On
Sun., Sep. 18, observers from the Organization of
American States (OAS) began deploying in Haiti
in preparation for the Oct. 9 elections, which will
include a re-done first-round presidential race and
legislative run-offs.
Former Uruguayan Sen. Juan Raul Ferreira will
lead the OAS observer mission, which will deploy about
130 monitors.
AEven though we never expressly
accepted that the right decision was to do a redo, the
OAS is there,@ said Gerardo de Icaza,
director of OAS's Department of Electoral Cooperation
and Observation.
This grudging participation, not surprisingly, is
also the posture of Washington, which
dismissed the
findings of a Verification Commission that the
Oct. 25, 2015 presidential election was fraudulent and
should be scrapped. Although the U.S. is withholding funding, it now
says it will go along with the re-vote.
But a
new report, released on Sep. 19, says that OAS and
European Union (EU) observers white-washed the fraud and
violence of Aug. 9 and Oct. 25, 2015 elections and
"hindered efforts to initiate a verification process."
"The 2015 elections in
Haiti
represent a monumental failure of international
electoral observation," begins the executive summary of
the report, which was jointly prepared by the National
Lawyers Guild (NLG), the International Association of
Democratic Lawyers (IADL), and the UK-based Haiti
Support Group.
OAS and EU monitors "consistently downplayed,
minimized and obfuscated the serious flaws and
violations of voters’ rights that occurred" in 2015 and
"OAS and EU reports were used to attack the credibility
of Haitian observers, political parties and others
demanding an investigation."
The EU is withholding both funding and observers
from the Oct. 9 election. The OAS, sometimes called
Washington's "Ministry of
Colonial Affairs," is sending observers funded by the
U.S. and six
other nations.
"The flawed assessments suggest that
international observer missions are subject to influence
by the powerful member states that sponsor them," the
report says. "OAS and EU observers’ positions on the
2015 elections closely mirrored those of the U.S.,
Canada, France and Spain – especially where they
deviated from the consensus of local observers and the
press – an indication that protecting these states’
political and economic agendas in Haiti may have taken
precedence over upholding international standards."
The report, entitled "Democracy Discouraged:
International Observers and Haiti’s 2015 Elections,"
documents how the OAS and EU electoral observation
missions ignored reports of electoral problems from
Haitian observers, journalists, two governmental
commissions and, at times, even their own observers.
“The failure to uphold international standards
for free and fair elections raises serious questions
about the objectivity and independence of international
observers,” said Nicole Phillips, a member of the
National Lawyers Guild and one of the report’s authors.
“How is it possible that the OAS and EU observers
did not see what everyone else did?” said Mario Joseph
of the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux
(BAI),
based in Port-au-Prince, and a member of the IADL’s
governing Bureau. “Their unjustifiable endorsement of
the 2015 elections has badly damaged international
observers’ credibility in Haiti.”
The report recommends that international
observation missions monitor objectively and honestly on
the electoral process, refrain from political
interference, and incorporate the views of Haitian civil
society observers into their evaluations of the upcoming
Oct. 9 vote.
In a short introduction, Ricardo Seitenfus, the
former OAS Special Representative in Haiti before he
was fired for denouncing the "electoral coup" of
2010-2011, hails the new report as helping to banish
"the idea that Haiti’s salvation can only come from
overseas. Finally, the Haitian government is making the
elections a matter of sovereign concern."
This
verdict, as the timely report suggests, can only be
passed after we see what role OAS observers will play in
the Oct. 9 elections, as well as that of the Provisional
Electoral Council (CEP), headed by long-time U.S.-ally
Léopold Berlanger, and the government of interim
president Jocelerme Privert.
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