Haiti’s Flawed Election and the Response of the International Community

1. Haiti’s Flawed Election and the Response of the International Community Mark WeisbrotCo-Director, Center for Economic and Policy ResearchFebruary 2011

2. OAS Report:Serious Flaws, Unsupported Conclusions • Unprecedented to change the outcome of an election without a full recount • Sample size of just 919 tally sheets, out of 11,181 • No statistical inference to estimate what result would be if the remaining 92 percent of tally sheets had been examined • Threw out 234 tally sheets which moved Martelly into second place by 0.3 percentage points • Five times as many tally sheets were simply “never received” by CEP • Six out of seven members were from the US, Canada and France

3. Haiti’s Fatally Flawed Election • Extremely low participation: 22.8% compared to 59.3% in 2006 • Exclusion of Fanmi Lavalas, polls inaccessible to many IDPs • Over 1300 tally sheets were never received by the CEP or quarantined by the CEP -- equal to 12.2 percent of the total • CEPR conducts full recount – statistical analysis • Found an additional 7.6% of the tally sheets to be irregular • Majority of missing sheets came from areas Celestin did well in • It is impossible to determine who should advance to a second round

4. Haiti Election Vote Recount (Percent of Registered Voters)

5. International Threats, Pressure to Accept Flawed Elections and Altered Result • United States, France, Canada all pressure Haitian authorities to accept OAS report • On the other hand, OAS downplays report’s findings as “calculations” and not “results” • US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice suggests aid cutoff if Haiti refuses to accept OAS candidate choices • US revokes visas of INITE party leaders, those close to Preval and Celestin • UN Under-Secretary-General Alain Le Roy: “Should the CEP decide otherwise, Haiti may well be faced with a constitutional crisis, with the possibility of considerable unrest and insecurity”

6. What is Washington Trying to Do? • History: overthrow of Arisitide (1991 and 2004), repression and exclusion of Famni Lavalas • Exclusion of Fanmi Lavalas is key: question could resurface if there were new elections • From Wikileaks cables: Washington pressures Brazil, South Africa to keep Aristide from returning and from influencing Haitian politics from abroad • Return of Duvalier: His head of security is Louis-Jodel Chamblain, long-time U.S. intelligence asset

7. What is Washington Trying to Do? • OAS/U.S. result: two right-wing candidates will compete in election • Neither will likely prosecute Duvalier; Preval committed to doing so • U.S. far right: committed to right-wing government in Haiti, very influential in Obama State Department • Wikileaks cables show U.S. concern about Preval re/ Haitian foreign relations

8. Looking Ahead: What Can Be Done to Support Democracy In Haiti • US Congress: Congressional Black Caucus Calls For New Elections; 45 Democrats asked Hillary Clinton for inclusion of all political parties • Other governments in the hemisphere: fiercely resisted U.S. support for coup government in Honduras, still won’t let Honduras back in the OAS • Other governments changed OAS resolution on Haiti so that it would not include endorsement of OAS mission results • Other governments blocked Rio Group (23 Latin American/Caribbean States) from resolution • Pushback inside Haiti: Preval, Celestin, INITE

9. Conclusion • Haiti will remain ungovernable without legitimate government; legitimate government requires free and fair elections