Originally: Dear Mr. President,
Letter to president of electoral commission, January 18, 2011
Dear Mr. President,
It was a pleasure to meet you and other members of the electoral commission on December 6, when I was in Port-au-Prince preparing the Haiti Democracy Project’s mission of fifty-eight electoral observers. During our discussion we covered the imperative need for the commission to verify the results and also for it to increase its security.
I understand you are shortly to meet with President Préval to receive the report of the experts’ team, which was sent to reinforce the OAS mission.
On the basis of the many things we have observed in the course of this electoral mission, I make these two suggestions for your meeting:
A. Receipt of the experts’ report
- Scrutinize very carefully the actual version of the experts’ report with which you are presented, to make sure it is the genuine one, which has been circulating widely for a week.
- In particular, take a close look at Table 1, which appears on page 12 of the English version, giving the revised total recommended by the experts’ mission for each candidate. Make sure that you see on line 2 of that table, “MARTELLY MICHEL JOSEPH” with a revised total of 227,467 votes, 22.2% of the total. And on line 3, “CELESTIN JUDE” with 224,242 votes, 21.9% of the total.
- Do not accept as a genuine copy of the experts’ report any version that differs from the order given above.
- Be very careful with this examination lest you be trapped in a situation where you have accepted an altered version, then in the spirit of compliance with the work of experts, announce results contrary to what they have recommended. This could put you in an inextricable situation.
B. Security
The Haiti Democracy Project will inform U.S. authorities of our finding that the Haitian electoral commission needs increased security in order to do an impartial evaluation of the experts’ report and implement its recommendations.
Sincerely,
James Morrell