nearly 25,000 over the past month. Authorities said this week that 400,000 could fall ill in the coming year.
Mulet blamed the violence on several groups including gangs and former members of the army, which was disbanded more than 15 years ago. Other observers have said the U.N.'s slow and dismissive response to the rumors about its soldiers' link to cholera simply enflamed anger.
The election cycle started, months before the Jan. 12 quake, under boycott threats. Many were angered over the disqualification on a technicality of ousted former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas Party, though several people previously associated with the movement are running Sunday.
There were also suspicions, raised before Celestin was chosen, that Preval would use the election to promote his own candidate.
That concern is fueling clashes between police and demonstrators in the capital.
"They are trying to impose Celestin, that is all they do. They want to keep us oppressed and let us die," Cymorin Bonenfant, a protester, said Wednesday.
Lambert said the Unity campaign expects both a first-round victory and accusations of fraud.
Preliminary results aren't expected until Dec. 7, with a likely runoff scheduled in January. A 10-day appeals period in December will follow the preliminary results.
The international community and Haitian government are resisting calls to postpone the election because of logistical challenges caused by the earthquake such as lost voter identification cards and destroyed polling stations. Hundreds of thousands of dead people, many of them killed in the earthquake, are still on the rolls.
An estimated 4.5 million living people are registered to vote at more than 11,000 polling stations.
Alcendor Jean-Denoit, a 66-year-old carpenter, said he just hopes the election won't be another problem itself.
"We just had a major earthquake. We're hoping that there won't be more violence and more lives lost," he said.
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