Haiti gripped in post-election gridlock
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A deep sense of unease and gridlock still grips Haiti days after Sunday's general elections – the first since the January earthquake, the October cholera outbreak and the November hurricane that have altogether claimed nearly a quarter of a million lives so far this year.
International aid and health agencies and groups are still hard at work, but under permanent fear that anything can go wrong – at any time.
The world is watching – and hoping nothing bad happens.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon Monday appealed for calm while votes started being counted and candidates were crying foul.
The top UN official argued that any post-election political problems could delay the battle against the cholera epidemic that had already claimed over 1,500 lives by Election Day.
But while the lengthy vote-counting process has begun, the aid agencies tending to the one and a half million displaced people and the tens of thousands affected by the disease are keeping their fingers tightly crossed.
The final results from the November 28 poll are a long way off, but there are already victory claims and advanced condemnation of the results.
There have been three interpretations of the results to date.
After the votes closed on Sunday, 12 of the 18 presidential candidates collectively called for the poll to be cancelled, claiming electoral fraud. (There had originally been 19 candidates, but one pulled out.)
But by the next day (Monday), at least two of the 18 – former First Lady Mirlande Manigat and popular musician Jean-Phillippe Martelly , who were said to have been leading in the very early but unofficial results – had already changed their minds and given the process their blessings.
Martelly – better known in Haiti and abroad as "Sweet Mickey" – said Monday the earlier calls by parties and candidates to guard against the government cheating in favor of its preferred candidate "had saved the election from being stolen."
But Manigat and Martelly aside, the other ten candidates opposing the election stand their ground in opposition to the poll and the results.
The third significant reaction to the poll came Monday evening, when two international observer teams – from Latin America and the Caribbean – jointly approved the process, saying it was valid, despite some irregularities.
The joint Organization of American States (OAS) and Caribbean Community (CARICOM) observer teams, through spokesman Colin Granderson, said the irregularities, such as late opening of polling stations, was not enough to call the poll off.
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