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On February 7, 2006 Haitians went to the polls and, despite many technical and other logistical difficulties, re-elected René Préval for a second term as President. Préval was first elected in 1996 and transferred power to Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2001 after he won re-election in November 2000[i]. Aristide was overthrown by former members of the defunct Haitian Army in February 2004, cutting short his second five-year mandate by two years. Aristide was replaced by an interim government led by Interim Prime Minister Gérard Latortue and Interim President Boniface Alexandre in March 2004 with the full backing of the United States, Canada, and France. Originally scheduled for November 2005, the presidential election was postponed four times before being finally held on February 7, 2006. Préval is scheduled to assume office on March 29.

Préval’s re-election represents a major victory for what could be called the popular sector, and an equally major defeat for those Haitian elite- and foreign-backed forces which coalesced in the Democratic Convergence and the Group of 184 to oppose and ultimately overthrow Aristide in 2004 with the help of the former army rebels. These forces had hoped that with Aristide gone one of their own could win the presidency. Out of a field of 33 candidates for the presidency, the eight candidates who were part of the coalitions and the two from the former army rebel forces that toppled Aristide received a combined 32.4 percent of the approximately 2.2 million votes cast. Préval received 51.21 percent thereby clinching his victory in the first round. Voter turn out was estimated at around 63 percent (Haiti/Conseil Electoral Provisoire 2/20/06)[ii].

The election also represented a defeat for the interim government of Interim Prime Minister Gérard Latortue. Since being installed by the United States, Canada, and France in March 2004, the main objective of the Latortue government was to pacify the country and prepare new presidential and parliamentary elections. That meant principally cracking down on Aristide supporters, especially but not exclusively the armed gangs known as chimès in the Lavalas strongholds in the ghettos of Port-au-Prince, and to prepare new elections that hopefully would bring to power a government that will respect the rules of the political game according to the dictates of the major capitalist powers and the international financial institutions, and restore the balance of power between the government and the bourgeoisie through the traditional pact of domination favorable to the latter.

In addition to the backing of the US, Canada, France, and the United Nations through its peacekeeping force known as the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH in French), the Latortue government pursued its objectives with the support of those who were the spearhead of the opposition against Aristide: the dominant business class, and the political middle class parties and intellectuals, including human rights organizations and the mainstream media. The Council on Hemispheric Affairs called the government’s strategy a “scorch earth policy towards [Aristide’s] supporters” (Council on Hemispheric Affairs 12 Nov 2004). One side of the strategy was to round up prominent Lavalas party officials, former elected and appointed members of government, and well-known party activists. Among those arbitrarily arrested were Father Gérard Jean-Juste, a renown pro-Lavalas radical populist and advocate of non-violence, and former Prime Minister Yvon Néptune, other Lavalas legislators, and party members (Council on Hemispheric Affairs 12 Nov 2004). The other side of the “scorch earth” policy consisted of indiscriminate attacks against the population in the areas considered Aristide strongholds under the guise of combating the gangs of chimès or “bandits.”

By jailing Jean-Juste, the Latortue government succeeded in preventing him from being a major contender in the election. But, to the consternation of the bourgeoisie and middle class, it could not prevent Préval from running and winning, despite a widespread campaign of defamation against him by those who depicted him as a continuation of “Aristidism without Aristide” because of his past links with Aristide and the Lavalas movement. Préval, however, distanced himself from Aristide and ran under his own LESPWA (Hope) Platform[iii] and not the Lavalas Family banner. Nonetheless, even though he built his reputation on his record as president from 1996-2001, and drew wide support throughout the country, there is no doubt that he owes a significant part of his victory to the massive turnout of voters from the poor neighborhoods and Aristide strongholds in Port-au-Prince and its surrounding areas.

Préval’s victory, however, was not without controversy, and could still prove troublesome for him. Leading early in the balloting, and projected by international organizations such as the National Democratic Institute and the Organization of American States to win in the first round with more than 51 percent of the votes, Préval saw his percentage drop to around 49 percent by Sunday, February 12. Believing that those who wanted to prevent him from winning in the first round were manipulating the vote count and engaging in extensive fraud, his supporters took to the streets in massive and sometimes violent protests that paralyzed Port-au-Prince and other cities throughout Haiti on Monday. Seeking to diffuse this potentially explosive situation that could not only derail the elections but plunge the country into chaotic civil unrest, foreign diplomats and interim government officials pressured Préval to call off the demonstrators. Préval answered by making his own public accusation of massive fraud for which he claimed he had proof, and declared that he would contest the results of the election if the Provisional Electoral Council CEP) insisted on making them official. At least two officials from the CEP—where Préval’s LESPWA party had no representative—made similar charges. Rather than calling on his supporters to end the protests, Préval urged them to continue to do so peacefully, and to respect the law, the rights, and the properties of others. The goal of peaceful protests, Préval told his supporters, was to increase the capital of the LESPWA platform rather than to weaken it (Mozingo 13 February 2006; 16 February 2006; Williams 19 February 2006; Haiti en Marche 16 Février 2006). Préval made it clear that he and his supporters would not back down and let his enemies deprive him of the victory he believed he earned legitimately.

