In Haiti, a re-run election finally produces a new president
Published 1:30 am Tuesday, January 3, 2017
By Jacqueline Charles
Miami Herald
Jovenel Moise, a businessman from northern Haiti and political protege of former President Michel Martelly, was declared the winner of the country’s November presidential election Tuesday by the country’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP). He defeated 26 other candidates in an election rerun from the year before and then repeatedly postponed, once by a hurricane.
The council published the result after an electoral court rejected allegations of “massive fraud” during the Nov. 20 election. Though a judges’ panel had discovered some irregularities during verification of 12 percent of the ballots, the council said the irregularities were not enough to affect the final outcome of the vote.
On his Facebook page, Moise promised that his five-year presidency will be marked by “political will and pragmatism.”
Moise, 48, was declared the winner with 55.60 percent. His closest competitor, Jude Celestin, the former head of the state construction agency, finished a distant second with just over 19.57 percent. Celestin’s final vote total only rose by 5 percentage points after the verification, which he and two others demanded after challenging the preliminary results.
“I do not recognize these results because neither I nor my representatives were present,” Celestin, 54, told the Miami Herald.
He said the CEP didn’t handle the challenge to the results correctly. “They are definitely hiding something.”
Three days into the verification, Celestin’s attorneys — as well as those representing the third- and fourth-place finishers, Jean-Charles Moise and Maryse Narcisse — left the Vote Tabulation Center after judges restricted their access to tally sheets. Attempts to remove the judges and to have the restrictions lifted were rejected by the CEP.
Haiti last year agreed to redo its first round of the presidential vote after a five-member Independent Commission of Evaluation and Verification, appointed by interim President Jocelerme Privert, ruled that the vote was such a disaster it should start over.
The fraud allegations, which Moise had insisted were untrue, sparked violent street protests. The crisis led to Martelly ending his presidential term on Feb. 7 without an elected successor, and brought Haiti its second caretaker government in 12 years.
This week, violent protests once more flared up. As supporters of Narcisse’s Fanmi Lavalas political party protested in Port-au-Prince, Celestin called on his supporters to remain mobilized. On Tuesday, the U.S. Embassy advised U.S. citizens to stay away from one neighborhood — Delmas 65 — after receiving reports of demonstrations.
Calling on Haiti’s opposition to accept the results, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said the publication of the final presidential results is “a positive step for the full restoration of that nation’s democratic institutions.”
Still, the tensions do not bode well for Moise, a serial entrepreneur who campaigned under the moniker Neg Bannan Nan or the Banana Man, a reference to his farming roots. Though he has never held elected office, he now must take charge of a country wracked by political instability and chronic problems. They include double-digit inflation, anemic economic growth, drastically reduced foreign aid, a rapidly depreciating currency, a deadly cholera epidemic and growing security concerns with the eventual departure of the United Nations peacekeeping force known as MINUSTAH.
Since 2014, Haiti’s economic growth has shrunk from 2.9 percent to 1.4 percent last year even before Hurricane Matthew slammed the country’s southern peninsula as a Category 4 storm, causing $2.8 billion in damages.
Meanwhile, inflation stands at 10 percent and could go to at least 15 percent this year, said Port-au-Prince economist Kesner Pharel, who noted preliminary forecasts show 1 percent economic growth.
