HAITI | NEWS ANALYSIS
Solution for Haiti's election? Depends on who's talking
As Haiti waits for the final vote count in the Nov. 28 presidential election, the way forward remains unclear.
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
jcharles@MiamiHerald.com
PORT-AU-PRINCE -- In a traumatized nation with a poor history of clean voting, Haiti's recent elections were a disaster waiting to happen.
There was -- and is -- pervasive lack of confidence in the eight members of the electoral council because some perceive them as being hand-picked by President René Préval.
Allegations of massive fraud were rampant even before polling stations opened for the Nov. 28 presidential and legislative elections, whose final results are yet to be released.
And the international community, which paid most of the $29 million tab for the elections, vacillated between paternalistic bullying of Haitian officials and a hands-off partnership.
Now that same international community -- unsure over what should come next as Haiti's electoral commission delays the final vote count while technical experts from the United States and elsewhere sift through tally sheets -- is faced with how to get Haiti back on track.
What everyone wants to avoid is a downward spiral into chaos that will hamper future efforts to help the quake-battered nation recover.
The way forward is not clear, and there are no easy choices. They range from an outright annulment of the vote with an interim government charged with organizing new elections -- in perhaps two years -- to a power-sharing agreement.
Among the ideas that have been suggested:
• Cancellation of this round of elections and Préval's early departure. So far opposed by the international community, this idea was put forth by 12 presidential candidates in a letter-writing campaign with Canadian and U.S. lawmakers launched last week.
• A second round with the presumed top three vote-getters: Former first lady and academic Mirlande Manigat, former government agency head and Préval pick Jude Célestin and musician Michel ``Sweet Micky'' Martelly, whose backers set the streets ablaze after the council said he had been edged out of a runoff spot by Célestin.
Brazil has pushed for this alternative. Questions have been raised about the constitutionality of such a move. Manigat opposes it.
• A new winner-take-all election with all 17 presidential candidates taking part and appointment of a new electoral council. Martelly put forth this idea. Some say it has little chance of winning favor.
• A runoff with Martelly and Manigat, courtesy of Célestin, who would voluntarily withdraw. There would also be a runoff for legislative seats with the likely outcome of Préval's INITE (UNITY) coalition controlling a majority in parliament.
• A second round with Manigat and Célestin, after which the winner would face questions of legitimacy.
• Formation of a coalition government with the opposition.
``We now have an electoral challenge that is acute,'' U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last week during a visit to Canada. ``The electoral challenge, the instability in the government, the lack of a clear way forward as to who will be assuming leadership responsibilities, requires the international community to act and provide technical assistance, provide support for unraveling the complexities and questions surrounding the election.''
The story of how Haiti and its foreign friends reached this dangerous impasse is a tale of good intentions by outsiders clashing with the harsh realities of a nation with weak institutions, a shattered government and a history of electoral fraud.
``We've had elections since 1987, and with the exception of 1990, all of them quite bad. I don't think we've made much progress,'' said Robert Fatton, a Haiti expert at the University of Virginia.
Even before the November vote, many Haitians doubted whether their country could pull off acceptable elections.
While a gentleman's agreement to postpone the vote might have worked in some other countries, it couldn't in a nation with a history of dictatorship and distrust.
A national survey of 1,275 Haitians taken on behalf of the United States Agency for International Development revealed that while an increasing number of Haitians planned to vote, respondents were equally split on whether the elections would be fair or not.
In fact, the survey showed that 39 percent of respondents interviewed between Aug. 18 and Sept. 2 believed the electoral council was corrupt. Overall confidence in the council had fallen to 56 percent in June of 2010 from a high of 78 percent the previous June.
Weeks before the vote, Colin Granderson, head of the joint Organization of American States-Caribbean Community observer mission, remarked that the main obstacle to good elections had nothing to do with the technical expertise or know-how of the council.
It had to do with ``the total lack of trust in the impartiality of the [council].''
Préval told The Miami Herald earlier this year that twice he had changed the council on the recommendation of various groups and opposition leaders. Each time, he said, the opposition complained about the new appointees.
