Passion Hits Streets After Haitian Election Results Announced

Emily Troutman Contributor

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Dec. 8) -- For a few weeks, news of the presidential election was a welcome distraction here from cholera and rubble and aid. To pretend, for a second, that all this international attention meant something and that change was imminent. But all along, there were only two outcomes to this election and everyone knew it: legitimate or illegitimate. It will be a carnival or a bloodbath, one man told me.

That prophecy was coming true this morning as protesters set fire to the headquarters of the ruling political party, according to The Associated Press, after popular candidate Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly was left off January's runoff. On Tuesday night it was announced he had finished third behind Mirlande Manigat and Jude Celestin, President Rene Preval's pick.

"The thing about Haiti is that people aren't stupid," said one young man after the vote was announced. "Even with the little education people get, what you find is that kids still learn how to read, still better themselves. And they're smart enough to know when they've been robbed."

Emily Troutman for AOL News

A campaign poster for Jude Celestin goes up in flames. Election officials say he received more than 20 percent of the vote in Haiti's presidential election. He is the favorite of the current president, Rene Preval.

For hours, crowds of dozens, and sometimes hundreds, circled the suburb of Petionville, throwing rocks and shouting their support for Martelly. They burned and destroyed posters of both Celestin and Manigat, whom some believe is also in collusion with the president.

"I'm doing this because the results don't represent my views. These are the results of the government, not the people," one man said.

The crowds, mostly of young men and boys, set fires and paused only to exclaim "Tet Kale!" -- Martelly's slogan, meaning both "bald" and "no sweat."

Many showed off their campaign paraphernalia, pulling out small, wallet-sized cards of the candidate, pink posters folded in their back pockets and T-shirts. Though they aggressively opposed having photographs taken of their faces, they were happy to pose with burning posters of Celestin.

Emily Troutman for AOL News

A rioter hurls a rock at a light in Petionville.

Much earlier, at about 4 p.m. Tuesday, in advance of official numbers, Celestin's campaign tweeted, "It's Settled! Jude Celestin Will Face Mirlande Manigat In Second Round." Though almost no one re-tweeted the statement, everyone saw it. The exclamation point rankled.

Though the voting process itself was flawed, early numbers revealed that Manigat and Martelly were ahead. Celestin was an unpopular candidate, mostly because of his association with the current government.

On Tuesday night, the provisional electoral council called a press conference at 6 p.m. At 8:30 p.m. they sent a representative, who sat alone at a table prepared for nine people. He read the detailed results of the senatorial races, along with the totals for each candidate and province.

A man went through the crowd of journalists, passing out a photocopied statement with signatures of the entire council, verifying that these were their results.

Then the spokesman read off the presidential results: Mirlande Manigat, 31 percent; Jude Celestin, 22 percent; and Michel Martelly, 21 percent. He shared none of the tallies for the provinces.

The journalists in the room stood up before he finished. The ones who didn't ended up stuck in that room for most of the night, as within minutes, streets in the town of Petionville exploded in riots.

Emily Troutman for AOL News

Smoke rises from the streets of Petionville after the start of rioting.

Damian Merlo, a political consultant from OstosSola and part of Martelly's campaign team, told AOL News the candidate was preparing a vigorous legal response, but he did not initially make a statement.

Martelly's cause was bolstered, Merlo said, by a 10 p.m. statement from the U.S. Embassy stating that officials were "concerned" with the announced results because they were "inconsistent" with the tallies of international monitors.

When they heard about the statement, boys in the streets just rolled their eyes. "Yeah, we know," they all said.

"No one voted for Celestin," said a young woman. "It's Preval's candidate and Preval's in power. How do they think we won't see through that? We voted for change."

Late Tuesday night, Martelly's campaign team traveled from his home to their campaign headquarters at Hotel Karibe. They navigated the empty, blazing streets, but when stopped by the police, they were hurried through after saying they were with the campaign. Martelly stayed at home. He was the talk of the town last night, and this morning the country waits for his statement.

Martelly is under tremendous pressure to say something that is both reassuring to the crowds but won't stoke further unrest. Manigat has not made a statement, though her campaign website posted the announced numbers of the electoral council and stated, "The results have finally been unveiled."

Earlier in the evening, groups of young men gathered as the sun set in Petionville. They hung out in the back of pickup trucks and on corners, watching traffic. The white SUVs belonging mostly to aid workers were bumper to bumper on every street, leading up to the hillsides where most foreigners live. The city emptied, as if preparing for war.

One group of young men said they were waiting, not for election results but to hear from Martelly, "Micky will tell us what to do."

Emily Troutman for AOL News

Haitian police wear riot gear while on a patrol in Petionville.

Later, as the riots gained steam, Haitian national police circled through the streets of Petionville in a noisy, red and blue convoy of eight trucks. In the back, some officers in riot gear donned machine guns and occasionally fired into the air. They sometimes aimed directly at people in the streets to scare them.

Though a fire raged on nearly every corner, the crowds intentionally avoided destroying property.

"Hey, man!" shouted one protester as a comrade aimed his rubble at a parked car, "I told you! No rocks at trucks!"

For every kid and bandanna-wrapped hoodlum on the street, there were 10 ordinary people in the darkened corners, looking out from windows or standing on their front steps. By in large, people didn't drink. They said they were not celebrating.

As the groups of arsonists circled again and again, bystanders watched and listened to hand-held radios and sometimes broke out into angry political debates. Mostly, they were silent, scared and sad.

"Imagine someone just raped you, right there," one man said, pointing to the scorched and burning corner. "You would be angry. Haiti is a beautiful woman. And they've just raped her. This is rape."

Election Day, held Nov. 28, was also a sad day for many, who were unable to vote. In Petionville, a wealthy businessman said he could not find his name on the registry at L'ecole Freres.

