Uncertainty Looms Over Haiti’s Elections

(CNN)A presidential runoff election in Haiti was postponed Friday amid what electoral authorities called threats and “security concerns”.

Neither candidate immediately returned phone messages seeking response to the electoral council’s decision.

Haitian election officials on Friday indefinitely postponed this weekend’s presidential runoff election, but the move did not bring a halt to violent incidents in this capital and cities in the country’s northeast involving thousands of demonstrators opposed to the vote.

Haiti’s newly appointed senators voted nearly unanimously this week to postpone the vote, and the Catholic church, business groups and local election observers all warned that an election under such conditions would not lead to a credible outcome. Windows of nearby shops, banks and cars were smashed before the unruly crowd turned over stalls to block police vehicles.

The UN has maintained a peacekeeping operation, the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), since 2004.

Recent opposition-stoked protests in downtown Port-au-Prince have ramped up the tension with rock-throwing partisans and burning street barricades.

The CEP denounced fires set at CEP regional offices in the northern department of Limbe and the central department of Lascahobas, as well as attempted fires in Thomonde, Torbeck, Artibonite, Grand Goave and Port-au-Prince.

Martelly is due to leave office in two weeks and Haiti may need an interim body to organise the next election, but the government and different opposition leaders will struggle to agree on who leads such an administration.

This is the second time the run-off elections were delayed since the first round of polls that took place on October 25, 2015.

Celstin recently told The Associated Press that Haiti was “moving toward a selection, not an election”. He said the USA and other foreign governments that monitor Haiti were complicit for supporting flawed elections.

Haiti is scheduled to elect a new president on Sunday, but after charges of fraud marred the first round of voting, there have been calls to boycott the ensuing runoff.

Martelly had said the runoff would go on as scheduled and accused the opposition of trying to derail the vote with bogus fraud accusations so a transitional government they would dominate could be set up.