Military

I came to Haiti as a man deeply concerned for the well-being of Haiti and deeply conscious of Haiti's importance for the entire Caribbean.

I was head of the OAS election observer team in 2000. We spent six months as a group under difficult circumstances. Our funding ran out. We had to seek funding by various means, where whatever diplomatic skills I have were put to the test.

We observed the first round of Haiti's legislative elections on May 21, 2000. In these elections masses of people turned out to vote. At 6 a.m. I was in the station at Petionville. There was such a large crowd already waiting, it was a pleasure to watch. A very pregnant woman wanted to vote. Despite the long line, the slowness of voting, the crowd made way for her to go in and get out again. It was a model of democracy-on-a-shoestring.

Then of course there were all the problems of completing the votes in a country like Haiti. We received reports from all parts of Haiti.

We learned that while the Fanmi Lavalas party of former president Aristide was leading many races, in eight or nine of the senatorial races it did not have the necessary votes to win on the first round, which meant that its candidate would have to go to a second round.

At this point the Aristide minions on the electoral commission concocted a process of adding votes from the bottom that was illegal and in contravention of Haiti's own process in its constitution. The problem was that Aristide did not just want to win, he wanted to win it all. He did not want to deal with a senate that might have a mind of its own.

I wrote a letter to the president of the electoral commission and the president of Haiti himself. President Préval immediately called me to the palace for an interview. I explained the situation. He said it would be extremely difficult to explain this to a man who had been robbed of four years of his presidency. I said that there are times when one has to bite the bullet, because this will be the determining factor on whether the election would be seen as credible.

If it is corrected, I said, I would be prepared to be the first one to seek investment for Haiti from the United States and Europe.

The next morning, some minion of Aristide on the election commission leaked my letter to the press. The press was able to quote word for word from it, so we couldn't deny it.

This had the end result that the Fanmi Lavalas partisans stood their ground against correcting the count. But we could not accept that the election had been conducted fairly.

In point of fact, not only was the president of the electoral commission unable to confirm the results, but he was threatened and forced to leave the country. The two other non-Fanmi Lavalas members of the commission left as well. Our OAS commission made a public statement that it could no longer proceed with the observation due to the failure to correct the illegal procedure.

The electoral commission's three missing members were then replaced by pro-Aristide members who proceeded to hold the second round of the legislative elections and the presidential elections.

In the presidential elections there were six candidates, Aristide and five unknowns.

Only 5 to 10 percent of the electorate voted. There was no canvassing, no campaigning. He was not democratically elected. We would have difficulties with any election like that in any part of the region.

I come from a country where democratic elections date back unbroken to 1679, longer than Britain itself from whom we got this tradition. My position was very serious. The problem is that while some have maintained that he was democratically elected with only a slight flaw, I was totally convinced that without good elections Europeans would renege on a half billion dollars in aid held up for Haiti. I wanted to be sure they could get that money.

However, it was more important to Aristide to have full control than to observe the processes of a democratic election.

There were also other irregularities. Ballots sent to a central point were scattered out on the street. So much so that we had to work from numbers on tally sheets we had received from the polling stations earlier. All of the signed tally sheets were available even when we didn't have the ballots. Those that we picked up from the streets and spot-checked bore out the trend.

Ordinary Haitians worked under conditions that were unbelievable in tallying the results, working for a long time in uncomfortable circumstances to go through the ballots. We had helped Haitian civil society to put groups together to observe elections. When we concluded the elections all groups except a pro-Aristide one agreed that the elections had not been conducted fairly. One of the people promoting the observation, sometimes considered a right-wing extremist, was one of the most reasonable, quite ready accept the vote if fair.

The ordinary Haitians were capable of doing it right. To think differently, to think the nation is incapable, does a disservice and expresses a condescension that is unacceptable.

Today after all these vicissitudes we are back at a real window of opportunity. There are currently the problems with the gentlemen in arms because they have not been totally incorporated in the process. In spite of this, the only major objection to any of them that could be maintained would be to Louis Jodel Chamblain, for crimes against humanity as a FRAPH leader. It is difficult to conceive how he could be pardoned. The others who committed crimes could be pardoned and return as ordinary citizens.

Two or three times as many observers as we had in 2000 should be present. Some of the funding for them had been blocked, even by Capitol Hill, and so others became reluctant when the major power blocked money for the election monitors.

The current situation must be considered in all seriousness. If this window of opportunity is lost we have condemned to perdition the country that fought for its independence like the United States. The country that wrote the charter of liberty for the other colonized in the hemisphere. Bolivar converted the knowledge he gained in Haiti to a fight for the independence of all Latin America. Two hundred years later Haiti is still in ruins. Much blame attaches to the international community. In the first century there was the French indemnity of $14 billion in today's money and isolation as other slaveholding countries refused to recognize Haiti.

New elections would take two years. They must create a permanent electoral council, which they have never had. They must take a census of eligible future voters. They must have, as in Caricom, a reputable, nonpartisan electoral council. They must conduct elections in a serious way, not tied any political party, with a commission powerful enough to publish its own findings.

This must be done across a country that is impassible in many places; sometimes villages are accessible only by helicopter or bicycle. Compiling information is difficult and long. The ballots must be printed with security. This time there must be metal ballot boxes that cannot be opened by one person. It is not going to be done in six months. There are no quick fixes.