General elections were held in Haiti on 7 February 2006 to elect the replacements for the interim government of Gérard Latortue, which had been put in place after the 2004 Haiti rebellion. The elections were delayed four times, having originally been scheduled for October and November 2005. Voters elected a president, all 99 seats in the Chamber of Deputies of Haiti and all 30 seats in the Senate of Haiti. Voter turnout was around 60%. Run-off elections for the Chamber of Deputies of Haiti were held on 21 April, with around 28% turnout.
According to official statistics, René Préval of the Lespwa coalition led the count for President with 48.8% of the vote, less than the 50% needed to be declared elected on the first round. Préval spoke of fraud, and voting bags and marked ballots found in a garbage dump triggered street protests by his supporters. The United Nations Mission in Haiti spoke of an "apparent grave breach of the electoral process". On 16 February, following meetings between the electoral council and the interim government, it was agreed that blank ballots would be excluded from the percentage calculations, resulting in a total vote for Preval of 51.1%. A second round of voting for president was thus avoided.
Background.
The election process saw many controversies, including threats to boycott by one of the major political parties, ongoing political violence, and one candidate being declared ineligible despite a Supreme Court decision.
The elections took place as Haiti was under the occupation of MINUSTAH, a multi-national U.N. force established by the Security Council which started operations in June 2004.
On election day, due to many organizational problems, a shortage of election workers, missing ballots, and extremely long line-ups, the voting hours were extended by at least two hours.
There are many reasons the Haitian elections were delayed. Due to a lack of funding, election officials were not able to meet the voter registration deadline set for early August. In addition there was considerable unrest in parts of Haiti, particularly the Port-au-Prince slums where there were attacks on the new government, and where the U.N. and the Haitian National Police have been accused of committing massacres and targeted killings of anti-occupation protesters and organizers. However, the inability to register voters in the time allocated was the primary reason for the extensions. There was also concern that only 800-900 voting stations would be placed throughout Haiti, in comparison to the many thousands of stations that existed during the previous election.
On January 25, 2006, Haiti's election authorities announced that no voting stations would be placed in Cité Soleil, an impoverished area which holds between three and six hundred thousand residents and has been controlled by informal armies professing allegiance to Aristide; registered voters from Cité Soleil had to leave their neighborhood to vote.
Delays.
Elections in Haiti were originally scheduled to take place starting on October 9, 2005 with the municipal election, followed by national elections on November 13, 2005, and a second round on December 18. In August the electoral council decided to to an undetermined date in late December to allow for more focus to be placed on meeting the (new) November 6 date for presidential elections. On September 7 the dates were again changed, . The first round of voting was moved back to November 20 and the second round on January 3, 2006. On November 18 the date for presidential and legislative elections were ; they were to take place on December 27, with a run-off to be held on January 31, 2006. On November 25, the date was set back yet again, ; they were to take place on January 8 and February 15, 2006, respectively. The election is being postponed yet again but a date has not yet been announced, although February 7, 2006 is reported to be the likely date for the first round. The municipal elections which were originally set to be held on December 11, 2005, have been postponed to March 5, 2006. When announced officially, they will be the fifth set of election dates for a new government since July. Originally, the hand-over of power to the elected government was set for February 7, 2006, but this date has also been pushed back, without an official new date being given.
The first round of elections for president and parliament was finally held on 7 February 2006. Runoff elections for Chamber of Deputies of Haiti were held on April 21.
Presidential candidates.
Thirty five presidential candidates appeared in the ballot. Among the more known figures were René Préval, a former prime minister (1994–1995) and president (1996–2000), and a Lavalas member; Guy Philippe, a former police chief and rebel leader of the 2004 Haiti Rebellion.
René Préval.
Préval is a former president of Haiti who served from 1996 to 2000. He is the second president of Haiti to leave office due to the natural expiration of his term. Préval was in exile during the latter years of the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier but returned to work in charitable organizations after Duvalier's fall. He served as Prime Minister under Aristide during his first term, until the military coup d'état that overthrew Aristide in 1991. In 1996 he was elected president under the Fanmi Lavalas party and served out his term ending in 2001.
Under his previous administration Préval was a big reformer, most notably in the privatization of government companies, and will be expected to continue down a similar path if he is to be elected for a second term. His dealings with the International Monetary Fund have been controversial. The unemployment rate in Haiti was quite high under Préval's previous government, but it did fall down to some of its lowest levels since the fall of Duvalier at the end of his term and continued to fall until the rebellion of 2004.
During his campaign, he sought to distance himself from any former association with the Lavalas party and ran as a candidate of Lespwa. Preval supports the current occupation of Haiti by U.N. forces, saying they "should stay as long as it is necessary", in contrast to Aristide and many members of Lavalas who denounce the U.N. forces and accuse them of carrying out a campaign of repression and violence at the behest of the U.S., France, and Canada. Preval has also sought the votes of Lavalas members on the promise that he will not oppose the return of Jean Bertrand Aristide from South Africa.
