[News] Martelly wins with just 16.7% registered voters in Haiti illegal "selection"

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Haiti Action Committee Post-Election Update

On his long fought for return home, President 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide addressed the 
fundamentally unjust nature of recent 
U.S./UN-backed Haitian elections, saying, “The 
problem is exclusion, and the solution is 
inclusion. The exclusion of Fanmi Lavalas 
[Aristide’s political party] is the exclusion of 
the majority 
 because everybody is a person.” 
Aristide recently returned from a seven-year 
exile in South Africa, where he and his family 
lived in forced exile after his 
democratically-elected government was ousted in a U.S.-backed coup.

Both the November 28 elections and the March 20 
runoff are sham elections, referred to by many 
Haitians as “selections.” In addition to the 
exclusion of Fanmi Lavalas, the Nov. 28 elections 
were fraught with massive problems – voters were 
unable to find their names at polling places; 
there was chaos and violence at a number of the 
polls. There was little effort to allow 
earthquake survivors living in tent camps to 
vote. The Center for Economic and Policy Research 
condemned the exclusion of Lavalas, saying, “The 
second round [
] is based on an illegitimate 
electoral process and a deeply flawed first 
round. New, inclusive elections remain the only 
way to ascertain the true will of the Haitian people.”

The international investment of millions in these 
sham run-off elections, which offered up two 
right-wing candidates sympathetic to former 
dictator Baby Doc Duvalier, shows contempt for 
Haitian sovereignty, and the rights of its people 
to determine their own future.  Haiti Action 
Committee will continue to work on behalf of 
Haiti’s poor majority, not the few elites who 
will benefit from this illegitimate election.

While mainstream news agencies credit a 
"landslide" victory to Martelly, the Center for 
Economic and Policy Research issued a report [see 
below] indicating even lower voter turnout in the 
run-offs than in the first round. Martelly won 
with the support of just 16.7% of the eligible 
electorate. For more on Martelly, see 
<http://www.haitisolidarity.net/article.php?id=503>Annul 
the Elections, Stop the Duvalier Restoration, 
Return President Aristide by Charlie Hinton.

The following report was posted by the 
<http://www.cepr.net/>Center for Economic and 
Policy Research on Tuesday, 05 April 2011:

MARTELLY'S HISTORICALLY WEAK MANDATE

Preliminary results announced by the CEP last 
night showed Michel ³Sweet Micky² Martelly with 
67.6 percent of the vote, while Mirlande Manigat 
received 31.5 percent. While news headlines focus 
on the ³landslide² victory for Martelly, he 
actually received the support of only 16.7 
percent of registered voters -- far from a strong 
mandate -- as early reports show Martelly with 
just 716,986 votes to Manigat¹s 336,747. Reports 
indicate that turnout was even lower than in the 
first round, when it was a historically low 22.8 
percent, and Martelly¹s percent of votes (as well as Manigat¹s)
would have been even smaller were it not for the 
use of new electoral lists which removed some 400,000 people from the rolls.

Nevertheless, media reports have largely ignored 
the issue of turnout. AOL¹s Emily Troutman 
reported last night that, ³Martelly's 67 percent 
of the vote is nearly unprecedented in Haiti and 
a clear mandate for his leadership². Not only is 
the 67 percent number misleading in terms of his 
overall support, it is also far from 
unprecedented (as other reporters have also 
stated). In 1990 Aristide was elected with 67 
percent of the vote, but with significantly 
higher turnout. Aristide received over one 
million votes in 1990 even though there were over 
one million fewer registered voters at the
time. In 1995, Preval was elected with over 87 
percent of the vote. In 2000, Aristide received 
over 3.5 times as many votes as Martelly did in 
the runoff elections last month. Even Preval¹s 
most recent term began with a greater
mandate than Martelly¹s; in 2006 he received 
nearly one million votes with 700,000 fewer registered voters.

It is also worth noting that the electoral 
process has been deeply flawed from the 
beginning. Despite an aggressive and expensive 
get-out-the-vote campaign from the UN and U.S., 
the second round suffered from many of the same 
problems as the first: low turnout and a high 
number of irregularities. The legality of the 
second round remains in doubt given that a 
majority of the CEP¹s members appear never to 
have verified the first round results.

There were also widespread irregularities in the 
March 20 elections. Although the US issued a 
statement last night saying that irregularities 
³were isolated and reduced², some 15 percent of 
the tally sheets were quarantined from 
preliminary results due to fraud or other 
irregularities. This is a greater portion 
excluded than in the first round, and represents over 100,000 votes.

It is clear that a candidate that won only 4.6 
percent of the electorate in the first round and 
16.7 percent in the second round does not have a 
strong mandate to rule.  In such a context, one 
would hope that Martelly would seek
to work with civil society and with his political 
opponents, especially those that were arbitrarily 
excluded from the elections, as Fanmi Lavalas and several other parties were.
Ever since the earthquake, Haitians have reached 
across political lines to join each other in the 
urgent tasks of helping their neighbors to 
rebuild their communities, and their nation. The 
continued political marginalization
of parties and groups that are supported by a 
majority of people can only detract from the critical tasks at hand.
[END CEPR REPORT]

Sent by Haiti Action Committee
<http://www.haitisolidarity.net/>www.haitisolidarity.net and on FACEBOOK




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