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The relatively smooth course of the March 20th presidential election in Haiti has brought cautious optimism about the prospects for political stability in the country.
There were reports of some scattered violence, in which at least two people were killed, but no large-scale disruptions. Haiti's top electoral official called the election—the country's first ever second-round presidential runoff–a "triumph of democracy." A peaceful transition of power would help convince foreign donors to keep sending the funds they pledged last March to help rebuild the country after the devastating January 2010 earthquake.
On the day after election, the United Nations urged patience as the votes were counted, issuing a statement that warned "the future of the country is at stake." Preliminary results are expected in March 31, with the final results to be announced April 16.
In the meantime, Haiti's electoral council reportedly prohibited the candidates from holding political demonstrations or making early victory claims, trying to avoid the kind of protests and street clashes that that followed the first round of voting on November 28.
A successful transition of power could end months of tension and political impasse that reflect frustrations with Haiti's leaders and the slow progress of an international recovery effort. Those tensions boiled over in mid-November as a cholera epidemic—possibly introduced via a leaking septic tank at a UN base—swept across the countryside, where people take their water from wells and rivers, and through the capital's unsanitary homeless camps.
In late November, one week before the first round of voting, I interviewed Seignon Duchamel, a student leader at the College of Ethnology–a hotbed of political activism located across from the collapsed National Palace in downtown Port-au-Prince. The students were leading a sustained protest campaign against UN peacekeepers, the administration of then-president René Préval, and Jude Célestin, Préeval's preferred successor. Duchamel answered questions with lengthy orations denouncing the whole lot. Plastered on the wall behind him were political tracts co-signed by an array of organizations—one featuring a large X slashed in paint over the image of a threatening-looking UN soldier shouldering a rifle–and a graffito scrawl that translates: "UN + Préval = Cholera."
The protest campaign, Duchamel insisted, was strategically non-violent, involving theatrical events that employ symbolic coffins, a reading of the names of political martyrs, and a mock trial of Préval and his allies intended to galvanize voters to sweep the president's party from power. They did not endorse any one candidate, but were generally opposed to Célestin (one Wikileaks cable suggested Préval was highly worried about being banished after his term expired, and so might want to make sure he had a close ally in power). But despite the movement's nonviolent and democratic orientation, Duchamel said he expected more confrontations in the days ahead. Things will escalate, he said, "because demonstration is the only way that the population has to show its anger, to show its suffering."
A few days earlier, the protest had attracted at least two other groups demonstrating nearby. Some in the crowd moved dumpsters to block off the street and then began hurling rocks at UN peacekeepers, who responded by firing teargas. In the tent camp across the street, where an estimated 25,000 people have been living since January, a boy showed me a teargas canister he had plucked from a fetid ditch. Older residents described a choking cloud of gas and volleys of gunfire that culminated in a terrifying burst from an automatic weapon. Two elderly women said that they almost passed out from the fumes. All around the camp, I encountered a persistent rumor that several people, including two infants, died from smoke inhalation.
One of the rock throwers had been Lesly Isidor, whom I found, late one afternoon, sitting on a concrete block in his empty tent while eating his first meal of the day–an avocado and a piece of bread. Neither President Préval nor his UN allies had made life easier for jobless, homeless Haitians like him, Isidor said, and so it was time for them all to leave the country. Préval's reserve has hurt his public image, making him seem unconcerned for the fate of Haiti's earthquake homeless. The UN peacekeepers propping up his administration are seen by many as an occupying foreign army, more concerned with putting down unrest than protecting the homeless from gangs and common criminals. Isidor said his resentment of the UN troops was about more than just cholera; it was also envy. "They live well," he said. "They're enjoying themselves, they eat very well, and they get $1500 every 15 days."
The riots began, said Isidor, after protesters tried to set fire to a bulletin board of Jude Célestin. They chased off UN troops and Haitian police. Then President Préval's convoy approached and slowed down. Célestin was inside and rolled down the window of the white Toyota SUV to wave to the crowd, apparently thinking they were his supporters. They sent stones crashing through his windows. Then a bodyguard stepped out to fire a machine gun into the air.
"We are soldiers," Isidor told me. "We're not afraid of anything. While they were shooting, we were still running and throwing stones," he said. "It will be civil war. They're going to come here with their soldiers and shoot at us and we're going to use what we have. If we have stones, we are going to throw stones at them."
I also heard a rumor that men tied to a candidate were offering arms and money to anyone willing to kill supporters of an opponent (a security contractor working for an NGO later told me the security teams have heard many such reports). Haiti is a place where conspiracy theories run rampant, but sometimes turn out to be true: the next week, men on motorcycles fired automatic weapons into a crowd at a rally.
Democracy has not come easily or quickly to Haiti in the 20 years since Jean-Bertand Aristide became Haiti's first democratically elected president. The November 28 elections were marred by widespread fraud and saw Jude Célestin, against all reasonable expectations, nudge out singer/partyboy "Sweet Micky" Martelly, initially qualifying him for a January runoff vote against former first lady Mirlande Manigat. For four days the city convulsed with riots. People died in the streets from gunshot wounds. Others died in the countryside from cholera because relief workers battling the epidemic couldn't get into the city for more IV solution.
The riots prompted an international investigation and Célestin was eventually dropped from the ballot.