Such a strategy, however, has its costs. There is no doubt that without the massive show of popular support for Préval and the pressure it put on government and CEP officials to resolve the imbroglio, those responsible for perpetrating the fraud that was designed to force him into a second round might have succeeded. But relying on popular mobilization to deal with difficult political problems, justifiable as that may have been in this instance, also plays into the hands of Préval’s enemies, both domestic and foreign, who can liken him to Aristide’s use of mob rule rather than the rule of law to achieve political ends. That these same enemies have themselves relied on other non-democratic means, including violence, coups d’état, and economic strangulation, to achieve their objectives is beside the point. Préval’s enemies are concerned about power, not political or ethical principles. As the Haitian Platform for the Defense of an Alternative Development (PAPDA in French) put it, the vote tally manipulations are an expression of the political struggles wherein sectors “of the dominant classes refuse to accept the presence of the popular classes on the political scene and are prepared to do all they can to preserve an archaic apartheid political system that is in tatters and needs to be buried definitively” (Chalmers 2006).

As evidence of fraud surfaced, the attitude of UN, OAS, Haitian government, and CEP officials who had previously denied such charges and even suggested that Préval supporters might have planted them to justify their claim changed and was instrumental in the decision to declare Préval the winner. The discovery of large some 85,000 to 90,000 blank ballots—where voters expressed no choice for a candidate—which represented over 4 percent of total votes cast, raised suspicion among CEP officials who doubted that such large numbers of voters would have walked for miles and waited in line for hours only to cast blank or protest votes, and also because they appeared to have been stuffed in ballot boxes in a fraudulent manner. As Max Mathurin, the CEP’s President, acknowledged, such ballots, which reduced the percentage of the votes for all candidates, amounted to one quarter of the votes in some polling stations and a third of the votes in some others. In addition to blank ballots, the CEP declared about 155,000 votes (7 percent of the total) invalid. This high number also raised suspicion, since the decision to nullify them was made by local election officials appointed by the CEP, and in the more closely monitored polling stations, such as in the West department, 5 percent of the votes were so designated, whereas in more remote and less well monitored areas, such as in the Nippes department, about 14 percent were thrown out. Moreover, in some polling stations, the number of ballots counted was less than the number of people who had voted, and approximately 4 percent of total votes cast nationwide could not be found. Also, on February 14, thousands of marked ballots, many for Préval, were discovered half-burned in a garbage dump outside Port-au-Prince (Delva 17 February 2006; Selsky 15 February 2006; Thompson 16 February 2006; Arthur 16 February 2006).

At that point, ambassadors from the US, Canada and France—who initially insisted that the CEP continue to count the votes that would have forced a second round—reluctantly agreed to join with their counterparts from Brazil and Chile, and meet with UN, interim government, and CEP officials to come up with an acceptable and legal solution that would grant Préval a first round victory. The solution was found in the so-called Belgian Option suggested by the Brazilian and Chilean diplomats. According to Article 185 of the Haitian electoral decree[iv], blank ballots must be included as part of the total votes cast, but it does not stipulate how the votes must be counted. That ambiguity allowed the CEP to use the “Belgian Option,” which consists of distributing the blank votes proportionally to each candidate rather than adding them to the total. While that solution raised everyone’s percentage it also put Préval over the 50 percent plus one vote he needed to win in the first round. In the early morning hours of February 16, eight of the nine members of the CEP signed the agreement that declared Préval the winner (Mozingo 16 February 2006; Williams 19 February 2006).

As Brian Concannon, Jr., director of the human rights advocacy group Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, observed, based on exit polls and unofficial projections, a complete and accurate vote count would have given Préval a first round victory, and while the solution the CEP agreed to yielded “the same result…it [did] so by changing the rules instead of correcting the violations of the rules.” Moreover, at the same time that the deal lets the interim Latortue government off the hook on the charges of vote counting manipulation and discarding ballots to defraud Préval of his victory, it “provides leverage for those seeking to delegitimize Préval’s presidency and block the progressive social and economic policies that he was elected to implement” (Concannon 17 February 2006).

