HAITI'S ELECTION WILL BE OVER WHEN THIS MAN SAYS IT'S OVER
(AOL) - Emily Troutman, Contributor
On Tuesday, Haiti's electoral council issued the 91st communique of the election season: It was a note to advise the public that results will be delayed again. Few were surprised.
Haiti's elections were first scheduled for Feb. 28, 2010. After the earthquake, new elections were organized for November. Like the "recovery," the elections have moved at a glacial pace.
"I'm telling you, they don't give the results, this country is going to burn down," a Port-au-Prince voter named Serge said.
Haiti's been besieged by decades of dictatorship, coups and opportunism. No one would begrudge the average conspiracy theorist. But with the latest delay, rumors reached new heights.
Machetes have sold out in the marketplace, the radio reported. The city is "hot," people said. Some aid workers have already made arrangements to evacuate.
On Thursday, members of Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly's campaign team said their own internal numbers indicated their candidate won by a wide margin, with 70 percent of the vote over Mirlande Manigat. Manigat declined to comment, but her communications adviser, Jean-Junior Joseph, maintained via Twitter that she was ahead.
Electoral law in Haiti forbids media from announcing partial results.
The silence is deafening. It was a very, very long year. Who will be president? And when? When do we get to start over?
As it turns out, only one man can say. A man who has experienced much more than just the frustration of trying to get this election right.
The Bureaucrat Who Became a Target
Richardson Dumel is not the president or a candidate. He holds no diplomatic passport and he was not voted in or on. His star power is pretty much limited to the streets of Haiti.
Dumel is a bureaucrat and the spokesman for Haiti's most controversial governmental body -- the Provisional Electoral Council. The council has been "provisional" since 1987, which gives some idea of Haiti's political state.
The eight-member board is known often by its acronym, CEP. It makes most official decisions on elections and Dumel has been its public face since 2009. The former lawyer and journalist arrived on the scene just in time for a humdinger.
Dumel shot to stardom in August, when musician and one-time presidential candidate Wyclef Jean put out a new single in Haiti, the confidently titled "Prison for the CEP."
Wyclef's presidential bid was tossed out after the council found that he did not meet the residency requirement to run. The first 20 seconds of his song features Dumel's voice, remixed to sound spacey and ominous, as he delivers the news.
"[Dumel] was really mad! Upside-down!" said Pierre Thibault, the director of communications for the council. "Eventually he just laughed."
But Wyclef is a high-powered folk hero in Haiti and the song reaffirmed a common misconception.
"[Dumel] is the one to show up on TV. People think he's the one to decide the results. Like he's making his own decision," Thibault said.
What Dumel does know, he often can't say.
"I have a lot of friends who understand my job. It's difficult sometimes. But they encourage me," Dumel said. "Usually they are the ones telling me what other people say, the gossip. Once in a while, they ask me, 'What about the results?' I don't know anything!"
The Wyclef incident was just the first in a series of dramatic events this election season. Dumel is everyone's favorite fall guy. No one can decide if he's the ventriloquist or the dummy. But they may not know all that he's been through.
A Troubled Election in Troubled Quarters
I met Dumel for an interview at the election council's headquarters -- a now-defunct Gold's Gym -- where his office might have been a towel closet and the lavatories are an old locker room. The building is a symbol of Haiti's difficulties. The council's own headquarters collapsed in the quake. Then it ended up in a failed high-end gym, rumored to be mired in corruption.
As a journalist, I understand better than most that the message and the messenger are two separate things. But that day, sitting with Dumel, I had to admit, "I might be holding a grudge."
In February, journalists came to the election headquarters for a news conference at 6 p.m. The council was preparing to announce the final results of the first round of elections, which would determine who moves forward to the second round.
Over the previous weeks, the city had endured riots and prolonged unrest when Jude Celestin, the president's handpicked successor, received second place.
The city was tense. Would the council respect the findings of election monitors and revise the votes? Would Celestin be thrown off the ballot? Would Martelly, the underdog, make the final cut? Which two candidates would face the final round?
At 11 p.m., Dumel came out and urged the journalists' patience. The electoral council was in deliberations.
