Now that Rene Preval has been declared president-elect of Haiti, more than one week after the country’s first elections since the ouster of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, some Haitians feel it is time for the new leader to move the impoverished nation forward.
Business owner Jetta Baptiste said that she, was not surprised by the results of the elections. She said the masses have spoken.
“We were expecting those results based on the amount of work that has been going on in the Haitian community for a number of months leading up to the Haitian elections. The masses wanted Preval and they demanded Preval,” Ms. Baptiste, a resident of Grand Bahama, told The Bahama Journal.
“They went out and voted in huge numbers, in droves. I mean thousands and thousands of people voted. We are talking about the democracy and the democratic process and having that improve in Haiti and it’s important that the people get what they want because if they don’t, we know how the Haitian people will react at times when they don’t feel they have received justice.”
According to international reports, Mr. Preval was credited with 51.15 percent of the votes, based on 96 percent of voting stations counted. The election process had been marred because of irregularities in the ballots and fraud allegations from Mr. Preval, which prompted Haiti’s interim government to block publication of the results of the February 7th election until an inquiry into the fraud allegations was completed.
It is circumstances like these that causes activist Bolivar Gustave to say that Mr. Preval is the right person for the job but the timing may be off.
“Preval is the right person but he might be the right person at the wrong time. The reason why is after all that fight in the elections that was supposed to be given in three days, the result came out 10 to 11 days after another long process whereby ballots were burned. It shows that somebody did not like him,” Mr. Gustave said.
“So after they proclaimed him the winner, the same persons who did not like him [are] still not going to like him. Are they prepared to work with him or work against him? Nobody knows. And even those that are going to be prepared to work against him, are they going to be prepared to get some outside help as usual? We don’t know, only time will tell.”
Mr. Gustave said Haiti has the potential to be a great nation, as it has the resources, the land and the people, but he said one key component is missing.
“All we need is political stability. We never had an election problem and a president problem, our problem is always principle. A winner is supposed to be a winner and a loser is supposed to be a loser. But most of the time in Haitian history, the winner becomes the loser and the loser becomes the winner,” said Mr. Gustave, who hopes that those opposing Mr. Preval allow democracy to prevail.
It is something that one Haitian resident, who preferred to be identified only as Richard, has noticed as well.
“I would like [the opposition] to get [their issues] over with and put things behind them, so the country can move forward and people can get on with their lives,” Richard said.
“Then you won’t have people trying to travel this way and travel that way for a better life. I think [Preval] will make a difference and I think he is the right choice.”
Mr. Preval has promised that if elected he would make restoring security in the Haitian capital a priority. He has also said that he wants to start a dialogue with the rank-and-file gangsters, many of whom are supporters of former President Jean-Betrand Aristide, on how to move the country forward in a peaceful way.
Ms. Baptiste thinks that in order for things to turn around for the country, the poorest in the Western hemisphere, the international community needs to step in and help.
“For us now, it’s good news. It’s up to Preval to work with the international community, CARICOM and all the other countries, to embrace him and help him along in his process and his quest to govern Haiti,” Ms. Baptiste said.
“He has experience politically because he has served Haiti before as a president. Obviously the people felt he did a good job in the past while he was in office and that’s why they re-elected him, and we’re hoping and praying for the best, that the powers that be don’t undermine his administration and create more chaos and more problems in Haiti.”
CARICOM had refused to recognise the interim Haitian government after Mr. Aristide was forced to resign in February 2004. But the Bahamas government said it was in this country’s best interest to have a relationship with the interim regime.
By: Courtnee Romer, The Bahama Journal