Haiti watchers say Préval should have recognized that it was in his own interest and that of the country's to completely replace the council.
Others criticize the international community, especially the United States, for wavering on how to handle the election. The United States, for example, went from wanting to stack the council with technical experts to changing its mind days later, without explanation. Adding to the challenge: The entire United Nations electoral brain trust died in the cataclysmic earthquake.
Failure to change the electoral council, said Mark Schneider of the International Crisis Group, a Washington think tank, ``simply fed the view that the electoral process was never going to produce a fair result.''
``Now what may be the only way to get any agreed-upon next step is for a high level internationally respected panel to review or carry out a verification process and make recommendations for a way forward,'' Schneider said.
Yvon Neptune, one of the few presidential candidates not calling for a cancellation of the vote, said the provisional electoral council is not solely to blame for the mess.
``What we are seeing now in the electoral process is a reflection of Haitian society. You take all of the sectors that are involved in the electoral process, directly or indirectly, and there is a question of credibility,'' he said. ``We are a product of our history. It has been a history of turmoil. It has been a history of corruption.''
Since doing away with dictatorship 24 years ago, Haiti has struggled to build democracy and institutions up against inequities in wealth distribution, a lack of rule of law, overthrown governments -- and now a feeling of despair after the January earthquake.
A deadly cholera outbreak and largely invisible reconstruction effort have contributed to the general atmosphere of gloom and disappointment.
Meanwhile, the international community has wavered between wanting to allow Haitians to chart their own course and getting more involved in the details.
``However unpopular Préval may be, he represents continuity, which is the single most important thing the international community values,'' Fatton said. ``In other words bad elections will be tolerated in the name of continuity. The problem though is that continuity is not necessarily what Haitians want.''
Some argue that a political agreement is needed now -- not later.
With opposition to Préval far from monolithic, he remains the key actor in Haitian politics.
Still, some in the international community have given up on the man once viewed as Haiti's ``indispensable'' politician. ``Eighty percent of the Haitians voted against him,'' said one foreign diplomat, since his candidate, Célestin, got only 22 percent of the vote.
That reality along with the accusations of fraud by INITE, and the fear of violence in the coming days, has diplomats wondering about what will become of Préval. Will he, like most of his predecessors, exit into exile -- or will he become Haiti's elder statesman?
Eduardo Gamarra, a Florida International University professor and political analyst, said the most important thing over the longer term will be getting a credible government in place.
``But that credible government will have to come from among the three [top vote-getters]. The question is who among them is best able to help Haiti on that path -- a singer with no real record of administrating, a former first lady who is dignified but has no real record or a man who has run a government construction company with extraordinary ties to the old Haitian establishment and all that means?''
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American gets nearly 20 years for sexually abusing Haitian boys
- NEW: Several of the victims spoke about the abuse
- Douglas Perlitz began a charitable school in Cap-Haitien
- He was believed to be a great humanitarian
- Perlitz admitted to engaging in sexual conduct with eight minors
(CNN) -- An American school founder who young Haitian men once hailed as a savior was sentenced Tuesday to nearly 20 years in prison for sexually abusing them.
Douglas Perlitz, 40, was sentenced in federal court in New Haven, Connecticut, to 19 years and 7 months behind bars for abusing the Haitian men when they were boys under his care, said Bruce Foucart, special agent in charge of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Homeland Security Investigations in Boston.
"We're very pleased with the sentence," he said. "He was brought to justice and I hope it sends a strong message to people who are doing that or who are even thinking about doing that."
Judge Janet Bond Arterton imposed the sentence, which includes 10 years of supervised release.
Perlitz arrived in the northern Haitian city of Cap-Haitien in 1997. There, he opened a charitable school called the Project Pierre Toussaint (PPT). He got homeless boys off the streets and gave them shelter, food and education.
"When I met Mr. Douglas, he appeared to us like Jesus Christ himself come to rescue us," said Francilien Jean-Charles, who was only 12 when he was plucked by Perlitz and brought to the school.
