Amidst the furor over the presidential nomination campaigns and the saga of the Middle East and refugees and failed nation states, there is other news. There are plenty of problems in our hemisphere that are sadly overlooked. Georgia’s Senators Johnny Isakson and David Perdue, along with Florida Senator Marco Rubio, are hoping to bring attention to at least one of those problems with a letter addressed to Secretary of State John Kerry regarding the presidential elections in Haiti.
The history of Haiti is fraught with corruption, rebellion and coup d’états, sadly capped in recent history with the 7.0 2010 earthquake that killed 160,000 people, including the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince and the leader of Haiti’s opposition party at the time. The Presidential Palace and National Assembly were damaged to the point of un-useable. In fact, the Presidential Palace was demolished completely in 2012. The capital city’s main prison collapsed and 4,000 convicts escaped.
The earthquake occurred during the first administration elected after Haiti’s most recent coup, in 2004. In an occasionally lawless country with a population of 10 million, it was estimated by the Prime Minister that 250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial buildings were damaged beyond repair. In some places, 90% of structures were reported as destroyed. The country’s poverty did not easily lend to earthquake-proofing homes and other buildings.
In short, the situation was dire.
Despite this, and perhaps because of it, a presidential election was held in 2011 and one of Haiti’s best-known musicians Michael Martelly, or “Sweet Micky” as fans may have known him, was elected president as leader of a small, center-right political party called the Farmers’ Response Party. Martelly’s inauguration marked the first time that power had been peacefully handed over from an incumbent president to a member of the opposition.
It appears there may be trouble that it may become the only time. The Provisional Electoral Council delayed a second round of elections that had originally been scheduled for January. Martelly left office in early February as mandated by the constitution but no successor had as yet been chosen. An election had been held in October but the losing candidates at the time rejected them as “anti-democratic.”
The letter from Isakson, Perdue and Rubio notes that the U.S. has invested $30 million in helping Haiti run the elections and that the Organization of American States and other independent observers disagreed with the losing candidates and that the elections were reasonably fair, with no patterns of egregious fraud.
“Our experience with Haiti leads us to believe that the postponement had less to do with the electoral process than it did with the losing candidates manufacturing a crisis in order to achieve a ‘do-over’ with the hope of a different result. This would set a terrible precedent for Haiti if allowed to succeed.”
The Senators are urging the State Department to “use every tool at its disposal to ensure that Haitian authorities conduct elections by the agreed upon deadline. During a recent trip to Miami largely focused on Cuba, Kerry told the media that Haiti’s leaders “need to understand there’s a clear limit to the patience, the willingness of the international community to condone this process of delay.” But as of yet, the State Department has not taken any penalizing action.
Read the letter from Isakson, Perdue and Rubio HERE
