By Clarens Renois (AFP)

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iTsXZ7yF92BrHwEA1cnPnHauKTbg

PORT-AU-PRINCE — Hait­ian Pres­i­dent Rene Preval pledged in an inter­view with AFP to hold elec­tions this year despite the mas­sive dif­fi­cul­ties of orga­niz­ing a suc­cess­ful poll in his quake-devastated country.

Leg­isla­tive polls, orig­i­nally set for Feb­ru­ary and March, were post­poned after the Jan­u­ary 12 earth­quake that demol­ished the cap­i­tal Port-au-Prince, killing more than 220,000 peo­ple and leav­ing 1.3 mil­lion Haitians homeless.

Preval, who also served as pres­i­dent from 1996 to 2001, is con­sti­tu­tion­ally barred from seek­ing a third man­date. His cur­rent term expires in Feb­ru­ary 2011 and pres­i­den­tial elec­tions are expected in Decem­ber, though no firm date has been announced.

Preval told AFP on Mon­day that he asked UN Sec­re­tary Gen­eral Ban Ki-moon “to send a tech­ni­cal team to eval­u­ate the pos­si­bil­ity to have elec­tions with inter­na­tional stan­dards in order for them to be credible.”

Elec­tions were impor­tant in order to “not leave a polit­i­cal vac­uum” at the end of his man­date, he said.

“It’s a pity there are no elec­tions at the time of my depar­ture,” he said, not­ing that “the absence of legit­i­mate author­i­ties could pose prob­lems of trust not only for the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity but also for investors.”

Preval how­ever noted that he took office in May 2006, three months after the date set by the constitution.

“On the day that I took the oath of office I announced that I’d serve until Feb­ru­ary 7, 2011. This is a choice and I will stand by my word,” Preval said.

In the inter­view Preval urged Haitians to be patient dur­ing the recon­struc­tion process. “This is the best way to help us help them,” he said.

“I tell those who are home­less that every­one under­stands their prob­lem, that nobody would like to be in the street liv­ing in truly appalling con­di­tions, but I also ask them to be patient,” Preval said, adding that recon­struc­tion will be a slow and expen­sive process.

The Caribbean nation — the poor­est coun­try in the west­ern hemi­sphere — has had a long his­tory of dic­ta­tor­ship fol­lowed by years of polit­i­cal tur­moil and civil unrest.

In 2004, 1,000 US Marines fol­lowed by thou­sands of UN peace­keep­ers brought order to Haiti after a bloody rebel­lion against pres­i­dent Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s rule. A pro­vi­sional gov­ern­ment was then installed.

MINUSTAH, the United Nations sta­bi­liza­tion force which plays a major role in orga­niz­ing and run­ning elec­tions in Haiti, was par­tic­u­larly badly hit by the quake and well over 100 UN per­son­nel per­ished in the disaster.

Quake sur­vivors say poor gov­er­nance, cor­rup­tion and shoddy con­struc­tion mag­ni­fied a dis­as­ter that was hun­dreds of times less pow­er­ful than the 8.8-magnitude Feb­ru­ary 27 quake in Chile, but far more deadly and devastating.

Haiti’s leg­is­la­ture build­ing was severely dam­aged in the quake, and the body is cur­rently meet­ing in tem­po­rary quarters.