No Support for Haiti’s Undemocratic Elections

Demands:

1. No financial support for February legislative elections.
2. No recognition of elections that exclude major political parties, including Haiti’s largest party Fanmi Lavalas.
3. No election monitoring because it would legitimize an undemocratic process
4. Stop election interference by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), National Democratic Institute (NDI), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the U.S. Embassy.

[AFGJ is sending this out in the capacity of its membership to LASC.]


Background

Legislative elections constitutionally scheduled for November 2009 have been arbitrarily postponed until February 28, 2010 by the government of President Rene Preval.

President Preval hand-picked the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP). Haiti’s Constitution mandates a Permanent Electoral Council. Within Haiti, Preval’s CEP is widely seen as favoring Preval’s own political party InitÈ (Unity).

Preval’s CEP used a technicality to exclude Haiti’s largest political party Fanmi Lavalas from the election; the CEP used a similar tactic to exclude Lavalas from a partial Senate election for about a third of the Senate seats in April 2009. Fanmi Lavalas is the party of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was ousted in a US-sponsored coup February 29th, 2004.

Preval’s hand-picked CEP also awarded his Unity Party the top ballot position while assigning all other ballot positions randomly, thus giving a huge advantage to the Unity Party.

A delegation organized by the Latin American Solidarity Coalition, a coalition of U.S. grassroots solidarity organizations is currently in Haiti to investigate human rights abuses. The delegation is especially concerned with abuses committed by the UN military and police force (MINUSTAH). The UN Security Council authorized the MINUSTAH mission following the 2004 coup.

Our delegation gathered testimony from victims of UN human rights abuses that include injuries and deaths from gunfire, beatings, rapes, and sexual abuse. During this process, we heard dozens of appeals from Haitians and Haitian organizations asking us to use our influence on our government to prevent the February election.

Many Haitians expressed fear of a social explosion that would result in violent repression by MINUSTAH and Haitian police if the election is allowed to proceed without the inclusion of Fanmi Lavalas. An election which excludes Lavalas would be tantamount to a U.S. Congressional election in which the Democratic or Republican Party were excluded from the ballot.

Take action

Call your member of Congress, Senators, and the Haiti Desk of the State Department.

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