Concannon is undoubtedly correct, and Préval himself seems well aware of the potential pitfalls of the “Belgian Option.” As one of his closest advisors acknowledged, this may not have been the best solution because it leaves the question of the role of fraud in the election unanswered. But, as he put it, “What else can you do? You have a population about to erupt. It may come out later what this was all about, but for the time being, there aren’t any other options. Let’s look forward now” (cited in Klarreich 2006).

As Concannon anticipated, Préval’s opponents wasted no time in denouncing the deal that gave him the victory and questioning his legitimacy. Leslie Manigat, leader of the Christian democratic Gathering of Progressive National Democrats (RDNP), and Charles Baker, a wealthy member of the business class, former co-leader of the Group of 184, and leader of the right-wing party RESPECT, came in second and third, respectively, though they trailed trailed Préval by a wide margin (See fn 2). Rather than condemning the obvious attempt to defraud Préval of his victory in the first round, both men instead criticized the CEP for caving in to the pressure from Préval supporters, the foreign diplomats, and the interim government to find a solution to the vote count imbroglio. Manigat had served briefly as president between January and June 1988 under military domination. Handpicked by the military rulers who came to power after Jean-Claude Duvalier was overthrown and forced into exile in 1986, Manigat was “elected” president in an election controlled by the military, in which less than 10 percent of eligible voters participated, and all independent Haitian and foreign observers agreed were fraudulent (Dupuy 1996, 58). As Marie Frantz Joachim put it so well, “even if the intellectuals who supported Manigat rarely recalled how he arrived at the presidency in 1988, the population was not completely amnesic” (Joachim 18 Février 2006). Trounced by Préval in the current election which was seen by all independent observers as free and democratic, Manigat shamelessly categorized the CEP’s “Belgian Option” as an “electoral coup d’état” that “confiscated [his] right to a second round” (cited in Le Nouvelliste 16 Février 2006; and AlterPresse 21 Février 2006).

Manigat’s anger can be better understood if we look at it not as an expression of a long-standing adherence to democratic principles but as frustration over a strategy that failed. As soon as Préval declared his candidacy for the presidency in September 2005, it became immediately clear that he would be the man to beat because it was assumed, correctly it turned out, that with Father Jean-Juste in jail and the Lavalas Family party in disarray, Préval would win the support of the poor majority. In early November 2005 a group of 30 prominent intellectuals issued a call to rally around a single candidate to face Préval who, in the words of Micha Gaillard, a spokesman for the FUSION coalition and former member of the Democratic Convergence, “symbolized a return to the [Aristidian] past and would not have a parliamentary majority” (cited in Caroit 22 Novembre 2005). To that end, and supported by the Group of 184, nine political parties which were part of the Democratic Convergence, signed “A Political Agreement for Democracy and Modernity” on November 28, 2005[v]. Rather than fielding a single candidate for the presidency, the parties to the Agreement committed themselves to form a government of national unity should one of their candidates win in the first round, and to share positions in the government, in the public administration, or other public posts among themselves. In case a candidate of one of the parties acceded to the second round if necessary, all the other parties agreed to form a bloc to support him. And at the level of the legislature, the members of the parties agreed to form a coalition to obtain a comfortable parliamentary majority (Entente 2005; AlterPresse 28 Novembre 2005).

Manigat’s and Baker’s anger, then, is that under pressure from the masses who refused to be disenfranchised, foreign diplomats and the interim government compelled the CEP to use a different method of tabulating the blank votes rather than disregarding the fraudulent practices that would have forced Préval into the hope-for second round. But if Manigat especially was angry at what he calls the “betrayal” of the CEP, he must have been even more so at the signatories of the Agreement who failed to rally behind him. With no sign that the United States and its allies intended to deny the legitimacy of Péval’s victory and oppose him as they did Aristide in 2000, several participants in the Agreement broke from the alliance to recognize Péval as the winner (Delva and Loney 14 February 2006). To save face, Manigat issued a call for the members of his party running for parliament to withdraw from the second round scheduled for March 19. So far, only his wife Mirlande who was running second in the senate race in the West Department—where Port-au-Prince is located—heeded the call.

The Haitian business class also issued public statements recognizing Préval as President-elect, but only after the United States, the European Union, and Canada had done so. Also, like Tim Carney, the acting US Ambassador in Haiti, who issued a statement that Préval’s opponents could use the dispute over the blank ballots to weaken his government “if he does not perform” (cited in Jacobs 18 February 2006), the business class warned Préval that the CEP’s use of a non-consensual political formula rather than respecting the prescriptions of the electoral law, tarnishes his legitimacy and represents a handicap that he will need to overcome. To do that, the Private Business Sector group and the Group of 184 pointed out in their simultaneous press releases, Préval must respect the “rules of the game,” reject the use of “street pressure” to resolve problems, and behave as the president of all Haitians and not only of that half of the population that voted for him (Secteur Privé des Affaires 20 Février 2006; Groupe Des 184 17 Février 2006). The hypocrisy of the Haitian ruling class is boundless, but it also understands its interests and will use any means at its disposal to defend them.