Charles Henri Baker.
Charles-Henry Jean-Marie Baker (born June 3, 1955 in Port-au Prince) is a Haitian industrialist with US residency. He initially billed himself as an independent and has allied himself with the Komba de Chavannes Jean Baptiste and Evans Lescouflair party. His coalition received 8.24% of the vote. Baker is a former member of Groupe 184, a loose federation of business leaders, church officials and NGOs associated with the US federal government funded USAID and NED, opposed to the Jean-Bertrand Aristide government in 2004. Baker is widely considered the candidate of choice of Haiti's wealthy ruling class as well as the favoured candidate of the international business community.
Leslie François Manigat.
Manigat received 12.40% of the vote in 2006. He was previously elected president in 1988 under a corrupt military run election after the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier's dictatorship. He came to power in what was an extremely low turnout, and just a few months later Manigat's government was overthrown by General Henri Namphy. Manigat spent 23 years in exile during the reign of François Duvalier. In 1979 he formed a political party in Caracas with other exiled political opponents called the Rally of National Progressive Democrats. In 1987 the first attempt at a democratic election was unsuccessful as 34 people were killed. Elections were postponed until February 1988 and Manigat won with many political parties boycotting the polls. He had the backing of the military but once in office he sought greater control over the military in an effort, according to him, to crack down on corruption. Following the coup d'état by General Namphy, Manigat worked as guest scholar in Washington D.C., Paris, and Geneva.
Guy Philippe.
Philippe is best known for his role in the 2004 Haiti Rebellion which overthrew the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide due to, in part, allegations of election fraud in the 2000 parliamentary elections and other issues. Philippe's involvement can be traced back to 2000 when he was forced to flee to the Dominican Republic after taking part in a failed coup attempt against the first administration of Rene Preval. He had been a police chief in Cap-Haïtien when he was accused again of masterminding another coup attempt against the Aristide government in December 2001, which he denies any involvement in but proof would point otherwise. Throughout 2001-2004 Philippe is said to have worked the rebels that were running a "contra" war in the Plateau Central assassinating Lavalas officials and family members. When unrest/insurgency turned to rebellion in 2004, Philippe publicly announced that he was joining with coup forces and quickly took a leadership role, which he shared with co-leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain, who is considered a notorious war criminal by some. After Aristide was removed from the country in a US registered plane, Philippe and his army put down their guns in favor of the UN peacekeeping force. He has also been accused of drug dealing, and Aristide supporter group claim he is a covert CIA spy, recruited by an agent in Haiti to start the coup. It has been reported that he had secret meetings with opposition groups of Aristide in the Dominican Republic and also with a CIA agent.
On July 11, 2005, Guy Philippe for the Front for National Reconstruction (FRN) party. The FRN is also his guerilla group which was involved in the rebellion of 2004. Early in 2005 the FRN became recognized as a political party. Philippe has been critical of the administration of the interim government, blaming them for the slow process of setting up registration centers throughout the country. Early on he was considered a frontrunner in the race but later fell behind the main contenders. In the end in spite of his international and local rebellion backers, and in spite of appealing to young Haitians to follow him, Phillippe won less than 1% of the vote, demonstrating that he was no popular hero and was only the leader of a false, mercenary rebel group.
Marc Bazin.
Bazin is a former Minister of Finance and Economy under the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier, and has also served as an official for the World Bank. In the 1990 elections Bazin received 14% of the votes, losing out to Jean-Bertrand Aristide. During the temporary coup d'état that replaced Aristide in 1991, Bazin was selected as the Prime Minister.
Bazin is a conservative politician who has sought to bring foreign investment into Haiti. For the 2006 elections he is running in an alliance with his MIDH (Mouvement pour l'Instauration de la Démocratie en Haïti) party and the popular Fanmi Lavalas. Bazin has been a bitter enemy of Aristide so it is somewhat surprising that this alliance has formed. There is evidence on the basis of Freedom of Information Act requests in the USA that the United States federal budget funded International Republican Institute (IRI) was involved in Bazin's campaign and has more generally been widely involved in organising political parties in Haiti.
Ineligible candidates.
Gérard Jean-Juste.
Jean-Juste is a Roman Catholic priest, Liberation theologian and supporter of the Fanmi Lavalas party in Port-au-Prince. He is well known for his close relations with former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Jean-Juste is well loved by many Haitians in urban slums for the liberation theology and the support for the poor and children that he has preached. His church feeds hundreds of homeless children every day and like Aristide he has promoted a government policy of social investment in the poor.
Most recently, on July 21, 2005, he at a funeral by police in connection with the abduction and subsequent murder of journalist Jacques Roche. While Jean-Juste was at the funeral of Roche, he was assaulted by other attendees before being placed in protective custody by the police. Later he was charged with complicity and intellectual authorship of the murder. Jean-Juste was out of the country both at the time of Roche's abduction (July 10) and the discovery of his mutilated, bullet-riddled body (July 14). On July 28, 2005 Amnesty International named Jean-Juste