Masses in street set election victory

Residents of Cité Soleil and other poor neighborhoods of Haiti took to the streets last week to prevent the Haitian bourgeoisie and U.S. imperialists from stealing the presidential election of Feb. 7.

Protesters take over upscale Hotel Montana where U.S.-imposed election officials were preparing to announce final results Feb. 13.

After a week of mass demonstrations, Haiti’s election commission on Feb. 16 reversed an earlier decision and declared that René Préval had won the election in the first round by getting more than 50 percent of the vote.

Préval, a businessperson who used to run a bakery in Port-au-Prince, was trained as an agronomist in Belgium. He was President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s prime minister in his first government in 1990-1991, followed him into exile and then was president from 1996-2001 after Aristide’s first term. Aristide was again elected by a landslide before being overthrown once more by a U.S.-orchestrated coup on Feb. 29, 2004.

Whatever Préval’s intentions are or his ability to carry them out, he is perceived as an ally of Aristide, and many of the people who voted for him hope he will find a way to have Aristide return to Haiti.

Port-au-Prince, Haiti Feb 11. Thousands marched from Cité Soleil.

According to the South African news agency SABC, on Feb. 21 Aristide said “he will return to his country once Rene Préval, the newly elected president, has made an assessment of the political situation there. The assessment will be done in consultation with the United Nations, South Africa, CariCom and the African Union.”

Meanwhile, the head of Haiti’s official election commission, Jacques Bernard, has left the country, claiming to fear for his life. Bernard had earlier announced that Préval got less than 49 percent of the vote before the commission was forced to reverse itself.

The entire election was stacked against Haiti’s poor people, who are among the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. Voting booths were rare in the poor neighborhoods in both the cities and countryside. They were ample in the wealthier districts. But even with an election under occupation that required long walks and long waits to vote, Haitians came to the polls.

Election fraud revealed

Early returns had showed Préval with over 60 percent of the vote. His nearest rival had less than 12 percent. The population exploded when the commission then announced that Préval’s total had dropped to 48.86 percent and that a second round would be necessary.

The announcement itself accidentally exposed the fraud: a graph illustrating vote percentages showed Préval with 52 percent at the same time that the speaker claimed Préval’s total was less than 49 percent.

The suspicion of fraud grew to certainty after it was discovered that some 147,000 ballots were discarded for allegedly being invalid and hundreds of thousands of apparently valid ballots were found buried in a lot. Another 85,000 ballots were blank: when these 85,000 were removed from the total vote, this placed Préval’s percentage over 50 and it allowed the commission to declare him a winner without admitting vote fraud.

But this happened only after a week of massive demonstrations, one numbering 100,000 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, and clashes with the United Nations occupation troops known as MINUSTAH.

The object of the fraud was to throw the election into a second round. In that round, all the rightist and openly pro-U.S. candidates were to join behind Leslie Manigat, who had come in a distant second. Another election fraud would then be carried out.

The Bush administration tried to prevent a Préval victory. Former U.S. Assis tant Secre tary of State for the Western Hemisphere Roger Noriega, a key player behind the 2004 coup, wrote in the Miami Herald Feb. 16 that “violent mobs” of Préval supporters were “trying to convince those tallying the ballots that 49 percent is ‘good enough’.” Noriega set up Haitian death-squad leaders in 2004 to murder their way throughout Haiti and drive Aristide from office —with the help of U.S. Marines.

The Haitian experience showed that even in an occupied country in a rigged election it is possible for the masses to vote someone they want into office—but only if they are ready to come out into the streets to back up the electoral victory.