Over the years, PPT grew into a 10-acre compound with dorms, classrooms and a soccer field.
Perlitz frequently flew back to Fairfield, Connecticut, to raise money. According to court documents, from 2002 to 2008, donors gave more than $2 million to help care for the kids. Perlitz's alma mater, Fairfield University, awarded him an honorary degree in 2002 for helping homeless boys in Haiti.
But Perlitz was hardly the man he appeared to be.
"I thanked God when I met Douglas," said Jean-Charles. "But when things started to turn bad, I realized it would have been better if I never came to PPT."
Perlitz wore a watch that lit up and at night, he used it to seek out the boys, they said. Fredlin Legrand said he woke up to see Perlitz next to him.
"He gave me a pill that made me fall asleep and when I woke up, I found my pants covered in sperm," Legrand told CNN.
Jean-Charles and a dozen other boys told CNN they were routinely raped by Perlitz for years. But they were afraid to speak out against the man who had been such a boon for the city.
Finally, in 2007, some of the boys approached their teachers and other adults. No one believed what they were hearing.
Brian Russell, a donor for the school, said Perlitz was a miracle maker, not a pedophile.
"There was no way that this man could have committed these things that people were accusing him of. It seemed utterly out of the realm of possibility," Russell said. "There was too much goodness. The heart was too big."
The boys grew desperate. They painted graffiti on the outer walls of the school, most of which has been painted over. But one plea for help still exists: "Welcome, Haitian National Police."
The police never came, but journalist Cyrus Sibert noticed the writing on the wall.
"I told the boys, I will go to the end with you," Sibert said. "Are you ready?"
But even after Sibert aired his interviews with the boys, Haitian authorities and American donors still did not believe the accusations.
It was only after an American volunteer at the school relayed accusations of older boys raping younger ones that red flags went up. Russell said the volunteer demanded from the headmaster that something be done immediately.
His response was: "Well, that's really hard because Douglas has been doing this for the last 10 years."
Russell felt broken, betrayed.
"I felt like all the money I had donated, the time that I had given, something that we had worked so hard for was gone."
In September 2009, U.S. ICE agents picked up the case and arrested Perlitz. He denied the accusations, but in August, Perlitz pleaded guilty to one count of traveling with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct. He also admitted to engaging in sexual conduct with eight minors.
The defense requested a delay in sentencing, contending Haiti's January earthquake, cholera outbreak and election-related street violence made it impossible to thoroughly review the prosecution's claims against Perlitz. The court denied the request.
In addition, the defense maintained that Perlitz himself was a victim of sexual abuse. According to a defense memorandum, while he was at Fairfield University, "a priest began a relationship with Doug that ... ultimately took on a dark aspect, both physically and spiritually, that had a significant and long-lasting impact on him."
The prosecution quickly responded, saying: "Perlitz's sexual abuse of minors, abuse which lasted for a decade or more, shows him to be nothing more than a wolf in sheep's clothing -- an American man who traveled to Haiti purporting to care for homeless children when in reality he preyed upon the desperation of these children so that he could sexually abuse them."
Some of the boys, now young men, were in court Tuesday for the sentencing. They faced the man who abused them for years and spoke about their experience, bringing a sense of reality to the courtroom, said Foucart. They testified about how afraid of Perlitz they were and how he threatened to throw them out of the school and back on the streets if they spoke up.
Paul Kendrick, an advocate for victims of abuse familiar with the case, was in court. He said Perlitz apologized to his victims at one point during the proceeding.
"The judge, I thought, gave a very strong sentence and a very strong message," said Kendrick. "American citizens will be held accountable for their actions with minors no matter where they are in the world."
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Man gets nearly 20 years in Haiti sex abuse case
By DAVE COLLINS
The Associated Press
Tuesday, December 21, 2010; 7:49 PM
NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- A Colorado man was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison Tuesday for sexually abusing children for more than a decade at a school he founded in Haiti, including some who faced him in the courtroom and testified that he threatened to put them back on the streets if they did not submit to his advances.
