Boycott keeps Haiti polls quiet

Clear-plastic ballot boxes were nearly as empty as Port-au-Prince’s unusually deserted streets Sunday as few voters turned out for Senate elections in which candidates from a major populist party were not allowed to run.

The vote had been seen as a key step in the development of Haitian democracy and in President Rene Preval’s bid to retool the constitution and fight poverty. The international community gave Haiti’s government $12.5 million to coordinate the elections, including $3 million from the United States.

But the vote, delayed since 2007 by political turmoil, hunger riots and storms, drew an extremely low turnout and occasional violence. The provisional electoral council told reporters that it had not calculated turnout or any results as of early evening. No results had been expected Sunday.

Supporters of ousted former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whose Lavalas Family party was disqualified from the election by the council, had urged an estimated 4 million registered voters not to participate.

On Sunday, poll workers napped during long stretches when no voters came by.

“When you see this kind of low turnout, you have to wonder how interested people are in an election,” said Edward Joseph, an observer with the Haiti Democracy Project, a Washington-based think tank. He said apathy or fear of election violence could be to blame.

A total of 79 candidates were vying for 12 seats. Most races had multiple candidates and were likely to end in runoffs.

Lavalas claimed responsibility for the low turnout, crediting a stop-the-vote campaign nicknamed Operation Closed Door.

“The people believe in [the Lavalas Family party]. That is why they did not come out today,” James Derozin, a former Lavalas lawmaker, told a reporter as polls closed about 4 p.m. Other Lavalas loyalists vowed to seek Preval’s resignation if the election results were accepted as legitimate.

Elections here have sometimes brought massacres and riots, but Sunday’s carless streets were occupied by young men and boys playing soccer.

Elections were canceled in the Centre district, one of Haiti’s 10 administrative regions, after protesters raided polling places and dumped ballots in the streets of the town of Mirebalais.

A poll supervisor was shot there around 3 a.m. and was recovering in the hospital, said electoral council director-general Pierre Louis Opont.