When asked if he would protest, he said no, he would head to his house in the hills. "But other people, they will protest for me."

This morning, the city remained shuttered, and there were reports of violence from across the country. In a radio interview this afternoon, President Preval said people should put the violence aside and respect the decisions and election results of the electoral council, as announced last evening.

"It's not by destroying public and private property that you will find a solution," he said.

He said that he trusted the conclusions of the Organization of American States and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), which earlier this week reported that the polling was flawed but did not "necessarily [invalidate] the process."

Regarding U.S. concerns, Preval simply said that the United States is not the arbiter of this election -- Haiti's electoral council is.

However, later this afternoon, the United Nations issued a statement from Secretary General Ban ki Moon, saying that he is
"concerned about allegations of fraud. He also noted that "these results are not final."

Emily Troutman for AOL News

A torn Jude Celestin campaign poster lies on an empty street.

 

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RADIO BROADCAST STATEMENT FROM 

MICHEL "SWEET MICKY" MARTELLY

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Furious Protests Greet Haiti Election Results

>via: http://ht.ly/3lWpK

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Blazing protests demand carnival singer lead Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Protesters enraged by the results of Haiti’s troubled presidential election set barricades and political offices ablaze, traded blows with U.N. peacekeepers and shut down the country’s lone international airport Wednesday, creating the social upheaval many have feared since the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The fallout from the Nov. 28 election, riddled by fraud, is violently shutting down cities across the impoverished country with gunfire and barricades at a moment when medical aid workers need to tackle a surging cholera epidemic that has claimed more than 2,000 lives.

The protesters back a popular carnival singer who narrowly lost a spot in a runoff election to Jude Celestin, a political unknown viewed by supporters and detractors alike as a continuation of unpopular President Rene Preval’s administration. The U.S. Embassy criticized the preliminary results Tuesday, saying Haitian, U.S. and other international monitors had predicted that Celestin was likely to be eliminated in the first round.

On Wednesday, demonstrators carried pink signs with the smiling face and bald head of their candidate, Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly, and challenged heavily armored foreign soldiers to near-theatrical confrontations. Outside the provisional electoral council headquarters, a former gym in the suburb of Petionville, young men wearing their shirts as masks threw rocks at U.N. troops.

The soldiers — Indians and Pakistanis working as a single unit — responded with exploding canisters of tear gas that washed over a nearby earthquake-refugee camp, sending mothers running from their tarps with their crying, coughing children in tow.

Protesters set fire to the headquarters of Preval and Celestin’s Unity party. Multiple fire trucks responded to the scene as flames licked the roof — an unusual scene in a country with few public services — but in late afternoon piles of charred campaign posters continued to smolder.

“We want Martelly. The whole world wants Martelly,” said James Becimus, a 32-year-old protester near the U.S. Embassy. “Today we set fires, tomorrow we bring weapons.”

Other protesters said they would continue to mobilize but do so nonviolently, which Martelly urged them to do in a radio address Wednesday. He also told supporters to watch out for “infiltrators” who might try to incite violence.

“Demonstrating without violence is the right of the people,” he said. “I will be with you until the bald-head victory.”

Preval urged the candidates to call off the protests.

“This is not how the country is supposed to work,” he said in a live radio speech. “People are suffering because of all this damage.”

Preval’s administration has been condemned by many Haitians for failing to spearhead reconstruction of the country after the earthquake. More than an estimated 1 million people still live under tarps and tents and little of the promised international aid from the United States and other countries has arrived.

Preliminary election results put Celestin ahead of Martelly by just 6,845 votes for second place, while former first lady and law professor Mirlande Manigat took first place. The top two candidates advance to the Jan. 16 second round.

Thousands were disenfranchised by confusion on the rolls, which were overstuffed with earthquake dead but lacked many living voters. There were reported incidents of ballot-stuffing, violence and intimidation confirmed by international observers, but U.N. peacekeepers and the joint Organization of American States-Caribbean Community observer mission said the problems did not invalidate the vote.

Turnout was low. Just over 1 million people cast accepted ballots out of some 4.7 million registered voters. It is not known how many ballots were thrown out for fraud.

In a televised address, Preval took a swipe at Washington’s criticism of the election results, saying that while he was open to discussing electoral problems with anyone, “the American Embassy is not (the electoral council).”

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the U.S. is not fomenting the unrest.

“The United States is in no way responsible for the actions of any individual. What we are determined to help Haiti achieve is a credible election and a result — not one that the United States will impose — but one that the people of Haiti can participate in fully,” he told reporters in Washington.

Martelly had joined with 11 other candidates, including Manigat, to accuse Preval of trying to steal the election while polls were still open.

An appeals period is open for the next three days, and election observers said a third candidate might be included in the runoff if the electoral council decides the first-round vote was close enough — though the constitutionality of such a move would be debatable.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed concern “about allegations of fraud” and “the acts of violence that have taken place in the aftermath of the announcement,” U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said at U.N. headquarters in New York.

He said all candidates have a responsibility to encourage their supporters to refrain from violence.

Vehicles were damaged by rocks and items were reportedly stolen from stores. Foreign aid workers complained that Haitian national police were slow to respond and that many officers refused to report to duty.

American Airlines canceled all flights in and out of the Haitian capital because airport employees were unable to get to work Wednesday because of demonstrations, spokeswoman Martha Pantin said. Flights will also be canceled on Thursday.

The U.S. Embassy reported that the smaller regional airport at Cap-Haitien was also closed due to demonstrations and barricaded roads.

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Associated Press writers Jacob Kushner in Port-au-Prince, Ben Fox in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Bob Burns in Washington and Edith Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

By JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press

>via: http://www.ultimapalabra.mx/2010/12/08/blazing-protests-demand-carnival-singe...