PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Political tension is mounting in Haiti as candidates and voters await the final results from the November presidential election.
Controversy erupted as to which candidates will advance to the Jan. 16 runoff after thousands of voters were turned away from the polls during the first round of voting since their names did not appear on registries.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haiti’s electoral council will allow candidates to re-appeal the preliminary results of the nation’s recent presidential election after its offer to re-tabulate votes was rejected by the two leading opposition candidates.
Candidates have until Dec. 15 to submit a new formal appeal.
Thousands of would-be voters were turned away from the polls on Nov. 28 because their names did not appear on voter registration lists, or because those displaced by Haiti’s Jan. 12 earthquake had not re-registered in their new voting locations.
Michel Martelly, an opposition candidate and renowned pop-singer, finished third behind President René Préval-endorsed candidate Jude Célestin by less than 1% of the vote, according to preliminary results.
Click HERE to read the full story as it appeared at Info Sur Hoy.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Mirlande Manigat and Jude Célestin are the top vote-getters of Haiti’s troubled presidential election and will compete in a Jan. 16 runoff, according to preliminary results announced by Haiti’s electoral council (CEP) on Dec.7.
The winner will oversee the about US$10 billion pledged by international donors in post-earthquake reconstruction aid as Haiti’s next president, replacing René Préval.
Click HERE to see the full story as it appeared at Info Sur Hoy.
Haiti’s election was supposed to further its democratic legacy by selecting a new president to lead the nation’s post-earthquake reconstruction. Instead, it’s become a huge distraction from that herculean task. Demonstrations are frequent: thousands of protesters have taken to the streets, chanting antigovernment slogans and setting fire to tires and barricades to protest the disputed results. All this is going on as the nation’s cholera epidemic continues to infect more than 1,000 people a day, and the 1.3 million Haitians still living in unsanitary tent camps since last January’s earthquake feel forgotten.
Click HERE to read the full story as it appeared at Newsweek.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)- Frustrated presidential candidates led a march through Haiti’s capital Thursday to demand officials annul an election they say was tainted by fraud.
At least four of 19 candidates on Sunday’s ballot walked with hundreds of supporters to an electoral council office. They denounced electoral officials, President Rene Preval and the ruling Unity party’s candidate, state construction company chief Jude Celestin, chanting: “Prison for Preval, liberty for Haiti!”
“These were not elections. People were not allowed to vote and there was stuffing of the election boxes … We need democratic elections,” candidate Charles Henri-Baker, a factory owner, told The Associated Press.
The presidential hopefuls were part of a group of 12 candidates who called for voting to be canceled while polls were open, alleging the election was rigged in favor of Celestin.
Click HERE to read the full Associated Press story as it appeared at the Star Tribune.
The Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation is on the verge of receiving one of the largest sums of foreign disaster relief dollars history—and 19 people are eager to administer it as they contend for Haiti’s presidency on November 28.
Samdy Pascal is decidedly less excited. The eighteen-year-old mother who lost her home and her school in the January earthquake has no job, so she spends her days scrubbing clothes in front of her makeshift shack not far from the mountain of rubble that was once Haiti’s national palace. Behind her stands a statue of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who led the nation to independence from France two centuries ago.
“All of my life, I listen and I read in the books about Dessalines and Haiti’s independence. But I don’t think Haiti is an independent country because we still have the same problems,” says Pascal. “We can’t find anything to eat, to drink, to go to the hospital is a problem, we don’t have any house to live in. The foreign NGOs have to receive the money because they can do better than the government. I don’t think we have independence.”
Samdy Pascal, 18, says she has no faith in her government’s ability to implement U.S. reconstruction funds. -Jacob Kushner
[flashvideo file=video/haiti_education.flv image=https://jacobkushner.com//new1/video/haiti_education.jpg /]
Click HERE to see the video as it appeared at Newsweek.com
A man walks in a flooded street during the passing of Hurricane Tomas in Leogane, Haiti, Friday Nov. 5, 2010. (AP / Ramon Espinosa)
LEOGANE, Haiti – Hurricane Tomas flooded the earthquake-shattered remains of a Haitian town on Friday, forcing families who had already lost their homes in one disaster to flee another. In the country’s capital, quake refugees resisted calls to abandon flimsy tarp and tent camps.
Driving winds and storm surge battered Leogane, a seaside town west of Port-au-Prince that was near the epicenter of the Jan. 12 earthquake and was 90 percent destroyed. Dozens of families in one earthquake-refuge camp carried their belongings through thigh-high water to a taxi post on high ground, waiting out the rest of the storm under blankets and a sign that read “Welcome to Leogane.”
“We got flooded out and we’re just waiting for the storm to pass. There’s nothing we can do,” said Johnny Joseph, a 20-year-old resident.
The growing hurricane with 75 mph (120 kph) winds battered the western tip of Haiti’s southern peninsula and the cities of Jeremie and Les Cayes.
At least three people died trying to cross swollen rivers, Haiti civil protection officials said. The hurricane had earlier killed at least 14 people in the eastern Caribbean.
