In a major victory for legality in Haiti, the administrator of the electoral commission, Jacques Bernard, returned Sunday, March 5 today to Port-au-Prince to resume organizing the parliamentary elections.
The Haiti Democracy is proud to have sponsored Mr. Bernard at a seminar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on February 27. At this event, interventions were made by senior Haitian ,U.S., and Dominican government representatives all seeking to ascertain the conditions needed to allow Mr. Bernard to resume his work administering the second round.
The negotiations broached at the seminar culminated in decisions taken in Haiti to clear the way for his return, and his agreement on March 3-4 to do so.
Mr. Bernard’s return is also fully supported by Rene Preval, who, in another major victory for governance in Haiti, has insisted that he wants to take the oath of office before a duly-elected parliament. He has declined to be sworn in by a judge, as was current president Boniface Alexander.
Here Mr. Bernard’s return is crucial because by most accounts he was the only effective senior administrator the CEP had, without whom the parliamentary second round might have faced long delays.