Judge Janet Bond Arterton called Douglas Perlitz a serial rapist and molester as she imposed the sentence in New Haven federal court. She said she believed he would commit the same crimes again if he were in a similar position.
Perlitz, 40, apologized to his victims while speaking in Creole before the sentence was handed down. He said he knew his crimes were horrible but pleaded for leniency nevertheless, asking the judge to consider the good work he did in the impoverished Caribbean nation.
"I began losing my head. ... I was using you," Perlitz said while facing the six young men who testified earlier. "I mistreated you because you were afraid. Perhaps you were confused. Perhaps you thought, 'How could this man, Douglas, who's protecting me, be touching me like this?'
"I wasn't thinking about you or your feelings or how my actions would affect you," he added. "I'm asking for forgiveness."
More than 100 people filled the courtroom including the victims, two Haitian police officers and Perlitz's family and supporters.
Perlitz admitted in August that he engaged in illicit sexual conduct with eight children who attended the Project Pierre Toussaint School for homeless children in Cap-Haitien. Prosecutors said Perlitz gave the children money, food, clothing and electronics and threatened to take everything away and expel them from the program if they told anyone.
Arterton said she believed there were at least 16 victims, based on testimony that authorities recorded on video by others who attended the school. Some of the six young Haitian men said in court that dozens of other boys were abused by Perlitz.
Now a resident of Eagle, Colo., Perlitz founded the school in 1997 when he lived in Fairfield County, Conn. Authorities said he began abusing the children, some as young as 11, in 1998 before the school was built. The abuse scandal led to the collapse of the school and its fundraising arm, the Haiti Fund, forcing the children back into homelessness on the streets, prosecutors said.
In court documents, Perlitz said one factor in the crimes was his "dark and abusive relationship" with a priest - whom authorities have not named - he met while attending Fairfield University.
The six young men were flown to Connecticut and detailed the abuse they suffered.
"He always told me, `Don't tell anybody about it. If you tell anybody about it, I will put you out on the street,'" one victim said through a Creole interpreter. He said Perlitz first abused him in 1998 and once sodomized him after plying him with rum.
Another victim said Perlitz started abusing him on his 14th birthday in 2004. He said he struggled with feelings of shame and thought about suicide, especially when he read the Bible.
"I am here today to tell the truth. Because of the truth, I can find justice," he said. "He hurt us a lot."
Perlitz was arrested last year and pleaded guilty to travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, a crime that carries up to 30 years in prison.
Prosecutors had asked the judge for a prison sentence of nearly 20 years, saying Perlitz preyed on some of the world's most vulnerable: Haitian street children with little or no family support or education.
"The damage and the harm he has done is just so extraordinary in this case," Assistant U.S. Attorney Krishna Patel told the judge. "He should be punished for the fact that he did this to the world's most defenseless children. He is a danger to our children. He's a danger to the world's children."
Perlitz's lawyers asked for a sentence of about eight years, saying that Perlitz also helped many children.
William Dow III, one of Perlitz's lawyers, drew jeers from some in the courtroom when he said Perlitz "lifted up" many poor children and treated them well. Dow quickly added that Perlitz "committed crimes. There's no question about it."
Dow urged Arterton to not sentence Perlitz as the "monster" that prosecutors portrayed him as.
"It's a tragedy on a whole bunch of levels," Dow said. "This is a significantly flawed man who has made good."
Perlitz's lawyers also wrote in court documents that he had "confusion and shame about his sexuality, and struggles with his identity; an ongoing, complicated and exploitive relationship with an influential priest; and increasing isolation and pressure while in Haiti."
Arterton also said Perlitz would have to serve 10 years supervised release after prison, register as a sex offender, receive sex offender treatment and not have any unsupervised contact with minors.
Perlitz said he would like to continue helping people.
"They say a convicted sex offender has no future, but I would like to try to prove people wrong," he said.
>via: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/21/AR20101221036...
