By WW4 Report

On Nov. 25, Haiti’s Pro­vi­sional Elec­toral Coun­cil (CEP) announced that it was reject­ing the appli­ca­tions of 16 of the 69 par­ties that sub­mit­ted can­di­dates for leg­isla­tive elec­tions sched­uled to be held on Feb. 28. The largest of the rejected par­ties is the Lavalas Fam­ily (FL) of for­mer pres­i­dent Jean Bertrand Aris­tide (1991–1996 and 2001–2004); among the oth­ers were the Lespwa (“Hope”) coali­tion, until now the party of cur­rent pres­i­dent René Pré­val; Work­ing Together to Build Haiti (KONBA); the Union party; and the Sol­i­dar­ity Effort for the Con­struc­tion of the People’s Camp (ESCAMP), for­merly part of Lespwa. Vot­ers are to elect 98 of the 99 mem­bers of the Cham­ber of Deputies and 10 of the country’s 30 senators.

Crit­ics charged that Pres­i­dent Pré­val was manip­u­lat­ing the elec­tions to favor the Unity party, a new coali­tion with which he is replac­ing Lespwa, part of a process in which a num­ber of par­ties and coali­tions are regroup­ing. The Union party said it had been rejected after its coor­di­na­tor, Cha­vannes Jeune, turned down an invi­ta­tion from Pré­val to join Unity. CEP pres­i­dent Gail­lot Dor­sainvil insisted on Nov. 26 that the coun­cil had acted inde­pen­dently to exclude par­ties that hadn’t com­plied with the law.

Sev­eral of these groups are split by inter­nal con­flicts, as had been the case with the FL when the CEP wouldn’t include it in the April 19 Sen­ate elec­tions ear­lier this year—the party had orig­i­nally pre­sented two dif­fer­ent lists of can­di­dates, and Aris­tide, the head of the party, report­edly refused to sign nec­es­sary paper­work as a protest against his removal from office in 2004. But this
time LF direc­tor Maryse Nar­cisse pre­sented a uni­fied list with an autho­riza­tion signed by Aris­tide, who has been in exile in South Africa since 2004.

Aris­tide con­firmed this in an inter­view on Nov. 25 with Radio Sol­i­dar­ité, say­ing that the CEP’s deci­sions “shouldn’t be dic­tated by the gov­ern­ment.” The ex-president, who usu­ally avoids inter­views, announced that he didn’t want to remain the head of the FL and that after a party con­gress was held, he would devote him­self to edu­ca­tion. (Alter­Presse, Nov. 24, Nov. 25; Haiti Press Net­work, Nov. 25; Reuters, Nov. 25; Radio Métro­pole, Nov. 27)

http://www.ww4report.com/node/8024