PORT-AU-PRINCE — Along the hard­ened edges of a sprawl­ing pub­lic plaza-turned sur­vivors camp, chil­dren run through cas­cad­ing water, women wash clothes and Elus­ner Mar­cel­lus, 31, is think­ing about mak­ing it through another day. The last thing on his mind are elections.

“A peo­ple who is hun­gry, who is liv­ing in mis­ery can’t think about going to elec­tions,” said the dis­il­lu­sioned street vendor.

But not far from Champs de Mars in the tony hills of Petionville, Haiti’s yet-to-be-scheduled elec­tions are the topic du jour as more than a dozen of this country’s most pow­er­ful busi­ness­peo­ple spend the day dis­cussing how to keep pol­i­tics from derail­ing the earthquake-battered nation’s slow recovery.

That par­al­lel uni­verse is the dilemma fac­ing Hait­ian Pres­i­dent René Pré­val and the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity as Haiti pre­pares to be with­out a func­tion­ing par­lia­ment after most mem­bers’ terms run out on Mon­day, and atten­tions are divided between day-to-day sur­vival and polit­i­cal reality.

“I under­stand we are in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion where peo­ple are not think­ing about elec­tions, but it’s also clear that the demo­c­ra­tic process has to con­tinue,” Pré­val said last week. “We can­not leave the coun­try with­out a par­lia­ment. We can­not leave the coun­try with­out may­ors. We can­not leave the coun­try with­out a president.”

GLOBAL HELP

So con­cerned that a new tremor could cause fur­ther desta­bi­liza­tion, Haiti’s part­ners — among them the United States, Canada, the Orga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States and the United Nations — have all dis­patched top lieu­tenants here for a Mon­day meet­ing with Préval.

“You have to send the right sig­nals out there to be able to have a sta­ble demo­c­ra­tic process because that will enable you to do your eco­nomic devel­op­ment; it will enable you to do as well your social devel­op­ment,” Canada’s For­eign Min­is­ter Lawrence Can­non told The Miami Her­ald dur­ing a visit here last week. “Ulti­mately, we are ask­ing peo­ple to come in here.… If that envi­ron­ment is per­ceived to be unsta­ble, obvi­ously there is going to be enor­mous ret­i­cent to doing something.”

Last week, Haiti’s lower cham­ber voted in favor of allow­ing Pré­val to remain until May 14, 2011 — five years to the date he assumed power — should his suc­ces­sor not be elected by Feb. 7. The sen­ate is expected to vote Mon­day, and Pré­val spent Sat­ur­day meet­ing with key sen­a­tors in hopes of get­ting their support.

As of Mon­day, Haiti’s par­lia­ment will cease to exist as a law-making body because the man­date of the entire lower cham­ber of deputies, and one-third or 10 sen­a­tors would have expired — pre­vent­ing the pas­sage of crit­i­cal laws.

With that new real­ity fac­ing Haiti, Préval’s oppo­nents have crit­i­cized his request, call­ing it a power grab. They’ve demanded that he leave on Feb. 7, the date sched­uled for the inau­gu­ra­tion of a new pres­i­dent and that an interim gov­ern­ment be installed to orga­nize elec­tions for all 144 may­ors, 99 deputies, 11 sen­a­tors and president.

“We have an oppo­si­tion that doesn’t want sta­bil­ity,” said Sen. Moise Jean-Charles, a Pré­val sup­porter. “It’s just a mat­ter of formality.”

The United States and oth­ers are all opposed to an interim gov­ern­ment, fear­ing that it could cre­ate insta­bil­ity or uncer­tainty. Monday’s dis­cus­sions, which will include U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills; OAS Assis­tant Sec­re­tary Gen­eral Albert Ramdin and CARICOM Assis­tant Sec­re­tary Gen­eral Colin Grander­son will focus on how to avoid an interim gov­ern­ment. They’ll dis­cuss a yet-to-be pub­li­cized UN report that found elec­tions are pos­si­ble “tech­ni­cally, logis­ti­cally and finan­cially,” but there are things Pré­val must do to kick-start the process.

Among them: set a date, decide the types of elec­tions — pres­i­den­tial, leg­isla­tive and/or local elec­tions — to orga­nize, address prob­lems with the country’s embat­tled nine-member Pro­vi­sional Elec­toral Coun­cil (CEP) and decide whether to pur­sue con­sti­tu­tional reform.

From the moment the 7.0 mag­ni­tude earth­quake rocked Haiti, the country’s elec­tion timetable and a push by Pré­val to reform parts of the Hait­ian con­sti­tu­tion — includ­ing giv­ing Hait­ian Amer­i­cans dual nation­al­ity — were upended.

