Campaigning for Haiti’s presidential runoff election began on Friday, but it appears there is only one candidate who is to actively participate.
Government-backed contender Jovenel Moise, a little-known agricultural entrepreneur who led a crowded field of 54 candidates with nearly 33 percent of the vote in the Oct. 25 first round, planned his first rally late Friday afternoon.
However, the campaign team of the second-place finisher, Jude Celestin, has said he is to take part in the Jan. 24 runoff only if sweeping changes recently recommended by a special commission are adopted to improve Haiti’s much-criticized electoral machinery.
Photo: AFP
Celestin told the Miami Herald on Thursday that outgoing Haitian President Michel Martelly “will have to do an election with just one candidate.” His phone consistently went unanswered and his campaign team did not respond to calls on Friday.
While the Haitian Provisional Electoral Council has pledged to improve transparency for the final round, special commission spokesman Rosny Desroches has said he has seen very little progress to improve the process and ease tensions since the panel’s recommendations were released last weekend.
Unless Celestin officially withdraws from the race his name would appear on the runoff ballot whether he chooses to campaign or not, council spokesman Roudy Stanley Penn said.
“Until he sends us a letter saying he is withdrawing he will be on the ballots for the final round and people can choose to vote for him,” Penn said on Friday.
The UN, the US government and other foreign governments that monitor Haiti strongly support holding the final round of elections this month so a transfer of power to a new president can take place by a Feb. 7 constitutional deadline.
The Organization of American States on Thursday said that the scheduling of the runoff for Jan. 24 was a “step in the right direction.”
However, a mood of confusion was palpable in the capital of Port-au-Prince as campaigning opened for the postponed presidential and legislative runoffs.
That only one presidential candidate planned to campaign left many perplexed and they expressed doubt the elections could reasonably take place under such circumstances.
“I’ve never heard about this happening in any normal country: Only one candidate in a presidential election. How can that be possible?” asked food vendor Karine Fenelon, who said she was so turned off by Haiti’s version of democracy that she has abstained from voting for years.
Unemployed accountant Pierre Richard Juste said he believed the opposition was playing “political games” to better their chances of gaining power. He believes authorities would ensure the runoff takes place even if some quarters of society refuse to accept the results.
“We’ve come this far with these elections. There should now be a conclusion,” said Juste, who has been raising four children with part-time work since he lost a tax office job in 2005.
Elections are never easy in Haiti, which only had its first genuinely free vote in 1990. What is happening now has echoes of previous electoral turmoil.
In 2010, there were opposition-stoked allegations that outgoing Haitian President Rene Preval rigged the vote to elect his preferred successor, Celestin. That perception fueled violent clashes between Martelly’s supporters and UN peacekeepers.
Celestin was eventually eliminated from the two-candidate runoff under pressure from the US, the Organization of American States and opposition protests. Martelly took office in May 2011.
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