|
Speaking in early May at
the
“Who ‘Owns’ Haiti?”
symposium at George Washington’s Elliot School
of International Affairs, Colin Granderson, the
head of the CARICOM-OAS Electoral Mission in
Haiti in 2010-2011 confirmed previous accounts
that the international community tried to force
then-president René Préval from power on
election day.
That the
international community had “offered” President
Préval a plane out of the country during Haiti’s
chaotic first-round election in November 2010
was first
revealed by Ricardo
Seitenfus, the former OAS Special
Representative to Haiti. Seitenfus subsequently
lost his position with the OAS, but Préval
himself soon confirmed the story,
telling author Amy
Wilentz: “‘At around noon, they
called me,’ he said in an interview at the
palace recently. ‘It’s no longer an election,’
they told me. ‘It’s a political problem. Do you
want a plane to leave?’ I don’t know how they
were going to explain my departure, but I got
rid of that problem for them by refusing to go.
I want to serve out my mandate and give the
presidency over to an elected president.”
Despite
accounts of the story from three different
high-level sources who were there, the story has
gained little international traction in the
media.
In filmmaker
Raoul Peck’s documentary “Fatal Assistance,”
Préval
revealed
that it was the head of the UN mission in Haiti
at the time, Edmond Mulet, who made the threat.
(Seitenfus recently offered his recollection of
discussions with Mulet and other high-level
officials that day in an
exclusive interview
with CEPR and freelance Georgianne Nienaber.)
For his part, Mulet categorically denied the
event,
telling Catherine
Porter of the Toronto Star: “I never
said that, he never answered that,” Mulet told
the Star when asked about Préval’s allegation.
“I was worried if he didn’t stop the fraud and
rioting, a revolution would force him to leave.
I didn’t have the capability, the power or the
interest of putting him on a plane.”
The election,
plagued by record-low turnout, problems with
voter registration and
massive irregularities,
was in doubt on election day when, around noon,
12 of 18 presidential candidates held a press
conference calling for the election to be
cancelled. Speaking at last month’s symposium,
Granderson discussed what happened next:
“The
international community intervened, working with
representatives of the private sector, and
managed to get two of the candidates to reverse
themselves, to renege on their commitment, and
this rescued the electoral process. But what I
think was most unsettling, was that following
this attempt to have these elections cancelled,
was the intervention of certain members of the
international community basically calling on
President Préval to step down.”
This wouldn’t
be the end of the international community’s
intervention in the electoral process. After
first-round results were announced showing
Mirlande Manigat and Préval’s successor Jude
Célestin moving on to the second round, a team
from the OAS was brought in to analyze the
results. Despite having
no statistical evidence,
and instead of cancelling the elections, the OAS
team overturned the first round results,
replacing Célestin in the second round with
Michel Martelly. Seitenfus has described in
detail how this intervention was carried out, in
his
recent interview
with CEPR and in his forthcoming book,
International Crossroads and Failures in Haiti.
|
