Yearbook 2006
Haiti. The first round of Haiti's presidential election
on February 7 was surrounded as expected by major practical
difficulties and political attacks. René Préval, leader of
the Lespwa Party ("Hope"), claimed that a widespread
election fraud had sabotaged his victory. However, the
electoral authority made sure that the voting was done,
which ultimately gave Préval the victory. His rival Leslie
Manigat, who received 12% of the vote, first equated the
action with a coup that prevented him from meeting Préval in
a second round, but later accepted the election result.
Foreign diplomats, especially Chilean and Brazilian, helped
resolve a situation that threatened to degenerate into new
political chaos in unstable Haiti. However, the confusion
surrounding the election results delayed Préval's
installation as president for a month and a half.
According to
CountryAAH, the hopes for political stability were high after the
long postponed elections were held. In early July, however,
the capital Port-au-Prince was shaken by a massacre of 21
people believed to have been carried out by the militia
group Lamé Ti Cuff (LTM) to destabilize the government of
Préval. Later, the same month, the exiled President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide's former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune,
who was jailed for two years, was released later that month.
In September 2013, the Senate voted to sue Prime Minister
Lamothe for a court of justice for share in the death of
Judge Jean Serge Joseph in July. In December 2014, he
resigned from the prime minister post. Two days earlier, a
parliamentary commission had recommended that both Lamothe,
the president of the Supreme Court and the chairman of the
state electoral council be removed from their post to soften
the conflict between Martelli's government and the
opposition.
Prime Minister Lamothe was immediately replaced by
Florence Duperval Guillaume, and Martelly subsequently
appointed Evans Paul for deployment in January 2015.
The UN MINUSTAH mission in Haiti is highly unpopular in
population due to its abuse. During demonstrations organized
by earthquake victims in December 2014, 2 Haitians were
injured and 1 killed when MINUSTAH soldiers opened fire on
the demonstration. There are countless reports of sexual
assault and MINUSTAH soldiers have been previously punished
for the rape of a 14-year-old Haitian boy.
In January 2015, Parliament dissolved as its term
expired. Four days later, thousands of protesters in Port Au
Prince's streets demanded the president's departure. Police
used tear gas and water cannons against the protesters. The
president urged the protesters to stay calm and declared
that he would have an agreement in place with the opposition
within the next 48 hours to form a unity government. At the
same time, a day was set in March for both presidential and
parliamentary elections.
However, the election was postponed and complicated by
elections in several rounds to the Senate, the Chamber of
Deputies and the presidential office. In August and October,
the 1st and 2nd rounds of the parliamentary elections were
held. The largest party in the Chamber of Deputies was Parti
Haïtien Tèt Kale (PHTK), which got 26 seats out of 92. The
second largest was Verité, who got 13 seats.
The social and health situation in the country became
even worse during 2015. The number of cholera cases tripled
in the first 6 months of 2015 compared to the previous year.
The country's northwest and southwest were affected by
prolonged drought. The situation was on the brink of famine.
Tens of thousands of Haitians fled the Dominican Republic
(PRD) in June after the PRD announced mass deportation of
Haitians. Finally, in 2010, 60,000 victims of the 2010
earthquake were still living in temporary camps under
miserable conditions.
In October, the first round of the presidential election
was conducted. PHTK's Jovenel Moïse got 32.8% of the vote,
while Lapeh's Jude Célestin got 25.3%. A total of 70
candidates ran for the election. Following the announcement
of the election results, Célestin and the following 5
candidates criticized the election for being so marked by
fraud that it was invalid. Lapeh and a host of other parties
then staged demonstrations in protest of the election.
Demonstrations that quickly degenerated violently and were
met by police resentment. Still, the second round of
elections was scheduled for implementation in December, but
5 days before the Supreme Election Commission postponed it
indefinitely. Nevertheless, President Martelly tried several
times in January 2016 to make the election. In February, his
term expired and parliament elected Jocelerme Privert as
acting president instead. In May, Privert set up a
commission to investigate the legitimacy of the election. At
the end of the month, it released a report showing extensive
and systematic fraud. Privert then recommended that the
first round of elections should go all the way. Now, the US
intervened, which had financed the first round with $ 33
million. US $, declaring that the US would not finance the
implementation of a new first round, but that it should go
directly to the second round. But this did not allow the
United States to dictate. The election was then postponed
several times during 2016.
|
