A tale of two cities November 2000 electoral observation

Guy S. Antoine
December 2000

After a tense week in Port-au-Prince...

[ I felt like a prisoner within the congested city,

which is an open market by day and a virtual ghost town by evening,

where most stores closed at 3:00pm even though they still posted open for business until 5:00pm,

where news of homemade bomb explosions and deaths of innocent children and random injuries to bystanders who simply "were in the wrong place at the wrong time" reached my ears with alarming frequency and yet there was no visible sign of panic,

a place where the meaning of the word "security" takes a whole new dimension as people dedicated to the safeguard of human rights had their guns next to them "just in case" and where you are greeted at most business fronts by a "security" personnel with a "heavy" gun. "I bet my gun is heavier than yours" seemed to be the message everybody wanted you to know ...,

a generalized urban decay where sidewalks are transformed into municipal parking lots and food marts and street merchants peddling all sorts of wares from "fritailles" to highly stylized art,

a redefined sense of personal space where you have to zigzag through it all, mere inches -if even!- from still and quite unstill life, and particularly from moving vehicles,

a spatially distorted checkerboard where it literally can take hours to navigate a few city blocks by car in the middle of the day, not unlike various traffic hellholes in Manhattan,

a city where life seems suspended in an unreal but altogether punishing reality, a mecca for seekers of sensual exoticism, political narcissism, foreign expertism, diplomatic cynicism, and aligned-opportunistic-newsfabricating media machine, but certainly not a place for ME... ]

I was happy to escape on board a twentysomething-seater plane to Jeremie two days before Election Day.

Desperately searching for the reason I had engaged myself in this "perilous" adventure, I quickly fell asleep. But the flight would only last half an hour, more or less. I was awakened to the view of an amazing coastline and, wonder of wonders, to the sight of green, as in trees everywhere. Could this still be Haiti? Well, indeed, it was... not a mirage, but a historical reminder of what most of Haiti must have looked like before the great centralization of its financial and political activity. Southwestern Haiti has not been subjected to the same degree of accelerated ecological decay due to its geographical and logistical isolation from Port-au-Prince. At least in this corner of Haiti, it does not seem too late to take a determined stand, and go on from there reclaiming the land of our ancestors.

We arrived at the Foyer Culturel de Jeremie, and soon after we are asked to be interviewed by two reporters from Radio Metropole and Radio Vision 2000. I politely asked them to return in a few hours, to first give us a chance to see the town of Jeremie, "La Cité des Počtes". They agreed. Our group of International Observers had been welcomed briefly at the airport by a young Catholic priest, Father Jomanas, who was eager to return to his "jardin", a plot of uncultivated land which he had bought, but on which he now planted a variety of fruit bearing trees, and that he was most happy tending to, while sharing cultivation techniques with neighboring land owners or workers. That is his work by day, whenever he can afford the time from the duties of his parish. By night, he fully assumes his role as teacher of Canon Law at the recently established night-time School of Law in Jeremie, of which he is also the founder and the Dean. His purpose is to prepare individuals that will help Haiti transition to a State of Law.

In the evening, we visited the school and had the opportunity to meet and talk with the professors and students of each class: first, second, third, and fourth year. The students are all adult and professional, one woman 60 years of age, and all visibly proud of being there at this moment, testifying to Jomanas's dream. This is the Law School's sixth year and there have been two graduating classes already. According to Father Jomanas, special attention is given to recruit women and police officers.

A member of our delegation, a secondary studies teacher, advocate of Children's Rights and volunteer trainer of Haitian teachers each summer through Project Teach, engaged the fourth year class in a spirited discussion of the Law as it applied to Children's Rights and the inefficacy of corporal punishment.

Back to the interview with the journalists. For the most part, they seemed uninterested, because our message was clear and simple: Elections were about to take place. We had come to observe not only the election process itself, but the climate that surrounded them in specific geographical regions. We were aware of the fact that these elections were being boycotted by the opposition parties, and not supported by the "International Community", but no one could deny that, boycotted or not, elections were taking place on November 26. We were here to observe that process. We were independent of any government or political affiliation. We were all doing so as volunteers, bearing the costs of our own expenses. The persistent question was: in doing so, were we affirming the legitimacy of the November 26 elections? Though this is open to personal interpretation, as far as we were concerned, we were not there to affirm or deny. As an organization we were there to observe the process that was taking place and later report on what we had observed. As a matter of fact, plans were made to send an observation team even if the elections had been cancelled.

