Despite Delays, Haiti’s Election Seems a Success

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Despite technical glitches that forced many of them to wait hours in sweltering polling places, Haitians voted peacefully and in vast numbers Sunday in their first free democratic presidential and congressional election.

International election observers, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, said they were pleasantly surprised by the largely orderly voting process after tardiness in delivering ballots and ballot boxes delayed voting for much of the day at some polls.

Although the delays provoked angry demonstrations in the fetid slum suburb of Cite Soleil and in front of the Port-au-Prince city hall, no serious acts of violence were reported by Sunday night.

Police and army troops were heavily deployed but kept the peace with unaccustomed courtesy. During Haiti’s last attempt at democratic elections on Nov. 29, 1987, some of the police and troops joined in Election Day massacres that left more than 34 dead in Port-au-Prince and forced cancellation of the voting.

Hundreds of others died in pre-election violence in 1987, but during this campaign there was only one serious incident of bloodshed, when seven people were killed and more than 50 wounded in a grenade attack at a political rally on Dec. 5.

Because of Sunday’s voting delays and the remoteness of many rural polling places, election officials said that even an unofficial vote count may not be available until Tuesday or Wednesday.

Judging by the intensity and numbers of his followers at the city’s polling places, political observers and journalists predicted that the radical slum priest, Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, 37, would gain a clear lead in the nation’s impoverished capital. But an estimated 75% of Haiti’s 2.8-million registered voters live in rural areas, the stronghold of former World Bank official Mark Bazin, 58, Aristide’s main opponent in the 11-candidate presidential race.

If no one wins a clear first-ballot majority, there will be a runoff on Jan. 20. Election officials said that even though 15% to 30% of the votes in this country--where 80% of the population is illiterate--may be invalidated for errors and other reasons, the number of invalid votes cast will be weighed together with valid votes in calculating voting percentages, thus making it difficult for any candidate to gain the necessary 50% of all votes cast, plus one vote, to win the first round.

Carter said that officials of the powerful Electoral Council, which organized and supervised the voting, had promised to keep the polls open all night Sunday or reopen them this morning at every polling place that experienced delays Sunday. The scheduled voting time was 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

“The election process was great,” Carter said enthusiastically, playing down the technical glitches as not surprising in a country that has never had a totally free election. Noting that many of the delayed voters were furious, the former U.S. President said, “If I were still standing there at 11 a.m. and they hadn’t even opened the gate, I’d be shouting too.”

In addition to Carter’s 33-member observer group from the Council of Freely Elected Heads of Government and the National Democratic Institute, there were about 1,000 foreign observers, most of them from the United Nations and the Organization of American States. The U.N. provided more than 400 civilian observers and about 60 unarmed military security officers, the latter to keep an eye on the behavior of Haiti’s notoriously undisciplined army.

One OAS observer, Anthony Johnson, an opposition political leader in Jamaica, called the apparently violence-free election “a victory for the Haitian people.”

Earlier in the day, when he was concerned that the angry demonstrations in Cite Soleil might get out of hand, the chief of the OAS group, Pierre-Ferdinand Cote of Canada, said, “If that’s the only problem we see today, it will be a miracle.”

Cote attributed the delays in opening polling places in Port-au-Prince to the Electoral Council’s attempt to supply election materials to the thousands of remote polling places in Haiti’s rural areas, many of which can be reached only on foot or by helicopter.