By Joseph Guyler Delva, Reuters

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) — Pres­i­dent Rene Preval on Wednes­day rejected U.S. Sen­ate pro­pos­als for upcom­ing elec­tions in Haiti and said one of them could even sow “anar­chy” in the earthquake-shattered Caribbean country.

Preval, who ear­lier this week set Novem­ber 28 as the date for pres­i­den­tial and leg­isla­tive elec­tions, was respond­ing to a report issued in June by Sen­a­tor Richard Lugar, the rank­ing Repub­li­can on the U.S. Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Committee.

The report sug­gested that Preval let Haiti’s inter­na­tional part­ners help restruc­ture the eight-member Pro­vi­sional Elec­toral Coun­cil, which has been accused of bias and cur­ry­ing favor with the president.

It also called for arrange­ments to ensure the par­tic­i­pa­tion of fac­tions within an oppo­si­tion party loyal to exiled for­mer Pres­i­dent Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide, which was blocked from par­tic­i­pat­ing in 2009 leg­isla­tive con­tests because of a dis­pute over rival can­di­date lists.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence out­side the once-ornate national palace, which was severely dam­aged dur­ing Haiti’s Jan­u­ary 12 quake, Preval called Lugar’s pro­pos­als “unacceptable.”

“I can­not set up an elec­toral coun­cil in con­sul­ta­tion with inter­na­tional part­ners. I do not form an elec­toral coun­cil with inter­na­tional part­ners. I form the elec­toral coun­cil with national part­ners,” he said.

He also rejected Lugar’s call for the par­tic­i­pa­tion of ele­ments within Aristide’s pop­u­lar Fanmi Lavalas party in the upcom­ing elec­tions, say­ing the party had right­fully been banned from elec­tions last year after rival Lavalas fac­tions sub­mit­ted com­pet­ing lists of candidates.

“If we are to strengthen polit­i­cal par­ties we can­not rec­og­nize frac­tions that exist within them, unless those frac­tions trans­form them­selves into polit­i­cal par­ties through the legal chan­nels,” said Preval.

“How can a polit­i­cal party present four or five can­di­dates under the same ban­ner and for the same posi­tion,” he asked. “That’s anarchy.”

Preval has repeat­edly denied accu­sa­tions that he hand­picked mem­bers of the cur­rent elec­toral coun­cil and that he was con­trol­ling them from behind the scenes.

Haiti’s gen­eral elec­tions were orig­i­nally due to take place on Feb­ru­ary 28 but were post­poned because of the quake that gov­ern­ment offi­cials say killed up to 300,000 peo­ple and left more than 1.5 mil­lion sur­vivors liv­ing in crowded camps in and around the cap­i­tal Port-au-Prince.

In March for­eign donors pledged $10 bil­lion over 10 years for rebuild­ing. Lit­tle actual recon­struc­tion work has begun so far, how­ever. More than 1 mil­lion peo­ple are still liv­ing in makeshift tent cities, as the Atlantic hur­ri­cane sea­son threat­ens the impov­er­ished, flood-prone coun­try with another poten­tial nat­ural disaster.

Preval’s suc­ces­sor is sched­uled to take office on Feb­ru­ary 7, 2011, but law­mak­ers voted recently to allow Preval to remain in office until May 14, if unfore­seen prob­lems with the elec­toral process delay the handover.

The elec­tion will cost $29.6 mil­lion, of which the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment pledged to pro­vide $7 mil­lion. The rest would be pro­vided by inter­na­tional donors.

(Edit­ing by Moham­mad Zargham)

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6600FA20100701?type=politicsNews