Political Parties Call For Investigation As Haitians Await Election Results

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti, November 25, 2016 (CMC) – Political parties in Haiti were, today, calling on the electoral officials to investigate allegations of voter fraud in last Sunday’s presidential elections, before any official announcement is made of the winners.

Jude Celestin, who is one of the presidential candidates, has written to the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) alleging that members of his LAPEH party at the Voting Tabulation Center (CTV) “saw and noted that many minutes transmitted to the CTV were accepted and validated, whereas the correlative listings of ‘émargement’ do not have signatures or fingerprints of the voters, only able to guarantee the authenticity of the vote with reference to article 158.1 of the electoral decree”.

Celestin is warning that “if, in the next hours and before any proclamation of partial results, such a flagrant violation is not corrected, it risks to irreparably damage the integrity and reliability of the entire process”.

He is also reminding of the problems that confronted the elections of 2010 and 2015, noting “elections must not be subjected to any manipulation or any gross form of violation of the law in general and the electoral decree in particular”.

“Immediate corrections are required. In particular, the minutes must be submitted to the Voting Tabulation Center’s (CTV) compliance control department, which is the only one authorized to review and validate them,” he wrote.

Earlier this week, Interim President Jocelerme Privert called on Haitians to accept the outcome of Sunday’s vote for a new head of state, saying it is important for the French-speaking Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country to emerge from the political instability over the years.

At least six million Haitians were eligible to vote for one of 27 presidential candidates, as well as for members of both houses of parliament, in elections that had been repeatedly delayed for various reasons.

Apart from Celestin, the presidential candidates included: Jovenel Moise, a plantation owner, chosen by the ruling PHTK (“the Bald Heads Party).

The other candidates include Maryse Narcisse, who was a spokeswoman for former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had endorsed Narcisse and encouraged his supporters to take to the streets in protest if her candidacy failed.

Haiti has been without an elected head of state after President Michel Martelly left office in February and Privert was elected as the Interim president.

Under the current timetable, the new president will not take office until February 7, but the elections cycle wouldn’t end until April 2017 — more than two years after elections began.

Another political party, Vérité, has also written to the CEP asking that investigations be conducted to several voting irregularities.

Génard Joseph, the Coordinator of the Party Vérité, said that one day after the elections, several ballot papers signed and annotated in favour of a candidate, and other blank ballots were discovered.

In his letter to CEP president, Léopold Berlanger, the Verite official said that the incident that occurred at the Saint Jean Bosco Voting Centre in Cap Haitien on the day after the elections, “raises relevant questions about the transparency, the credibility of the electoral process in the North department and may lead us to hypothesize that the same observation is made in other parts of the country.

“As a result, the political platform Vérité takes the opportunity to request from the institution a comparison, on the basis of sampling, of the lists of ‘émargement’ with the databases of the national identification office in order to verify and validate the signatures of the voters concerned.

“Moreover, it requires that this operation be carried out before the publication of the partial results in order to exclude the fraudulent ballots who would have slipped into the ballot boxes and prevent reactions of dissatisfaction of voters who would then be entitled to believe that their right was knowingly violated.”

Official results of the elections are not expected until at least eight days after the vote, but officials have warned that the date could be extended.

Meanwhile, the Office of the Public Prosecutor of Port-au-Prince has written to the chief executive officer of Digitel Telephone Company, Maarten Boute, inviting him to appear at the “Prosecutor’s Office on Monday, November 28, 2016 at 10 am on the grounds that your company has published some results of the elections held in the country on November 20, in flagrant violation of the Electoral Decree governing elections”.