Electoral campaign rolls on in Haiti despite cholera (Feature)

By Silvia Ayuso Nov 23, 2010, 5:41 GMT

Port-au-Prince, Haiti - More than a hundred youths parade through the Delmas neighbourhood of the capital on motorcycles, trucks or on foot. A festive air reigns, with homemade horns and radios blaring music at maximum volume.

All wear the same yellow football jersey with Jude Celestin and the number 10 on the back - the name and ballot position of the candidate from the ruling party Inite in Sunday's presidential election.

'Inite is a team and the number 10 is our man, Celestin the most popular,' proclaimed a follower, Pierre Gedeon, as if he were referring to a football match.

The party's yellow and green colours are everywhere in Port-au-Prince, adorning most of the walls still standing since the January earthquake destroyed much of the city. It is a demonstration of the power and money put into the campaign by the government of outgoing President Rene Preval, to the indignation of the other candidates.

The attempt to evoke popular youth support for the party with the rally and its heavy contingent of security guards, appeared to have failed to resonate on the streets of Delmas.

Henri, a resident who withheld his surname, watched the spectacle with a twisted grin from one of the pavements.

'I'm going to vote for my candidate,' he said, reluctant at first to reveal his choice of Milande Manigat, wife of a former president and favourite in pre-election opinion polls.

A motorist named Charles was also unimpressed with Preval's handpicked successor, Celestin.

'I'm all for stability, but what does that mean in right now: Earthquakes, cholera, corruption?'

Most polls have Celestin in second place, but polling in Haiti is considered a dubious science by many.

'There are eight polls, the first had me in second after Manigat, and another that came out before the campaign even got going had magically put me in fifth place, with Celestin in second,' said Charles Henry Baker, one of the 18 candidates.

'I know what I see. I am the only candidate with a party of 50,000 registered members, the others don't even have 5,000, and we are in fifth place?'

With less than a week before the election, in an environment marked by violent protests resulting from an outbreak of cholera - the final straw for impatient Haitians - all the candidates are pushing ahead with their campaigns.

'Vote for Micky!' a woman shouts at every passing vehicle from the Saint Pierre plaza of Petionville neighbourhood. She hands out posters of Michel 'Sweet Micky' Martelly, a flamboyant performer of traditional kompa music who is among the leading candidates.

The effects of the earthquake - apart from the devastation, the outbreak of cholera and subsequent street violence - are also being felt by election officials who fear a low voter turnout.

Many people had lost everything, including their legal documents. Authorities are now in a race against time to distribute new identity cards in a country where about 1.5 million people were suddenly left homeless.

Orfeil Doudi keeps coming back day after day hoping to get papers in time to vote, 'because it's a civic duty,' although she confesses to being 'not very optimistic' about what it will bring.

Germain Fouchard, a young, unemployed translator, has no confidence in the worth of the whole exercise.

'I wouldn't be caught dead voting. For what? There is no hope in Haiti, a president is never going to do anything from the palace,' he said. 'This is a country condemned to bad luck.'

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