AP
HAITI, JANUARY 23
Haiti has called off its presidential election just two days before it was due to take place over concerns of escalating violence sparked by the opposition candidate’s refusal to take part in a vote he said was riddled with fraud.
The Provisional Electoral Council decided to postpone the runoff because there is “too much violence throughout the country,” council president Pierre-Louis Opont said at a news conference.
In recent days, a number of election offices across the impoverished nation have been burned and the capital has been rocked by violent opposition protests calling for a halt to the vote.
The council did not set a new date for the vote. It also did not say whether an interim government would take power after 7 Febuary, when president Michel Martelly is required to leave office under the Constitution, or if he would remain until a replacement is elected.
Martelly had been expected to address the issue in a speech to the nation on Friday evening, but he cancelled his address as thousands of protesters erected flaming barricades, smashed car windows and hurled rocks at police in Port-au-Prince. Instead an extraordinary council of ministers was convened to discuss public order and security.
Government opponents have insisted that the first round of presidential balloting on 25 October was marred by massive fraud in favour of the president’s hand-picked successor, businessman Jovenel Moise. The runoff was originally supposed to be held on 27 December, and was then rescheduled for Sunday.
Jude Celestin, also a businessman and the other candidate in the runoff, said he would boycott the vote, though his name remained on the ballot.
Protests have grown increasingly violent in recent days, prompting the council to conclude it was too dangerous to try to hold the vote. Haiti has only a tenuous handle on security even with the assistance of troops and police from a UN peacekeeping force that has been in the country since a 2004 uprising ousted then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Schools that serve as election centres and voting stations in various towns have been attacked and set on fire in recent days, and election materials in a border town were hijacked by gunmen, Opont said.
Recent opposition-stoked protests in Port-au-Prince have ramped up the tension with rock-throwing partisans and burning street barricades.
Thousands of demonstrators cheered in celebration on Friday after hearing the vote would be postponed. Groups of mostly young men then proceeded to Petionville, a hillside district that is home to some of Haiti’s wealthiest citizens, where they smashed windows, set vehicles alight and threw rocks at riot police. Security guards fired into the air.
In the evening, the smoldering remnants of scores of flaming barricades could be seen in downtown Port-au-Prince. Motorists were forced to swerve around burnt tires, shattered glass and piles of rocks, but roadside eateries began to reopen.
There has been growing concern that a flawed runoff might push the perennially volatile country of 10 million people to the edge of tumult, rolling back a decade of relative political stability and putting the brakes on foreign investment.
Elections are always a struggle in Haiti. It saw its first genuinely democratic election in 1990, closely followed by a coup d’etat. While there have been no shortage of opposition boycotts since, this is the first time that a presidential candidate is boycotting a runoff after qualifying for it.
Celestin recently told The Associated Press that Haiti was “moving toward a selection, not an election.” He said the US and other foreign governments that monitor Haiti were complicit for supporting the flawed process.
Haiti’s Senate and various religious, business and civil-society groups had called for a halt to Sunday’s runoff due to public suspicion of fraud and concerns about instability.
Martelly had said the runoff would go on as scheduled and accused the opposition of trying to derail the vote with bogus accusations so a transitional government they would dominate could be set up.