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Haiti buckling under pressure
IF THERE is anything in the Caribbean that could qualify for me as the Scandal of the Year, it would not be the revelation that phones were tapped and e-mails intercepted by the Security Intelligence Agency in Trinidad and Tobago.
That may pale in comparison with what I expect to be unveiled in Haiti one day coming soon; what I and many others across this planet believe to be nothing less than a well-orchestrated, merciless sabotage of the Haitian people; either in an attempt to annihilate these "free" people who are seen as the dregs of humanity in the New World Order, or to correct a suspected "earthquake weapons" experiment that went horribly wrong.
It is also clear that Haiti continues to be the victim of successive selfish and corrupt governments which have fawned, in recent years, over a dubious US foreign policy.
In fact, the Rene Preval administration seems bent on following hook, line and sinker promises from the US in the aftermath of the January earthquake, especially those made by the UN's Special Envoy to Haiti, Bill Clinton, a former United States president—despite the obvious fact that nothing has improved for nearly three million Haitians living and dying in tents daily.
I was in Port-au-Prince two months ago when the priorities of the Haitian government appeared so skewed that I nearly fell out of my chair at a press luncheon.
I was privileged, through an invitation of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), to be in the presence of a Haitian reporter who lives in Port-au-Prince and whose relatives were surviving under dirty tarpaulin and plastic tents exposed to sun, rain, vermin and violence. This reporter stood up and, in a voice cracking with emotion, asked the Minister of Public Health Alex Larsen "what is happening in Haiti ten months after the earthquake?"
To someone relaxing on a beach or in some restaurant in any neighbouring Caribbean island, this question might not spark a flicker of emotion. In fact, one Barbadian told me recently "man, we aint got nutten in common wid Haiti! De language, see? We can't understand dem and dem can't understand we".
Clearly, it might take a major natural disaster here to make him "understand".
Anyway, the Haitian reporter was told by Larsen that there were other priorities for the government such as the planning of an underground sewerage system! I wanted to get out of the room and walk home: from Haiti to Barbados!
Here was a situation where people were still walking around having lost limbs and with other physical and mental scars of the earthquake; where people were living in unhealthy conditions with one pipe serving hundreds for cooking and washing.
The country was two days away from the start of a cholera epidemic, and its health minister—about to partake in a culinary feast while cozying up at the head table with suit-wearing UN officials—was concerned about laying underground pipes.
Haiti's health minister also voiced concern about people entering his country and behaving as if they were in a colonised land. But isn't it colonised by the United States, whose UN "peacekeeping" fortress outside the capital contains heavily armed soldiers and armoured tanks imported from Jordan?
Doesn't Haiti smack of a colonised country when – like the former Spanish, French and British "discoverers" whose diseases and weapons wiped out most of the original Caribbean people—its cholera epidemic is gradually being traced to the UN peacekeeping forces?
This is happening in the 21st century. More than 3,000 people have succumbed to cholera so far, and a government minister is posturing about sovereignty!
I was equally saddened last weekend to watch outgoing Caricom Secretary General Sir Edwin Carrington lament Caricom's inability to implement the aid plan for its Haitian brothers.
Sir Edwin, shaking his head, could hardly articulate the situation—compounded by cholera—which now faces the Caricom team. What hurts most, though, is the aggressive controlling stance of the US and UN, whose takeover has frustrated most other meaningful attempts to rebuild and to give the people of Haiti some semblance of normal, modern living. The earthquake should have been the catalyst to finally create a new, prosperous Haiti, but this is not to be.
Meanwhile, platitudes and promises continue unabated, including envoy Clinton's recent comment that "I share their frustration" while promising that "hundreds of thousands" would get new permanent housing next year.
Above all, too many questions remain unanswered as we go into 2011:
• Why has there been no concentrated effort at evacuation? Even keeping people away from the island's capital has been left to chance.
• Where has the US$5.1 billion gone?
• Are any governments and/or organisations investigating the possibility that the earthquake of January 12 was man-made, and that large deposits of oil exist under Port-au-Prince? Reports of such suspicions are rife on the world wide web, so anyone with eyes to see can see.
