Haiti elections postponed a third time

Roudy Stanley Penn tells The Associated Press that the Provisional Electoral Council has agreed to postpone the presidential and legislative runoffs that had been set for Sunday. The vote was originally supposed to be held December 27.

The chairman of the Electoral Council, Pierre-Louis Opont, said there had been security concerns.

The protesters’ jubilant celebration lasted mere minutes after the election decision was announced and quickly gave way to clashes with the police, who closed downtown Port-au-Prince and had to fire gunshots in the air and use tear gas to disperse the crowd.

Swiss-trained engineer Celestin has said the government has not done enough to remedy cheating in the first round, and called the plans for the second round vote “a farce”. Haiti has only a shaky handle on security even with the assistance of troops and police from a United Nations peacekeeping force that has been in the country since a 2004 uprising ousted then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The move to cancel the election came after Opont reported attacks on the communal electoral bureau in Limbe as well as the private residence of an elections official in Pignon.

Thousands of demonstrators cheered in celebration Friday after hearing the vote would be postponed. He has spent much of his time in Haiti developing clean water and alternative energy.

The postponement is nevertheless expected to ease unrest after days of protests in the deeply impoverished country of about 10 million people, at pains to rebuild from a devastating natural disaster six years ago and to emerge from decades of political dysfunction.

This is the second time the run-off elections were delayed since the first round of polls that took place on October 25, 2015. But it’s uncertain now when or if Haiti can pull together a credible election.

In an atmosphere weighted with uncertainty, Haiti’s Senate and various civil society, religious and business groups have called for a halt to Sunday’s runoff due to deep public suspicion of fraud and meddling by the US and other foreign governments.

“The United States supports all efforts aimed at finding consensual and constructive solutions that will conclude the electoral process with an outcome that reflects the will of the people”, a State Department spokeswoman said.