UN and U.S. Blame Haiti’s Opposition for Delayed Elections, Ignore History
by Center for Economic and Policy Research
At the United Nations Security Council meeting last week,
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power did not mince words
as to whom she thought was to blame for Haiti’s electoral
impasse. “[A] group of six senators seems intent on holding
elections hostage to partisan concerns, even going so far as
to prevent a debate on the electoral law,” Power
stated bluntly to the
assembled council members. “Legislators in a democracy have
a responsibility to defend their constituents’ rights. But
when elected officials take advantage of democracy’s checks
and balances to cynically block debates and elections
altogether, they stand in the way of addressing citizens’
real needs.”
In line with Power, Sandra Honoré, the head of
the so-called UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH), also
targeted the “Group of Six” senators. She extolled the March
2014 El Rancho Accord, which all major opposition parties,
including former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Lavalas
Family, have condemned as a bogus political compromise and
public relations ploy orchestrated by President Michel
Martelly. But Honoré said the Accord “generated the hope
that combined elections would be held by the end of 2014"
and blamed a “group of Senators opposed to the El Rancho
Accord” for demanding “the establishment of an entirely new
Electoral Council,” a call of almost the entire Haitian
opposition.
On Sep. 15, in a separate action, 15 U.S.
Congress members wrote to the Senate president Simon Desras.
“We are deeply concerned that the Haitian Senate has been
unable to pass the requisite legislation to authorize
elections this year,” wrote the U.S. lawmakers. “We believe
that Haitians deserve better than to have this fundamental
democratic right continually delayed.”
But, as the Miami Herald
pointed out, “[i]n
addition to the senators, several large political parties in
Haiti are also opposed to the agreement and were not part of
the negotiations [the El Rancho Accord]. In addition to
raising constitutional issues, Martelly opponents have also
raised questions about the formation of the Provisional
Electoral Council (CEP) tasked with organizing the vote.
Many feel that it is currently being controlled by the
executive.”
Opposition leader Mirlande Manigat, a
conservative who lost to Martelly in a run-off election in
2011 and is a constitutional scholar,
responded to the comments
from the U.S. and the UN, saying it was unreasonable to
overlook the role that Martelly has played in the delay.
“For three years, he refused to call elections,”
she said. “A large part of this is his fault… It is unfair
to accuse the six senators for the crisis.”
As
we have noted
previously, there are legal and constitutional reasons
behind the oppositions’ electoral stance. “Prompt elections
are much needed, but elections will only remedy Haiti’s
political crisis if they are run fairly by a
constitutionally-mandated electoral council,” said Mario
Joseph, managing lawyer for the Bureau des Avocats
Internationaux. “President Michel Martelly has delayed
elections for three years because he does not want to lose
the political control he has enjoyed without full
parliamentary oversight.”
Given the outrage coming from the U.S. and other
foreign powers about the delayed elections and the focus on
this group of senators, it could be easy to forget that
indeed, as Joseph and Manigat point out, this issue has been
developing for years, a fact of which the international
community is well aware.
For starters, much of the current political
stalemate arises from the
deeply flawed presidential
elections in 2010, through which Martelly was
elected only after the
arbitrary intervention of the
Organization of American States (OAS). Since that
election, every year, without fail, the Martelly government
has pledged to hold elections and then subsequently failed
to live up to its promises. By overlooking this background
and simply blaming a group of six senators, the
international community and the U.S. are once again
prioritizing the holding of any election, without regard to
the quality of said election.
Looking back over the last few years of U.N.
Security Council meetings reveals just how long this has
been an issue and how the viewpoints and criticisms from the
international community have changed.
In September 2011, Martelly had been in office
for less than six months. With partial legislative elections
on the horizon, then head of MINUSTAH, Mariano Fernandez
Amunategui,
spoke to the council.
“It will also be important to support the
electoral process in Haiti, which is preparing for partial
legislative and local Government elections in November,” he
said. “In that respect, I stress that electoral reform,
including the establishment of a credible permanent
electoral council, is indispensable if Haiti hopes gradually
to reduce its dependence on international electoral
assistance.”
One year
later, after those scheduled elections had not taken place,
Fernandez
once again addressed
the Security
Council.
“An exceptional situation in Haitian political
life is currently being played out in that the Senate, which
is theoretically made up of 30 members, today has only 20
members,” he explained on Oct. 2, 2012. “That continues to
distort political life, with negative consequences for the
democratic stabilization process in Haiti. In addition,
there is at present a serious impasse in the formation of
the Permanent Electoral Council.
“The formation of an electoral body of nine
members in accordance with the stipulations of the
Constitution is an unavoidable prerequisite for any
elections; its establishment will determine how soon the
pending elections can be held to renew a third of the Senate
as well as to elect all municipal mayors and councillors,”
Fernandez continued. “That is why MINUSTAH is currently
working in coordination with the international community to
promote dialogue and prepare the way for the soonest
possible establishment of a Permanent Electoral Council that
is legitimate and legal and that enjoys the broadest
possible support.”
That year (another with no elections held), the
terms of some 130 mayors expired. Rather than let them
continue in their posts until elections were held, they were
replaced by Martelly appointees. Fast forward another year,
and MINUSTAH has a new head, Sandra Honoré.
“Turning to the political situation, the
continued delay in the holding of long-overdue partial
senatorial, municipal and local elections is of increasing
concern and poses a series of risks to the stabilization
process,” she said in her
Oct. 10, 2013 report to
the council. “Yesterday’s long-awaited submission to
Parliament by President Martelly of the draft electoral law
that is required to launch the electoral process is a most
welcome development. However, there have been protracted
delays caused, in part, by the eight months that it took the
three branches of Government to designate the nine members
of the Electoral Council.”
But most importantly, last year Honoré
explicitly stated what has caused the “Group of Six”
senators to come together: “Despite the executive branch’s
repeated public statements in favor of holding the elections
as soon as possible, those delays have led a number of
political and civil society actors to express skepticism
concerning the likelihood that elections will be held in
2013...
“Delays in the submission of the draft electoral
law by the executive to Parliament fueled speculation among
legislators that the executive had intentionally delayed the
process to ensure that Parliament would become
non-functional,” she continued. “That perception united a
grouping of main opposition parties that repeatedly and
publicly called on President Martelly to uphold the
constitutional requirement of timely elections, or else to
resign, thus popularizing the chant calling for ‘elections
or resignation.’”
Again, another year passed without elections.
For years now, the international community has called for
elections which respect the Constitution and reflect a broad
consensus. Now, however, with the terms of another third of
the Senate and the entire lower house set to expire in
January, the calls for elections have become deafening.
Unfortunately, it appears as though the U.S. and other
countries involved in Haiti, after doing little more than
make speeches each year calling for elections, are now
willing to accept any sort of election, even if it doesn’t
follow the Constitutional provisions that they themselves
have been citing over the last three years. It is true that
Haiti needs to hold elections, but after the debacle in 2010
(largely shoved on Haitians by the international community),
it would be wrong to discard the objections of a large
section of Haitian society and push forward with another
deeply flawed election. |