• Was the timing of this quake so soon after the failed December UN climate summit in Copenhagen purely coincidental?
On my own, I can do nothing to remedy this heartless situation, but I will not enjoy lunch with officials who watch Haitians die in squalor under tents.
Courtesy Barbados Nation
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Monday, December 20, 2010
Cholera Deaths In Haiti
Top 2,500, Health Ministry Says
The Haitian health ministry on Sunday said there had been 2,535 cholera deaths since the outbreak hit in mid-October, "dashing hopes the fatality rate might be beginning to taper off," Agence France-Pressereports.
"Almost 57,000 of the 114,497 people infected have been treated in hospital. Hopes rose last week that the death rate could be slowing as less than 30 people were shown to have died on two consecutive days," the news service writes. But earlier tolls were revised on Sunday and official figures showed that 54 people died on December 14, "the most recent day recorded," AFP notes (12/19).
PAHO Expert Meeting Recommends Starting Cholera Vaccine Program In Haiti Next Year, International Vaccine Stockpile For The Long-Term
Experts at a meeting convened by PAHO on Friday agreed to "start a cholera vaccination program in Haiti," Reuters reports. "PAHO, the American division of the World Health Organization, had previously opposed vaccination in Haiti on grounds that it would be too difficult and expensive. It changed course on Friday and recommended using the vaccine in Haiti, partly because it has discovered a stockpile of additional vaccine and partly out of recognition that the outbreak would not be halted any time soon," the news service writes (Sutton, 12/18).
The group "urged the creation of an international stockpile of cholera vaccine and called for the use of current vaccines in a pilot project in Haiti that would be expanded as more vaccine becomes available," according to a PAHO press release. "In the short term, we should make use of the limited amount of vaccine we have," said Roger Glass, director of the Fogarty International Center and associate director for international research at the NIH. "In the long term, we need to make sure we have adequate supplies to respond to cholera in Haiti, in the Americas, and around the world," Glass said (12/17).
The PAHO group recommended that "global public health agencies and the government of Haiti should press ahead with cholera vaccination as fast as possible," NPR's "Shots" blog reports. "That means talking with vaccine makers on a monthly basis to see how much they can produce. Meanwhile, PAHO and its parent agency, the World Health Organization, should raise money to pay for as much cholera vaccine as the makers can crank out, the advisers say," according to the blog.
The aim should be to "start a demonstration project in Haiti in March or April of next year, with continuation [in 2012] if vaccine becomes available and could be financed," said Sabin Vaccine Institute's Ciro de Quadros, who led the PAHO meeting. De Quadros discusses the logistics of scaling up global cholera vaccine production in the blog post."There are not enough [cholera] vaccine doses available in the world today," according to de Quadros. "It's less than 300,000 doses within the next three or four months," he said (Knox, 12/17).
U.N. Secretary-General To Establish Independent Scientific Panel To Look Into Source Of Haitian Cholera Outbreak
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "announced the establishment of an international scientific panel Friday to investigate the source of the deadly cholera epidemic in Haiti," the Associated Press reports (12/17).
At a news conference, "Ban noted there were several theories [about the source of the outbreak], and not all reports reached the same conclusion," the U.N. News Centre writes. "But there remain fair questions and legitimate concerns that demand the best answer that science can provide," Ban said. "That is why, pursuant to close consultation with Dr. Margaret Chan of WHO, I am announcing today the creation of an international scientific panel to investigate the source of the cholera epidemic," he said.
"The panel will be completely independent and have full access to all U.N. premises and personnel, he stressed, adding that further details will be provided when it is finalized," according to the news service.At the news conference, Ban also appealed for more funds to fight the Haitian cholera epidemic, "noting that a $164 million appeal is only 21 percent funded," the U.N. News Centre writes. "Haiti needs more doctors, nurses, medical supplies, and it needs them urgently … Our first priority continues to be saving lives," Ban said (12/17).