Haiti Gets Its First Free Elections in 28 Years--but Few Vote

After 28 years of Duvalier dictatorship, Haitians had their first chance to vote in free elections Sunday. But with a dismal turnout at the polls, democracy made a faltering debut, undermined by apathy, ignorance and protest.

Balloting was for 41 members of a constituent assembly that will approve a new national constitution. A government spokesman said official results will not be complete until next week.

Unofficial returns, however, showed turnouts as low as 4% of eligible voters in some places.

In anti-government demonstrations that forced President Jean-Claude Duvalier out of power last February, a major demand was for democratic elections. Lt. Gen. Henri Namphy, head of the provisional government that took over from Duvalier, has repeatedly promised to usher in democracy.

Sunday’s elections were the first event in an electoral timetable that also includes a plebiscite on the new constitution next February and elections for president and a congress in November, 1987.

The voting Sunday gave little evidence of a nation quenching its thirst for democracy.

Of an estimated 45,000 people eligible in the northern city of Cap Haitien, about 1,900, or 4%, voted. In Gonaives, about 21% of an estimated 20,000 eligible voters cast ballots.

At one of the main polling places in Port-au-Prince, poll workers sat in a shady door well waiting for a slow trickle of voters. By 10:45 a.m., only 54 had shown up.

At 12:50 p.m., Namphy became the 79th person to cast his ballot there. By the end of the day, a total of 156 had voted.

Namphy said Sunday’s elections were part of a process of civic education that most Haitians need before democracy can flourish. For example, he said, “I am 54 years old and this is the first time I am voting.”

Many politicians have criticized the process that was devised by Namphy’s government for writing a constitution. While the plan calls for the election of 41 constituent assembly members, 20 others are to be appointed by the government. And a panel of nine experts, also appointed by the government, will submit a draft constitution for consideration by the assembly.

Critics complain that the plan gives the military-led government the means to dominate the constitutional process.

Critics also complain that not enough time was allowed for campaigning. Sunday’s election date was announced Sept. 10, and the deadline for registration of candidates was Oct. 11. The assembly is to have one member from each of 41 administrative districts in the country. In seven districts, only one candidate was registered, and in one district there was none.

Most political organizations stayed out of the election process, and some called for a protest boycott.

“We told everybody to stay at home and boycott the elections,” said Yves Champagne, 39, a leader of a political alliance called the Liaison Committee of Democratic Forces. Champagne said the committee objects because not enough time was given for campaigning and no registered-voters lists were compiled.

“Fraud is so easy,” he said. “There is no control.”

Those 18 years of age or older were eligible to vote, but poll workers did not ask for identification or proof of age. To try to prevent repeat voting, voters’ fingers were marked with red ink. But one young man seen washing the ink from his finger said he had voted six times.

Letoit Jean-Baptiste, 46, a merchant in the slum area of La Saline, said that he and his friends did not vote.

“It is a false election,” he said. “It is a rich people’s election. We poor people don’t know anything about it.”

In another part of town, Raymond Pierre, a 30-year-old baker, stood on a sidewalk talking with four friends.

“We heard about the elections, but we didn’t vote because we didn’t know who we were going to vote for,” Pierre said. Asked if he and his friends knew what those who are elected will do, he said: “We have no idea.”

Pierre said that much of the information about the election was in French, Haiti’s official language, but that he only understands Creole, the country’s popular patois. About 85% of all Haitians are illiterate and speak no French.

Leslie Manigat, a politician who plans to campaign for the presidency, said that because political parties are not involved in the assembly elections, interest is low.

“The masses have a sense of seriousness, and they realize that these elections do not have the characteristics of seriousness,” Manigat said. “First, there is a kind of indifference to these elections, and second a kind of protest.”

A foreign diplomat said that politicians took little interest in the elections because “there’s no real payoff in this thing”--no money, power or patronage.

Since Haiti won independence from France in 1804 after a bloody slave revolt, democracy has been a fleeting spirit here, sometimes briefly glimpsed but never fully realized.

An 1816 constitution proclaimed the right of “universal suffrage--except for women, criminals, idiots and menials.”

From 1843 to 1915, a total of 22 dictators held power in the backward, rural country. And from 1915 to 1934, Haiti was occupied by U.S. Marines.

Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier, a soft-spoken physician who later became one of the harshest dictators in the Western Hemisphere, was elected president in September, 1957, after a turbulent nine months in which six provisional governments came and went.

Duvalier used elections as a tool for self-aggrandizement, winning endorsement in 1964 of a constitution that made him Haiti’s eighth “president for life.” In 1971, the dying dictator asked voters to endorse a transfer of power to his son, Jean-Claude. The official results were 2.4 million in favor and none against.

A period of intermittent turmoil and bloodshed forced the younger Duvalier to flee the country on Feb. 7.