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AGAINST THE backdrop of recurring claims of electoral malpractices at Haiti’s presidential and parliamentary elections in November 2010, strident allegations that persisted right up to last month’s second-round presidential run-off, the declared final results have placed the popular Haitian musician, Michel Martelly, as the President-designate of that poverty-stricken CARICOM member state.
The official results are scheduled to be disclosed next Saturday (April 16), but having gained approximately 67 percent of the votes, according to Haiti’s Electoral Council, the 50-year-old Martelly, known in the entertainment world as ‘Sweet Micky’, is already preparing to take the oath of office next month as his country’s new Head of State, succeeding the outgoing President Renй Prйval.
The tough opponent Martelly defeated, former First Lady Mirlande Manigat, scholar and author, who had emerged as the clear first-runner at last November’s poll, remains “outraged” over, as she said, “how the (second-round) election was staged.” But she has decided against mounting a legal challenge, because “I have no faith in the process…”
Originally, Martelly was placed third in the declared results for the first-round contest with Jude Celestin, the candidate backed by President Prйval’s party, in second spot to the declared winner, Manigat. Ugly scenes of political turmoil eventually led to the dropping of Celestin from the second round contest.
Now, with some 30 percent of the votes cast rejected by Haitian electoral officials on the basis of claimed “fraud and other reasons,” Manigat’s attorneys contend that she had made the “right decision” against challenging the validity of the declared results.
However, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Organisation of American States (OAS), which had mounted a joint observer mission for the November elections and remained involved for the second-round run-off poll, have given their approval of the final results that identified Martelly as the incoming new President of Haiti.
For CARICOM’s special envoy on Haiti, former Jamaica Prime Minister, P.J .Patterson, the Haitian elections marked a “welcome victory for democracy…a testament to what could be achieved through partnership…”
It is to be hoped that Martelly, the musician-turned-politician, will commit himself and whatever administration he establishes to the peace and security Haiti so desperately needs for the daunting task of national reconstruction to overcome the horrors afflicting Haitians in the wake of that unprecedented earthquake of January 2010.
The international community, the major donor nations in particular, has the outstanding obligation to walk the talk on the aid pledges made for Haiti’s national reconstruction.
