The OAS has announced it will lead a recount of the disputed results announced by the electoral commission. But the OAS-Caricom electoral unit cannot be vouchsafed this mission because it has displayed too much partiality for the government of René Préval and too little transparency and professionalism for Haitian public opinion to have any confidence in its findings.
In our article “OAS Electoral Mission Complicit in Approving Suspect Returns” we have detailed the complicity of the OAS mission in letting through, in favor of the government candidate, 14,408 results displaying evident signs of fraud, as well as problems of conflict of interest, lack of transparency, and public expressions of bias.
We have also raised these concerns in a public meeting with the OAS in Washington on October 27, 2010.
Haitian public opinion in general, and civil society in particular, has become mistrustful of the OAS-Caricom’s unit’s ill-concealed political orientation, and has expressed this in incisive comments by Prof. Rosny Desroches and Jean-Claude Bajeux posted on this web page, and repeated in articles in major outlets such as Le Nouvelliste, Radio Kiskeya, or Alterpresse.
In its article on the recount, Radio Kiskeya noted the “vagueness in the exact mandate of this technical mission.” Such vagueness characterizes the entire mission.
The doubts are well enough founded to disqualify the OAS-Caricom mission from the role of impartial arbiter.
The answer is to place in quarantine the 14,408 doubtful votes for the government candidate and declare the results accordingly, so that Haiti may get on with its second round and the arduous task of forming an actual working government.