Politics
Haiti working towards credible elections this year
Parliament accused the president of trying to stuff the electoral commission with his supporters. The presidency accused lawmakers of delaying a vote on a key electoral law.
As months went by without any votes, local councilors and national lawmakers saw their mandates expire with no replacements named.
On January 12, the national parliament fell into disuse, with too few members to form a quorum to vote on legislation. Under pressure from the street, where opposition demonstrations were getting louder, Martelly issued a March 2 decree – there would at last be elections.
Pretenders to the presidency are supposed to register their intent during the second week of May, but already dozens of names are circulating.
“If we have 50 or 60 presidential candidates, you can just imagine how long the ballot paper will be,” Georges told reporters.
Long indeed. Alongside each name on the ballot there must be the candidate’s photo, campaign logo and party registration number.
Candidate Number One will be easy to find at the top of the ballot, he explained, and: “Ten is Lionel Messi’s shirt number.”
Argentine footballers may be better known to Haitians than their own leaders, but there is a greater challenge facing poll organizers: Money.
Haiti, already lagging behind its neighbors because of its brutal colonial history under France and recent years of dictatorship and rebellion, was devastated by a 2010 earthquake.
The unprecedented disaster killed 200,000 people and demolished much of the capital, Port-au-Prince. The World Bank estimated the damage as the equivalent of 120 percent of annual gross domestic product (GDP).
