Polling delays spark clashes in Haiti
Some voters allege election-tampering in nation's capital
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Haiti's long-awaited elections for president and a national legislature erupted in anger and occasional violence yesterday, as thousands of Haitians -- including many who awoke at 3 a.m. to walk hours to the polls -- found themselves turned away at polling centers unprepared for the massive throngs.
Haitian officials, seeking to quell an escalation of violence in what they had hoped would be peaceful, clean, and democratic elections, said they would keep the polls open until everyone who wanted to vote did so. Many polls closed four hours later than scheduled.
By midafternoon, the sites of earlier unrest had calmed, as people stood patiently in line to vote.
But the specter of election mishaps in a country that has suffered a series of undemocratic regimes and contested elections unleashed a flood of emotion and accusations of election-tampering by Port-au-Prince voters.
Waving their new voter ID cards in defiance, Haitians from the capital's impoverished and chaotic Cité Soleil district screamed in frustration at officials and police at the polling station where they tried to vote, then marched back to their neighborhood chanting the name of their favored candidate, René Préval. No polling stations were located in Cité Soleil because of gang violence and kidnappings there, and residents of the area were forced to walk to polls elsewhere.
Elections officials said at least three people were killed, including an elderly voter. He was killed after voters rushed the gates of a polling station in Bel Air, a nearby poor neighborhood, and at least 20 more were injured as they were smothered by the angry crowd.
''This is a selection, not an election!" thousands of demonstrators yelled as they marched in Bel Air, where some unruly voters were hit with pepper spray.
Authorities said voting problems in this nation of 8.3 million were largely limited to the capital.
But in the northern town of Gros Morne, a Haitian policeman shot and killed a man in line at a polling station, and a mob then killed the police officer, election officials said.
The elections are for a president and a new bicameral National Assembly to replace an interim government -- widely dismissed by Haitians as ineffective -- that has ruled Haiti since charismatic former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced into exile in 2004.
Préval, an agronomist and former president, was favored to best the other 34 candidates running for president, although it was not clear whether he would take the absolute majority needed to avoid a runoff election. Préval and Aristide, then a priest in a small church, helped to drive out the hated Duvalier dictatorship in 1986. Préval has drawn much of his support from Aristide strongholds in Port-au-Prince's slums, and some residents there dream that he would bring back Aristide.
Préval has provoked neither the intense emotional support nor the opposition that Aristide did; supporters interviewed in the past week described him as a pragmatic leader with a proven record of bettering Haiti.
But yesterday the name of Préval became synonymous with the disenfranchisement slum residents have felt under many Haitian regimes. Cité Soleil residents, marching through filthy streets, chanted in unison: ''No matter what, we want Préval!"
Election officials acknowledged some delays but heralded the election as a step toward democracy and progress. ''Many people didn't think these elections would take place," said Jose Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of American States. ''Finally, these elections took place and they are good elections."
Only one elected Haitian president has completed his term in office. Yesterday's elections -- already delayed four times since October because of security and organizational troubles -- gave many Haitians hope that they could begin to fix the high unemployment, substandard education, and poor healthcare that keep Haiti the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
But, instead, many voters found themselves stymied in their efforts to change their lives through democratic elections.
Some polling stations opened several hours late. Many voters were confused about where to go, spending hours in line at polling places only to be told they were in the wrong place. In a country where illiteracy is high, many voters could not read the name of the polling place written on the laminated voter registration cards prepared for the internationally monitored and UN troop-patrolled election.
IFES, a Washington-based democracy-building group and one of three international monitoring groups watching the polls, found that approximately 95 percent of polling stations across the country opened late, according to Vincent Deherdt, the group's chief electoral observer.
In Petion-Ville, a relatively wealthy neighborhood up the hill from the capital, lines were moving smoothly -- if slowly -- as riot police guided voters. Even there, bureaucratic troubles emerged, as voters contended that they were sent to the wrong polling station or given registration cards that were inaccurate.
''There is no order to it," said a Haitian government election observer in Petion-Ville who asked not to be named. Election authorities ''were not ready" for the voting, he said.
But the worst election mishaps occurred in the capital's poorest areas, fueling fears by the long-beleaguered population that their votes deliberately were not being counted. Some wondered aloud whether Haitian elites or a foreign power was trying to suppress votes for Préval.
''I have my card. I wasn't able to vote. Something fishy is going on," said Dieula Julien, 40, as she marched back to Cité Soleil from a voting station.
Claude Dougé, a voodoo doctor in middle-class Bas Peu de Chose, said he thought the international community and Haiti's wealthy citizens did not like Préval because he was tied to Aristide, a champion of the poor.
''This is the sad state of the country. They will never respect the vote of the Haitians," he said.
While the city had calmed by later in the day, some Haitians worried that the situation could again turn violent -- especially if the country's poorest citizens believed their votes were not counted.
''When we get upset, who knows what will happen," said Marie Antoinise Dorsainuil, a 59-year-old resident of Cité Soleil, as she entered her 12th hour waiting in line to vote. 