'This is Haiti,' where voting is not easy

By Silvia Ayuso Nov 29, 2010, 9:02 GMT

Port-au-Prince - It is 5:58 am. In two minutes, polling stations are due to open all over Haiti, with 4.7 million people eligible to elect a new president.

Yet in the Carra 2 camp, which houses people displaced by the January 12 earthquake, located near Port-au-Pince airport and the US embassy, police officers forming part of the United Nations' Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) exchange baffled looks.

The UN police have come to the camp in which more than 68,000 displaced people live to help Haitian police supervise the election process.

Yet everything does not seem to be in order. There is talk that the location of the polling station may need to be changed, and that the 'sensitive material' - ballot papers, ballot boxes and lists of voters - has not arrived.

6.10 am. The polling station station should have opened 10 minutes ago. Election observers and other organizers begin to arrive, but nobody initially tells them that the station could be moved to the outskirts of the camp.

'I'm not going anywhere,' vows Edel Ovigot, an election scrutineer from presidential candidate Charles-Henri Baker's Respe party.

6.25 am. Commotion, phone calls. It is decided that voting will take place where initially planned. That is, in a small wooden building that is a centre for female victims of sexual violence - a massive problem in Haiti since the earthquake forced 1.5 million people to seek shelter in camps.

Forty minutes after voting should have started, organizers appointed by the interim electoral commission (CEP) realize that the 'sensitive material' is inside the wooden building. None of the MINUSTAH morning guards was aware of this. 'But the place has been under guard the entire time,' one of the officers maintains.

Like the rest of the camps for the displaced, Carra 2 is a 'red zone,' which means that it belongs to the most conflict-prone of the three security categories MINUSTAH has established for the 11,000 polling stations in the country.

Once the confusion over the 'sensitive material' has been sorted out, organizers begin to work on it. Ballot boxes made of plastic need to be assembled, one for each ballot for electing president, senators and legislators.

Cardboard panels are meant to provide voters with a minimum of intimacy in the small room. Rumours swirl that there have been attempts to intimidate camp dwellers into not voting, but nobody dares to make such allegations out loud.

Voters begin gathering at the polling station. They seek their names on the list of voters, but many are not on it. The list ends with names starting with the letter P. The rest of it has been lost.

Another problem: it is 8 am, and the polling station should have opened two hours ago, but it has not. The official supervisor named by the CEP has not arrived. 'I'm not worried about the delay, I will wait, I want to vote,' says Placide Kenol, one of the voters.

But another hour passes, and exasperation mounts. 'We want to vote! (President Rene) Preval has already voted, but we haven't,' people complain. 'Are we going to vote or not?' Dominique, a young man who speaks Spanish, asks an Argentine UN police officer. 'If we cannot, there will be trouble,' he grumbles.

There is also concern over the consumption of beer and liquor by many voters, despite an official ban on alcohol on election day. UN police keep watch but do not intervene - after all, they are there only to back up the Haitian national police. And there would hardly be much point in provoking voters whose anger over the delays is about to boil over under the scorching sun.

Similar situations were reported at polling stations elsewhere in Port-au-Prince and on the outskirts.

Finally, at the Carra 2 polling station, a 'conjunctural decision' is taken to appoint a new supervisor, despite his not having received the required training and not knowing the law.

Voting gets underway at 10 am, four hours after the official opening time.

Suspicions mount that something is astray in the electoral process. Some people, however, just shrug. 'This is Haiti,' a police officer smiles.