Editorials/Op-Ed
Want to send this page or a link to a friend? Click on mail at the top of this window.
More Editorials
                
Posted December 23, 2010
                                   
PRESS RELEASE/EDITORIAL
A Provisional National Council of Government Is What

Haiti Needs, not a Fraudulently Elected President
                                       
Wehaitians.com, the world's preeminent, authoritative Haitian-American journal of democracy and human rights of its kind, supports any resolution that calls for famously known ineffective, tinhorn Haitian civilian dictator Rene Preval to resign the office of the presidency, taking out of the circulation members of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP, as it is known by its French language abbreviation) for a multitude of alleged grave crimes - not limited to conspiracy, treason, and grand fraud - against the Haitian people.
 
rulling party
Constituents are said to have expressed most of their electoral sentiments in favor of Ruling-party (Unite or Unity) candidate Judge Celestin. The number of votes cast for opposition candidates tends to be negligible, meaning that they all lost, and badly. The grand and interesting question that is asked above, in French, is: Haiti elections 2010, recount what, the fraud? (Courtesy of Monghy Lamonge/Radio Energy-Boston)
 
You, public officials, do not commit public wrongs or acts prohibited by the state and always expect to then be permitted to go into comfortable exile to diffuse a volatile or complicated political situation. This is certainly inviting the replacements of those who have committed odious crimes not to conform their behavior, to emulate their predecessors. You are instead prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

So numerous are the most erroneous crimes (classified as felonies, as are those first cited above) members of the CEP are also believed to have committed it may be difficult, if not extremely so, for even the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague to first carefully enumerate them in a matter of, say, just a few minutes, and subsequently determine if there is probable cause to have the public servants of concern face the bar of justice.

The alleged atrocious violations members of the CEP may also be charged with is voluntarily or involuntarily, whichever applies or both, aid Preval to further institutionalize pre-electoral violence, post-electoral violence, which always results, not only in considerable economic losses in an already dirt-poor small land, but murder (for which their is no statute of limitations), and the departing president's shadowy political machinations, as in every one-party system (refer to the passage of Cuba's presidency by Fidel Castro to his brother Raul Castro, for example) or dictatorship, all in an effort to solely pass the reins of power to a puppet or a chosen successor who will be restricted to ceremonial observances, lacking real power, sadly not a new head of state who will promise a fresh start - a necessity, especially in a land with a tortured history like Haiti.      

It is not that Preval's alleged criminal actions, in concert with members of the CEP, have raised a simple query, that he has solely attempted to enter the demi-monde of criminally. This journal is qualified or inclined to take a view on all of those involved. Sure there are reasons why to believe that they have rather attained the "age of criminal menopause." Since it is so the tyrant's replacement cannot be a man, Judge Celestin, who, too, evidence suggests has attained the same age.      

The formation of a provisional national council of government, also with the very demanding mission of organizing new and credible general elections within a reasonable period of time, say, one that is not to surpass one year, is what exactly Haiti needs, if the historically troubled Caribbean nation is to be hopeful that it will one day rightfully enter the pantheon of democratic nations, change the quality of life or material conditions of its vast majority of citizens, in the positive terms, even by the dismal Third World standards. These, thanks also to a combination of unprecedented economic opportunities, a new and better educational system - two of the many independent causes or variables of social mobility, which the morally repugnant, privileged few have always veritably denied the vast majority of their fellow citizens.

What is more, address its many other systemic and endemic problems - not a fraudulently elected president to preside over or perpetuate blanket lethal poverty. Alternately, a very sad continuum.

The above recommendations are not meant to suggest that the duly elected new government will not be in for a bumpy ride. But calamities or tribulations like an earthquake terminating the lives of 300,000 citizens and forces more than 1.5 million others to continue to sleep in the open, with no end in sight; biblical times diseases, grand-scale corruption, blanket famine and many more, each of nearly the same gravity (except the first one that is far superbly consequential in scale), will most likely be things of the past.

Given the plethora of unwanted problems (one of the latest to be, cholera has sent thousands of citizens to the dark embrace of death) that the small Caribbean corner (earthquake-ravaged Haiti) is experiencing today, and for a longtime will most likely, unfortunately, continue to define the lives of its estimated 9 million inhabitants, it is certainly impossible for even a reduced democratic exercise (vote) to be held at least 45-day (45) and no more than 90-day's time or ninety (90) days after the vacancy occurs, as one of the many articles (149-I) of  the 1987 Haitian constitution provides for.

The writer, Yves A. Isidor, who teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, is executive editor of Wehaitians.com.
                                         
Wehaitians.com, the scholarly journal of democracy and human rights
More from wehaitians.com
Main / Columns / Books And Arts / Miscellaneous