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03/09/2006:

"After February 7th: Haiti’s Election ‘Provides Space’ to Poor Organizations"

The second anniversary of the coup of elected Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide occurred in the midst of la carnival, a popular yearly cultural festival. Tens of thousands of Haitians from neighbourhoods all over the capital came out for the celebration, which included a performance by Haitian hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean. Last year, the planned festival was all but cancelled in Port-au-Prince amid political demonstrations and violence by the Haitian National Police, who shot and killed three participants in a peaceful demonstration protesting Aristide’s removal. This year, in the aftermath of the Rene Preval’s landslide win in the February 7th Haitian elections, the climate is noticeably calmer, even within some of the poorest neighbourhoods.

On Thursday, March 2nd, hip-hop star Wyclef Jean lead a delegation of individuals from Yele Haiti, the public works NGO founded by the hip-hop icon, into Bel Air and Cite Soleil, two of the poorest urban slums in the capital of Port-au-Prince. The next morning, Le Matin, a paper owned by Haitian industrialist Reginal Boulos, featured a cover photo of Jean standing arm in arm with Evans and Amaral, two “gang leaders” according to the caption, in Cite Soleil. Many of the artists and musicians accompanying Wyclef into Cite Soleil called for a new spirit of “reunification” of Haiti, presumably within the “troubled” poor neighborhoods surrounding Haiti’s capital.

Such optimism may seem somewhat premature, given the fact that on the same day as Wyclef’s well-publicized visit, the Haitian Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced without explanation that the planned March 19th parliamentary elections would be postponed indefinitely. This announcement echoes the announcements of past delays of the Presidential election, which was delayed at least three times before it was held in a state of massive disorganization on February 7th. The tallying of the votes for this election took more than a full week, and culminated in an explosion of street protests by poor Haitians and supporters of Preval after burned and charred ballots bearing an “x” under Preval’s name turned up in a dumpsite on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. The Provisional Electoral Council’s tally of votes had reduced Preval’s lead from its earlier tally of 61% to 48.7%, below the 50% required to avoid a run-off vote. Preval was declared President soon after by the CEP, under pressure from within and without as the international community began to recognize the fact that none of Preval’s rivals, most of whom taken from Haiti’s wealthy elite, had garnered anywhere near the electoral support that he had.
zmag.org