Any member of our delegation was free to hold on to his own personal view of the legitimacy of the elections, and his own ideological, philosophical, and political views, but as a group we adhered to report only what we would see " with our own eyes " : not what we heard others say, and certainly not what the aligned media and various political and diplomatic interest groups would fabricate as they invariably do. We voluntarily engaged ourselves to observe, and only to observe. The interview was kept mercifully short, as we did not deviate from our message, regardless of our interviewers' arts and artifices.

That night, I went to bed slightly after two in the morning. People were still walking and talking in the streets, there had been some excitement with a couple of rara bands making their way past the hotel, one could distinctly hear the welcome Konpa beat emanating from a distant night club; all in all, it was a rather festive atmosphere. What a difference from Port-au-Prince! Were we even in the same country?, I frequently wondered.

The next day was dedicated almost entirely to the business at hand. We started early by visiting the local BED (Biwo Elčktoral Depatmantal) and interviewing the bureau chief, L. Ouston, a recent graduate from the Jeremie School of Law, on the readiness of his bureau to handle the logistics of the elections the very next day. The interview had to be short, as he was obviously preoccupied by the fact that he had yet to receive from Port-au-Prince a lot of the necessary materials. Furthermore, he had to make sure that the training of the electoral workers (four per polling station: president, vice-president, secretary, and "security") proceeded as planned, he had to go to the airport hoping to receive some additional 60 ballot boxes and other electoral materials, he had to make sure that the existing materials were being properly distributed to the various locations, etc, etc.

There were reports of impending trouble in Anse d'Hainault. However, throughout the interview, Mr. Ouston remained open, friendly, informative, even candid with respect to the enormous logistical difficulties he had to overcome somehow, and he invited us to attend the training sessions for the poll officers. We also asked him for a list of all BV's (polling stations) in Jeremie. He promised to have the list ready for us in a couple of hours. For my part, I left this interview, impressed with the fact that this was an individual clearly imbued with a great sense of his civic responsibilities.

We went back to the hotel, waiting for the list of BV's and the location of the training sessions. The day had just started... but compared to Port-au-Prince, Jeremie seemed to provide us a breath of fresh air.

The training sessions...

The distribution of election materials...

The registers (containing the lists of all those who had previously registered to vote, the only rational basis upon which one can calculate voting percentages)...

The voting itself...

All of the above is fodder for interminable debates, the sort of which Haitians of a certain class or certain affiliations love to revel in.

But what has stayed on my mind the most was the diligent behavior of the poll workers, working in extremely difficult situations.

From this vantage, the elections in Jeremie unfolded in a peaceful and remarkably orderly fashion. This is not to say that it happened without glitches. I could lead you into a surprising world of technical and procedural irregularities (the mushrooms) and expose you to the fierce determination of a people to exercise its right to vote (the trees). It would be entirely up to you to keep your head to the ground, straight ahead, backwards, or toward the tree tops.

On the night of the elections, we returned late to the Foyer, after a hard day's work. I could not help but notice the spirited and wonderful Latin music coming from a closed room on the second floor. A first I resisted the idea... it was getting late, and our group of six still needed to go over our various checklists and consolidate the observations that we gathered as individuals or in tandem with a partner throughout the entire day. The music though was insistent, calling for me to peek through the window panes... It was just great. Numerous young couples were learning to dance the salsa, and perhaps other Latin dance forms... another indication that life was not so desperate in this corner of the country that people would forget how to live. The happiness of the youthful participants warmed my heart. Then it was back to work.

The next morning, Monday, we were to depart to Port-au-Prince. I wanted first to call my wife in the United States, to assure her that I had "survived" the elections, that I was alive and well. Before 6:00am, I walked to a Teleco station situated next to the "old" cathedral. I could hear some joyous singing inside the church. I promised to myself to stop by, right after my telephone call, to find out what this was about. I almost missed the entire thing... First, the office did not have change for the bill that I presented to them as a deposit for my call, and it was not a large bill. Then, after waiting for some other customers to come in and provide the needed change, they attempted to connect me with New Jersey. Not an easy thing. In fact, I almost gave up. But patience does have its rewards, as I finally "reached out and touched" my loved ones. All the while, the music from church seemed more and more glorious. It sounded incredibly festive. Surely, I thought, this must be a mass of thanks for the elections having proceeded very peacefully, without any major incident in the city. That must have been it. But, still in the frame of mind of an observer, I needed to verify this...

I rushed to the church. The service was ending, but in the last couple of minutes that I was there, I marvelled at the fact that this cathedral was really packed from seam to seam. As everyone began to leave, I walked besides a lady and asked her on a friendly tone: "This was a special mass of thanks, wasn't it?" She responded, with a little perplexity in her voice: "No... this is our regular Monday 5:30am mass."

Ah.... I should have known.

But it was time to say goodbye to the City of Poets, and go back to the City of Princes, fallen from grace.


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