First one hour passed, then two, then four. Journalists slept on folding chairs in the council's press room. The country went to sleep.
Bewildered, I tweeted: "RT @emilytroutman: #Haiti elections, now overtaking Monopoly for longest game on earth."
At sunrise, an assistant brought out coffee and at 7 in the morning, Dumel finally made the announcement. For an impatient press pool, as well as the public, it was a lot of months, some weeks, and 13 hours late.
"I see moments like that," he said by way of an apology, "as an opportunity for gratitude to journalists."
Dumel's sincerity in the face of antagonism made it simple to see how he became an easy target.
The Earthquake Took a Deadly Toll on His Family
Dumel has paid a higher price than most for the year's unrest. In front of the cameras, he is often taciturn and serious, as the job requires. In person, though, he is deeply good-spirited, smiling and warm.
He is an accomplished speaker, but he has difficulty talking about himself.
On Jan. 12, 2010, Dumel's house collapsed in the earthquake. His wife, Stephane Joissaint, and their 13-year-old daughter, Christina, were both killed.
When the quake struck, he was on his way to a university to teach a class in civil law. He arrived home too late to save his family.
Though he's thrown himself into his work these days, even before he lost his family, his job was his life.
"I can't say I regret it. I like working. I like my job," he said. "Between family obligations and work, well, sometimes they don't really match."
At every press conference, he is handed a statement by his boss, rushed to the microphone, then rushed off in a police convoy. In December, the red and blue lights of the police faded into orange firelight, as protesters set fire to the streets minutes after his departure.
"She always encouraged me," Dumel said of his late wife. "She said [my job] has a lot of risk. She always complained I worked too much."
Beyond the personal risks, there are professional risks as well. Just after February's all-night press conference, Ginette Cherubin, one of the council members, said there had been a disagreement about the election decision.
According to her account, only half the council members signed on to the second round match-up of Martelly vs. Manigat.
The next week, Dumel was dragged into court by two former candidates. As a civil service employee, he is one of the few prosecutable individuals in the council.
Legally, there was no case. But the radio stations and rumor mill ran rampant.
Thibault, Dumel's supervisor, explained, "We knew [the council] was in there, talking about the race. We were waiting. And we saw, when we received the official statement, it was only signed by the [council's] president. So something happened. But legally, if the president signs it, it's official."
The case shook Dumel. In that sense, it might have served its purpose.
"When you hear people talking about you and they have a warrant complaining about you, it does put you in deep reflection," he said.
"Life Comes Back Again"
As he talked about his losses over the past year, Dumel held back tears.
He survived the quake because he was at work; he recovered from it the same way.
"Let me try and explain. Jan. 12 was an ... unexpected event. The election should have been Feb. 28. A lot of people died. But as life comes back again, people start going about their business.
"We felt, at the time, that people won't be able to forget about these things," Dumel said.
But eventually, they do, in a way.
"It's impossible to have a reconstruction without [elections and governance] in place," he said. "This is where I can start to see through the good, the bad moments. It's in realizing we can't neglect these important institutions."
Communique 91 promised election results on April 4. But alas, they are just preliminary results, and final results won't appear until later this month.
When the announcement finally does come, dozens of journalists will adjust their microphones and cameras will line up. Dumel will appear, as if from behind a curtain. Thibault will hand him the document to read.
Camera shutters will clack, flashes flash, families in the street will tune the dials on their radios, eyebrows raised in ready suspicion.
Thibault insists he would never hand over results he believes are false.
"I have never been in that situation," he said. "And I hope it never happens. As long as they give me a result that looks like reality, I will do my job."
For the moment, reality is for the making. Numbers slide like an avalanche from unnamed sources as enemies -- real and imagined -- pick sides. Percentages and promises.
Friends called Dumel last night to warn him his life may be in danger. Everyone assumes Dumel knows what's going to happen next, but he has no idea.
He's just one earthquake, one drive to work, one sheet of paper, one press conference away from his own fate.
"You wait," he said, "and you ask yourself, 'What's happening?' Finally there is this moment where you can't do anything. As a human being, that puts a lot of pressure on you. You have to empty yourself. When it happens, it happens."
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