You don?t have to be a genius to realize just how long Preval and Alexis can postpone the dates for the incomplete legislative elections in the Nord-Est and for the Territorial Collectives. They can use every bit of the time to extend their tentacles. They want to confiscate the elections of 2006 just as they did those of May 21, 2000. This is the basic reason why this twosome is returning Haiti to the status quo ante. It is a necessary step towards the confiscation of power for decades by the anarcho-populists.
In the Nord-Est department, they are afflicted with a candidate for the senate who is in their way. Sans manipulation, it is absolutely certain that he would be elected in first place. In the two elections held this year so far, he received more than twice the votes of the next candidate. The pretext utilized to annul the first round in the Nord-Est Department is undoubtedly a manipulation. They could, given that the electoral commission is out of money, use the results of the second vote to declare the winners. The two votes gave the same results. A third one, sans manipulation, would most surely do the same.
We are on course to lose the opportunity to open a new era in the effort to include multiple sectors in top elected posts. Unfortunately, the effort at manipulation is not without its rationale. Consider their situation. The Lavalas adherents have been thrust back in power by the intervention of the South American hegemonists. They have done the impossible, achieving a paradoxical reconquest of power and a spectacular reinstallation of the Lavalas regime. At just this moment of triumph, their xenophobia and totalitarian instincts are offended by the existence of a candidate who is the antithesis of Lavalas populist canons, and who comes in first in the senatorial election.
This is felt to be intolerable. They can tolerate the distinctions between paleo-, crypto-, and neo-Lavalas adherents. But not this!
After a half century of populism, what is new under the sun? With this kind of xenophobia, what kind of national dialogue or multisectoral coalition is possible? With this intolerance, what kind of democracy? With such violations of the right of the minority, what democracy? Do you think it is only the Haitians who see what is going on? Why then the hesitations of those who have their hands on the pursestrings? Why are they holding out? Why are all their promises of aid tied to conditions of governance?
If one is not convinced that the manipulation and postponement sine die of the Nord-Est elections serve the interests of the Preval-Alexis duo, one need only refer to the arithmetic of the parliament. Control of the pending elections in the Nord-Est offers the Preval/Alexis duo three seats in the senate and thirteen in the chamber of deputies (sic).
(Webmaster?s note: Only one deputies? race was annulled in the Nord-Est. The other thirteen are in other departments.)
In the senate, LESPWA would go from eleven to fourteen seats out of thirty, improving from 36.66 to 46.66 percent, bringing with it the presidency of the senate. In the chamber of deputies, they would go from twenty to thirty-three out of ninety-nine, increasing from 20 to 33 percent.
But they seek to confiscate the elections of the Nord-Est for another reason as well, besides their interest in controlling parliament to the extent possible. They want to prevent a historical first, the entry into an important legislative post of a member of a minority ethnic group and social class, whom they wish to exclude from politics at any price. In this case, what kind of dialogue and multi-sectoral coalition are we talking about?