Haitians Protest Election Delays

With major elections only six weeks off, Haitians who say they haven't been given a chance to register to vote demonstrated outside Port-Au-Prince on Monday.

Protestors set up flaming tire barricades and torched cars in a capital suburb Monday to protest the lack of voter registration offices.

"Tens of thousands live in our neighborhood. They want to vote, and we don't have a single registration office here," said 30-year-old mason Roland Roy, one of several dozen protesters who blocked traffic on Route des Dalles in Port-au-Prince early Monday morning. Protesters burned two vehicles parked on the street.

They are anxious to vote in local and parliamentary elections scheduled for March 19 and April 30.

The votes were called last year after President Rene Preval dissolved parliament. But problems with training and staffing voter registration offices may force the elections to be postponed.

The delays in opening the offices could be due to the late arrival of materials, like equipment for producing photo identification for each voter. Some reports indicate that the local election council has not paid all the registration workers on time, and some of the workers may not open registration offices until they are paid.

A month-long voter registration period was originally scheduled for Jan. 20 but was postponed until Jan. 27 because of violent disputes over the staffing of election bureaus. The registration offices must be open for thirty days before registration can be closed, and elections occur.

The local election council is administering the elections with help from the International Foundation for Elections Systems, a Washington, D.C.-based organization supported by the United States Agency for International Development.

"At this point it's a technical and a procedural thing as opposed to a political thing," says Karen Sieger, senior program officer at IFES. Sieger cited "relatively minor problems with the distribution of materials," and delays in appointing some of the 14,000 elections workers. Haiti's political parties submitted lists of people to hire for election positions and some of the lists, Sieger says, were submitted very late in the process.

There is speculation, however, that the party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristidd, called Lavalas Family, wants to delay the elections until December, when presidential elections will also be held.

Aristide is widely regarded as a potential candidate for the presidency, and the delay could increase turnout in December and give his party popular support in the presidential polling.

Sieger, however, says any delay will be minor.

In the capital, which has an estimated population of 2 million, many of the 145 registration offices were not open Monday. Some reports indicate that offices in affluent areas, like the wealthy Petionville area, are up and running while registration centers in poor areas remain closed.

Last week, in norther Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city, voters complained that fewer than 10 registration offices had been opened. Cap-Haitien has an estimated population of 150,000.

A nationwide survey of 9,000 voters in October and November conducted by ECOSOF, a Haitian business consulting firm, showed that 86 percent of the electorate intended to vote. The poll had a five percent margin of error.

On Friday, the provisional electoral council said 900,000 had already registered.