For his part, Préval knows he will walk a tightrope. As the purported champion of the poor majority who voted for him, but beholden to the members of the business class who bankrolled his campaign and whose investments he will need along with those of foreign capital, he embodies the classic contradictions of a populist politician. In a country where 80 percent of the population is unemployed and annual per capita income is less than $400, Préval realizes that the people who voted for him expect him to prioritize their need for access to jobs, food, healthcare, housing, education, and security above all else. Popular organizations who felt betrayed by Aristide and opposed the Latortue government are already mobilizing to press those demands, which also include a more comprehensive agrarian reform than the limited one he (Préval) undertook during his first term, and a break with the so-called Interim Framework for Cooperation—the neoliberal structural adjustment program—the interim government signed with the international financial institutions (see Pierre 23 Février 2006; Kovac 24 February 2006).

At the same time, Préval will be squeezed from above and from the Right by the Haitian business class, the United States, and the international financial institutions who will expect him to adhere to the agreements of the interim Latortue government concerning the neoliberal reforms. He has been busy wooing the business class by promising them to prioritize private sector and foreign investments (Thompson 9 February 2006). Both will require him to preserve current capital-labor relations, which mean preserving poverty wages and Haiti’s status as the cheapest source of labor in the Western hemisphere. Aware of the contradictory interests that are confronting him, Préval has warned against expecting too much from his second presidency by saying during his campaign that Haiti’s intractable problems cannot be solved too quickly (Roig-Franzia 17 February 2006). Though seemingly pragmatic, this is another way of saying that, as much as he may find it unacceptable that 4 percent of the population possess 66 percent of all assets in the country, while nearly 80 percent live in absolute poverty, he may not be able to do anything to change that, especially if he wants to maintain the pact he is seeking to form with the dominant classes.

Equally as pressing, Préval will have to deal with the thorny issues of disarmament and security, including the pro-Aristide armed gangs who control the slums of Port-au-Prince, the armed members of the former Haitian Army, and the gangs involved in other criminal activities such as drug dealing and kidnappings. There has been a marked decrease in gang- and police-related violence since the elections. And, in what could be a hopeful sign, an influential gang leader who supported Aristide vowed that if Préval became president the gangs would voluntary disarm because they would no longer be fighting against an illegal government that tried to use military force to suppress them (Delva 10 February 2006). Indeed, much of the criticism of the failure of the UN’s MINUSTAH force of some 9,000 troops and police was that it pursued its disarmament mission through a military solution in collaboration with the Haitian National Police that resulted in increasing violence and widespread human rights violations (Council on Hemispheric Affairs 3 February 2006). Preval, who has as a priority a comprehensive disarmament program and argues for the need to keep the United Nation’s peacekeeping force for a while to achieve that goal, believes in using a different approach. “There are too many military in this [peacekeeping] mission. We need more police” and more jobs, he argued. “Children must be taken off the streets. Weapons must be taken from the hands of children and replaced with pens and books” (cited in Renois 16 February 2006).

Last, but not least, Préval will have to confront the troublesome issue of Aristide’s possible return to Haiti. As Kathie Klarreich observed, while Préval has maintained that Aristide is welcome to return as a private citizen, it would seem “counterintuitive for [him] to encourage such a move if he’s trying to create a new image as an independent leader” (Klarreich 13 March 2006). There are at least three potentially destabilizing issues for Préval’s second term if Aristide returned. First, it could sour relations between the Bush administration and Préval, given the role the former played in Aristide’s removal in 2004. Second, it could jeopardize the pact Préval is seeking with the Haitian bourgeoisie and middle class who are already distrustful of his ties with the former president they despise and overthrew. And third, it could undermine Préval’s ability to deal effectively with the pro-Aristide and other armed gangs to restore peace and stability.

How Préval tackles these intractable issues remains to be seen and depends in large part on the outcome of the parliamentary elections and his selection of a prime minister who will have the responsibility to form a new government. With only 19 candidates from his LESPWA platform running for 30 senate seats, and 58 candidates for 99 lower house seats, it is unlikely that Préval will have a majority in parliament that would allow him to choose a prime minister from his coalition. But even if he were to achieve a majority in parliament, his room to maneuver will still be limited by those domestic and international forces whose power to shape events does not depend on the ballot box.