Haiti's elusive polls

Prime Minister Latortue and Rosemond Pradel, secretary-general of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), point bitterly to the OAS and the UN stabilization mission, or MINUSTAH. The UN, with a $60 million budget, has deployed some 9,000 soldiers, police, and civilian staff to Haiti, a country of 8.5 million people.

"We are fed up with those foreigners who sit there spending money and not delivering," Mr. Pradel said last week, arguing that OAS had not properly distributed voter ID cards, and MINUSTAH had "refused" to set up enough voting centers or to provide adequate security.

Evans Jean, leader of the notorious Boston gang in Cité Soleil, suspected of orchestrating dozens of kidnappings and one of Haiti's most notorious gangsters, gave MINUSTAH equally low points, charging its leadership was corrupt and abusive. "They are taking cuts from the kidnappers," he charges. "The police are even worse."

Both the head of the OAS mission in Haiti, Denneth Modeste, and the UN's Valdes have firmly dismissed these claims, and hinted the government and CEP have parts in the delays.

Mr. Modeste has repeatedly said that the OAS was ready to start distributing voter cards Sept. 25, but Haitian officials told them to wait because polling stations had not yet been chosen. The UN, meanwhile, says spokesman Damian Onses-Cardona, acted appropriately. "Our mission was to verify the voting centers ... physically existed, and to organize ballot boxes, ballots, computers, staff, and security. We have done our part..."

Dumarsais Siméus, a Haitian-American businessman barred from running in the elections on constitutional grounds, is more direct in assessing the government's responsibility.

"If the people supposed to do their job can't do it - and the government has proved this to be the case again and again - then we need a new team," he said in a phone interview from his office in Southlake, Texas. "If ... we try to force elections without cleaning up the mess, we will create a worse mess."

Some analysts also voice concern about drug traffickers. "The last thing they want is a legitimate government capable of building a police that they cannot corrupt," says ICG's Schneider.

The business community has also come under scrutiny, as many are known to dislike election frontrunner René Préval, a former president and Aristide associate who is backed by many urban poor.

"The bourgeois know Préval is going to win and he knows that means the poor will be in the picture," asserts Amaral Duclona, leader of the Belcourt gang in Cité Soleil. Wearing a cap emblazoned with Préval's party name, "LESPWA," and showing off his new registration card, Duclona charges that the "rich ... are doing everything they can to delay, even stop ... democracy."

But some charge that the blame game has gone too far. "Who cares who is to blame?" asks Mr. Onses-Cardona, the UN spokesman.

"The elections are going to be late, but they will happen. Iraq and Afghanistan were no better prepared. If we want elections in the style of Switzerland we can wait 1,000 years. But we are almost as close to ready as we will ever be."

• Ms. Harman is Latin America bureau chief for the Monitor and USA Today.

Page: 1 | 2