BICKERING

Two weeks of rare polit­i­cal unity was quickly replaced by bickering.

“There are a num­ber of rea­sons why elec­tions can­not be held this year,” said Evans Paul, a long­time oppo­si­tion leader. He cites chal­lenges with the elec­toral list, which would need to be updated to account for the dead and dis­placed. He also ques­tions jus­ti­fy­ing spend­ing $44 mil­lion — the U.N. esti­mate — at a time when Haitians are liv­ing in hun­dreds of tent cities.

And then there is the mat­ter of Préval.

“Pres­i­dent Pré­val has shown that he’s a spe­cial­ist in orga­niz­ing bad elec­tions and we don’t trust him to orga­nize elec­tions,” said Paul, refer­ring to last year’s con­tro­ver­sial par­lia­men­tary elec­tions that increased Préval’s major­ity in par­lia­ment. “Yes, we are vic­tims of a nat­ural dis­as­ter, but we can­not let a polit­i­cal dis­as­ter destroy us.”

That refusal to let Pré­val orga­nize elec­tions has some oppo­si­tion lead­ers call­ing for a mass demon­stra­tion before the pres­i­den­tial palace Mon­day, demand­ing he resign immediately.

“This pres­i­dent is inca­pable of resolv­ing any of the prob­lems in Haiti,” said Garaudy Laguerre, a mem­ber of the opposition.

As a splin­tered group, Haiti’s oppo­si­tion faces its own chal­lenges includ­ing mis­trust of each other. Pré­val him­self demon­strated its fragility when he launched a new polit­i­cal plat­form, Inité, or Unity, prior to the quake and it included sev­eral of his polit­i­cal foes.

In order to pre­serve the con­fi­dence of the elec­toral process and avoid insta­bil­ity, Pré­val is being urged to con­sult with oppo­nents to build a con­sen­sus. He also must address issues with the trou­bled CEP, which he’s been reluc­tant to replace.

The group’s cred­i­bil­ity has come under fire from polit­i­cal groups and the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity after it barred Haiti’s largest polit­i­cal party, Fanmi Lavalas, from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the post­poned Feb. 28 elec­tions. Also one of the mem­bers is under inves­ti­ga­tion for embezzlement.

CEP Pres­i­dent Gail­lot Dorsinvil said the coun­cil is “pre­pared to do elec­tions. Good elec­tions, not so-so elections.”

But to do them, it would need 120 days.

Elec­tions are pos­si­ble, he said, even though its main offices were damanged, the U.N. elec­tions expert was killed in the quake, 47 per­cent of vot­ing bureaus are destroyed and the elec­toral list needs major updating.

Even before the quake, the National Office of Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (ONI) still had 300,000 vot­ers reg­is­tra­tion cards it had yet to hand out since 2006, rais­ing ques­tions on its abil­ity to iden­tify an esti­mated 1.2 mil­lion vot­ers, UN offi­cials say, who are either dead, dis­placed or have lost their vot­ers card.

“The chal­lenges are enor­mous,” said Dorsinvil. “There needs to be a sit-down with all of the sec­tors in the society.”

But even if the experts work out the logis­tics to hold elec­tions by the end of the year, Pré­val con­cedes it will not be easy in a coun­try where past elec­tions have resulted in boy­cotts, and violence.

‘EXPLOSIVE’

“Today I’m not sure every­one wants elec­tions because I hear they are say­ing the pres­i­dent needs to go,” Pré­val told The Miami Her­ald on Sun­day. “We have an explo­sive sit­u­a­tion because the peo­ple are suffering.”

Already, his sup­port­ers believe forces are at work to desta­bi­lize his gov­ern­ment amid increas­ing street protests demand­ing his res­ig­na­tion, rumors of pend­ing gas cri­sis, and arson at a pop­u­lar mar­ket last month.

“We are ask­ing the Hait­ian peo­ple to under­stand one thing clearly. It’s not in insta­bil­ity or in chaos that their sit­u­a­tion will improve,” Pré­val said, recall­ing the progress Haiti had made before Jan. 12 as investors and Haitians abroad viewed the coun­try through lenses of hope , and Haitians here went out with­out fear of kidnappings.

“Then Jan. 12 changed the dynam­ics,” Pré­val said. “It’s a sit­u­a­tion that is extremely dif­fi­cult.… The Hait­ian peo­ple should not let them­selves be used to allow this sit­u­a­tion to once again become difficult.”

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