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<span class="post_date" title="2015-11-24">November 24, 2015</span>
<h1 class="headline" itemprop="name"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/24/defiant-haiti-we-wont-let-you-steal-these-elections/"
rel="bookmark">Defiant Haiti: “We Won’t Let You Steal These
Elections!”</a></h1>
<p class="post_meta"> <span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/david-welsh/"
rel="nofollow">Dave Welsh</a></span></p>
<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/24/defiant-haiti-we-wont-let-you-steal-these-elections/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/24/defiant-haiti-we-wont-let-you-steal-these-elections/</a></small></small></small></b><br>
<div class="post_content" itemprop="articleBody">
<p>Hooded gangs attacked a large demonstration against election
fraud today (November 20) in the Haitian capital. A group of
about 20 hooded men in a white pickup (license plate 1-00692),
armed with machetes, pipes, hammers and guns, attacked marchers
in the Delmas 95 district while police turned a blind eye,
according to radio reports. One marcher was wounded in the head
by a machete, AP reported. In the Delmas 40 district a young
man in the march was shot and killed by a unit reportedly
affiliated with the national police of outgoing President Michel
Martelly.</p>
<p>Haitians, determined to thwart what they see as an ongoing
“electoral coup d’etat,” have been in the streets almost daily
in their tens of thousands since the Oct. 25<sup>th</sup> first
round Presidential elections. There were huge demonstrations,
punctuated by police firing into the crowd, wounding several,
on Nov. 18, anniversary of Haiti’s defeat of the armies of
Napoleon at the Battle of Vertieres in 1803, which paved the way
for independence from France and abolition of plantation slavery
on the island. On Nov. 1, a big election protest in the Bel Air
popular district, led by a Rara band, was attacked and two
marchers shot dead; later that day a third protester was
ambushed and killed on the way home.</p>
<p><strong>Massive and sustained protests</strong></p>
<p>“Only continuous mobilization throughout the country can win
respect for the people’s rights and their votes. When one person
tires, their neighbor must take up the fight,” said Fanmi
Lavalas, widely acknowledged as the country’s most popular
political party, although banned until now from running
candidates ever since the coup that ousted former President
Aristide in 2004.</p>
<p>Lavalas presidential candidate Dr. Maryse Narcisse, who is in
the streets every day getting teargassed with the protesters,
has officially challenged the results with the National
Electoral Litigation Bureau. Other major parties have
unofficially protested the fraudulent elections, in which
President Martelly’s handpicked candidate, a political
neophyte, miraculously emerged as the front-runner. A run-off
election is due to take place in December.</p>
<p>[This recalled for many the 2010 election, when Martelly was
illegally catapulted into the run-off under pressure from
then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Organization of
American States. The US and United Nations forces have continued
their in-your-face interference in the 2015 election as well.]</p>
<p><strong>U.N. charged with major role in election fraud</strong></p>
<p>Haiti’s political crisis took a dramatic turn with the
mid-November revelations of Antoine Rodon Bien-Aime and two
other candidates for Parliament from President Martelly’s own
PHTK party. It has been reported that some 10,000 Haitian police
and 2,500 MINUSTAH (UN military mission in Haiti) personnel were
deployed during the Oct. 25 voting, and that both MINUSTAH and
the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) were involved in
transporting ballots to be tallied in Port-au-Prince.</p>
<p>Now Deputy Bien-Aime and his two colleagues are accusing the
U.N. Mission in Haiti, headed by Sandra Honore, with direct
involvement in the Oct. 25 election fraud. Specifically, they
charge UNOPS and its Electoral Logistics Coordinator Sylvain
Cote, a Canadian national, with being directly responsible for
taking boxes of ballots actually cast by the people, and
switching them with boxes of pre-filled-out ballots. Sylvain
Cote scurried out of the country the day after the revelations
surfaced.</p>
<p>Fifteen well-known Haitian intellectuals were so outraged by
the “clear involvement of U.N. agencies in the fraud that marred
the elections of October 25” that they wrote an Open Letter to
Sandra Honore on Nov. 16, stating: “…the whole world is
discovering, under pressure from the street…. the truth of the
biggest electoral fraud operation…for the last 30 years in
Haiti.”</p>
<p>But the main force is coming from the street. Many are
comparing today’s non-stop mass demonstrations to the uprisings
that led to the 1986 collapse of the dictatorship of “Baby Doc”
Duvalier. The people are turning the defense of their vote into
a focus of mass struggle against the hated neo-Duvalierists in
the Haitian government and their US, French and Canadian
backers.</p>
<p>On November 9<sup>th</sup> there was another General Strike by
transportation workers, forcing the government to rescind
draconian price and fee hikes and effectively shutting down most
of the country. Haiti is defiant and its people determined.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="author_description"> <em><strong>Dave Welsh</strong>, a
delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council, was a member of a
Human Rights and Labor Fact Finding Delegation to Haiti in
October, that reported on systematic voter suppression,
violence and intimidation in the election process.</em> </p>
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