Click HERE to read the full Associated Press article as it appeared at the Boston Globe.
We interviewed the two women who represent the pink vote in Haiti’s presidential election—plus one who didn’t make the electoral cut—to ask, “Why should Haitian women vote for you?”
Click HERE to read exclusive interviews with Josette Bijou, Mirlande Manigat, and Claire Lydie-Parent.
Residents of a camp for displaced Haitians fill jugs with clean water, Oct. 26, 2010. An outbreak of cholera has killed nearly 300 people. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Nine days into a cholera epidemic that has killed at least 303 and infected more than 4,700, Haitians are holding their breath and waiting to see if the outbreak can be stopped.
Haiti’s humanitarian relief organizations are posed to call their response to the outbreak a success, pointing to the quick mobilization of doctors to affected areas and sufficient stockpiles of IV bags. So far the disease hasn’t spread through Haiti’s tent camps where 1.3 million people still live, and the organizations are hopeful they’ll soon be able to contain the outbreak.
But critics say Haiti’s gruesome brush with cholera represents a failure by these groups whose job is to prevent exactly this type of disaster in the first place.
Click HERE to see the full story as it appeared at the Global Post.
By Jacob Kushner
The Associated Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI—A spreading cholera outbreak in rural Haiti threatened to outpace aid groups as they stepped up efforts Saturday hoping to keep the disease from reaching the squalid camps of earthquake survivors in Port-au-Prince.
Health officials said at least 208 people had died and 2,394 others were infected in an outbreak mostly centred in the Artibonite region north of the capital.
But the number of cases in towns near Port-au-Prince were rising, and officials worried the next target will be hundreds of thousands of Haitians left homeless by January’s devastating quake and now living in camps across the capital.
Click HERE to read the full AP story as it appeared at TheStar.com
By JACOB KUSHNER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ST. MARC, HAITI — A cholera epidemic was spreading in central Haiti on Friday as aid groups rushed doctors and supplies to fight the country’s deadliest health crisis since January’s earthquake. At least 150 people have died and more than 1,500 others are ill.
The first two cases of the disease outside the rural Artibonite region were confirmed in Arcahaie, a town that is closer to the quake-devastated capital, Port-au-Prince.
Officials are concerned the outbreak could reach the squalid tarp camps where hundreds of thousands of quake survivors live in the capital.
“It will be very, very dangerous,” said Claude Surena, president of the Haitian Medical Association. “Port-au-Prince already has more than 2.4 million people, and the way they are living is dangerous enough already.”
Click HERE to read the full article as it appeared at Yahoo! News.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – Haiti on Thursday launched two new mango processing factories that will help farmers export more of the juicy tropical fruit that is a $10 million-a-year business in the impoverished country.
Located in two rural towns in the mango-rich northwest, the plants aim to improve packaging and cleaning to decrease the number of mangoes bruised by poor handling and transport on rutted, sun-baked roads.
The two processing plants will employ 62 people to train mango farmers about cleaning and packaging and to better document the origin of their crops to meet standards in the United States, where most Haitian mangoes are sold.
Haiti grows dozens of different varieties that are indigenous to the country. The only type exported to the U.S. is the “Madame Francis,” which is juicy, sweet and a bit fibrous.
Last year, Haiti exported $10 million worth of mangoes, accounting for one-third of the country’s total agricultural export revenue, according to the U.S. Embassy.
With more processing plants, fruit industry leaders think they have the potential to blossom into a $90 million-a-year export business.
The new mango processing centers will increase profits for 9,500 farmers by as much as 20 percent, predicts CHF International, the U.S.-financed group that organized the project. -Jacob Kushner
By JACOB KUSHNER
The Associated Press
ST. MARC, Haiti — An outbreak of severe diarrhea in rural central Haiti has killed at least 54 people and sickened hundreds more who overwhelmed a crowded hospital Thursday seeking treatment.
Hundreds of patients lay on blankets in a parking lot outside St. Nicholas hospital in the port city of St. Marc with IVs in their arms for rehydration. As rain began to fall in the afternoon, nurses rushed to carry them inside.
Click HERE to read the full article as it appeared at Salon.
Fair and inclusive elections may prove impossible in Haiti this year. In the run-up to the Nov. 28 presidential vote, post-quake logistics are presenting huge challenges: some 230,000 dead have to be purged from voter rolls and 1.3 million displaced have to be reregistered—and the constitutional deadline for that has already passed.
But an even greater problem may be Haiti’s electoral commission itself. It has sidelined 15 candidates without explanation and has excluded the Lavalas Party, which stands in opposition to the current president, René Préval. International investors and donors are worried that a tainted election will further impede the country’s already hobbling reconstruction efforts. Experts say rebuilding Haiti will necessarily infringe on individuals’ property rights—and the less trust Haitians have in their government, the quicker they’re likely to fight back. In the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, lesser issues have stirred unrest
Click HERE to see the story as it appeared in Newsweek.