ARTICLE - STRUGGLE TO SECURE ID CARDS

HAITIANS STRUGGLE TO SECURE ID CARDS NEEDED TO VOTE
(Washington Post) - By Nick Miroff

Port-au-Prince - In the hills above this capital, the crowds pushed and jostled all day Saturday at the doors of the cracked government buildings of Petionville, its central square now a squalid tent camp.

Inside were the boxes of unclaimed identification cards that Haitians need to vote in Sunday's election. Outside, men and women who had been standing since sunrise waved their tattered paperwork at insouciant government clerks.

And when the clock struck 4:30 p.m. - quitting time - the clerks shut the doors, locked the gates and told the crowd to come back later, after the election.

"We want our cards! Give us our cards!" the crowd shouted, scattering as police moved in.

And so, Rachel Pierre, 20, headed back home to the tent she shares with her family and 3-year-old daughter, still lacking the card that might verify her existence and allow her to cast a ballot.

"There is no work here. There is nothing," she said. "It would have been my first time voting."

For Pierre and many others trying to go to Haiti's polls Sunday, the election will be a tense occasion, with some degree of disappointment almost certain. Apathy, a cholera outbreak and fear of violence might keep some away from voting stations, while an unknown number of others won't be eligible without their identification cards, many of which were lost in the Jan. 12 quake that killed 300,000.

But Sunday will also be chance for Haitians to exert a bit of control over chaotic lives that have been beset by one disaster after another, natural and man-made.

Picking from the field of 19 candidates seemed less important to many here than simply doing something to replace the administration of outgoing President Rene Preval, who is widely seen as weak and ineffective.

"I don't care who wins, as long as it's someone new," said Leonor Laguerre, 56, making his fourth attempt to acquire an ID card. "For Haiti to develop, we have to have a new president."

If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, a runoff will be held in January.

Voters will also choose candidates for Parliament and a third of the Senate.

The international aid organizations and foreign governments keeping this country propped up also view the election as a critical step toward accelerating the reconstruction process. An election marred by low turnout and violence might may hamper the flow of international aid, but a reasonably orderly process could speed the delivery of the $6 billion pledged by the United States and other donor nations, of which only $732 million has arrived.

Like others in line, Jacques would not say which candidate he planned to vote for, as he was pressed against others who might virulently disagree with his choice. "I think the man I will choose will make things better," he said, before adding, "but a lot of men change when they get into office."

Election results may take days, if not weeks to sort through, but the one candidate whose vote tallies may spark violence is Jude Celestin, Preval's hand-picked successor. His rivals and their backers seem poised to accuse the government of fraud if his vote totals appear to exceed his perceived level of support. Observers from the United Nations, Organization of American States and other groups will monitor the balloting, and the United States is providing $14 million in election-related aid.

Other leading candidates include a former first lady, Mirlande Manigat, 70, a Sorbonne-educated professor who has positioned herself as a candidate of maturity and competence, and Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly, 49, a popular musician known for performing in drag who has a large youth following.

Several former associates of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide are running, and because he remains popular, especially among the poorest Haitians, his status in exile also seems to hang in the balance, with loyalists hinting they would help him return.

On Saturday, the government attempted to bring some degree of calm, restricting gun permits and alcohol sales and ordering motorcycles off the streets. That followed a week of colorful, raucous and sometimes violent campaigning ended Friday with freewheeling rallies and loud caravans that choked the capital.

In the Delmas neighborhood, a flatbed truck loaded with giant speakers clogged the main artery, blasting high-decibel chants of "Vote! Vote! Vote for Voltaire!" over deafening dance music.

Teenagers riding atop the speakers rained small campaign fliers onto passing cars promoting candidate Leslie Voltaire, a former Aristide minister.

The fliers carried Aristide's symbol, a red rooster, boasting "the rooster has returned." As they fell, they quickly blended in with the rest of the garbage lining in the streets, carried off by trickling rivulets of sewage.

Another candidate close to Aristide, Jean-Henry Ceant, set up a massive stage in the middle of the rough Bel Air neighborhood Friday night, as men on ATVs raced through the crowd, performing wheelies and tire-melting donut patterns.

Guillolene Basile, 23, wearing a Ceant t-shirt, chanted his name and pumped her fist in the air. Someone in her tent camp was found dead in the latrines two days earlier, killed by cholera, she said.

"We are hungry. We can't go to school. We don't have any money," she shouted. "We want Ceant!"

Her passion is a concern to others who have been through previous cycles of election violence.

"I am worried about tomorrow," said Frantz Edward, a former mayoral candidate who helped organize the line at the ID card office downstairs from his barren law office. "Once people are in power here, they have a hard time letting it go."