Haiti Opposition Urges National Strike : Calls for Walkout on Day Before Election, Renews Boycott Plea

Opposition leaders, labeling Sunday’s presidential election “farcical,” called Thursday for a national strike to be held the day before the voting.

Declaring that “we don’t want to give an appearance of credibility to a masquerade,” four of the major political figures of this black Caribbean nation repeated their call for a boycott of the election scheduled by the army-led government. They also expressed fear of renewed violence similar to the terrorism that aborted a previous election attempt here last Nov. 29.

(Further complicating the picture, the Haitian Supreme Court on Thursday stalled a ruling on whether associates of ousted dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier could run, Reuters news agency reported. The delayed decision, now expected today or Saturday, means Haitians may not know the final list of presidential candidates until the eve of Sunday’s scheduled balloting.)

The four opposition leaders, who were among the leading presidential candidates in a failed November election, also denounced the scores of arrests in the last few days of provincial anti-government activists who have been urging Haitians not to go to the polls Sunday.

By calling for a boycott, the opposition leaders were risking arrest. Under a new law proclaimed by the army-controlled government’s handpicked Electoral Council, urging voters to stay away from the polls is punishable by a fine and prison sentence. Critics say the law also leaves individual voters’ choices and vote totals open to tampering and final results open to fraud.

‘President Already Chosen’

“The president is already chosen before the voting,” protested Sylvio Claude, one of the four former presidential candidates who have joined in a Committee for Democratic Agreement to protest what they call the illegality of Sunday’s presidential, parliamentary and mayoral elections.

Complaining of “a climate of terror and intimidation,” Claude, a Protestant minister-turned-politician, said he was urging peasants to band together in groups of 50 or 60 to defend themselves against attempts by officials to shanghai them to the polls Sunday.

“They should take sticks, machetes, whatever they have to defend themselves,” he said. “We aren’t urging them to attack, but even God, the Bible, gave the right of self-defense.”

Claude charged that the government has ordered local leaders to round up groups of 1,000 and force them to the polls in order to swell vote totals to figures that are high enough to make the elections appear credible to the United States and other foreign governments upon whom Haiti depends for support.

Forecasting a return to the unprovoked violence that derailed the Nov. 29 election, former presidential candidate Marc Bazin said, “We know we are dealing with a number of people who would take any opportunity to once more proceed with the random killing of the peaceful people of our country.”

Bazin, a former World Bank economist who was reportedly the favorite of U.S. policy-makers in the last election attempt, joined Claude and former candidates Gerard Gourgue and Louis Dejoie II in Thursday’s defiant statement. All but Dejoie, who was in the United States, appeared at a widely announced press conference here in the capital to call for a general strike in the names of all four.

Their statement demanded an end to the wave of arrests, postponement of Sunday’s voting and the arrest and trial of those responsible for a massacre on the last election day when armed thugs, reportedly including uniformed soldiers, killed at least 34 voters at the polls.

It also demanded formation of a new Electoral Council under constitutional guarantees that would keep the organization of new elections free of the influence of the army officers, led by Lt. Gen. Henri Namphy, who now govern the country.

After the massacre--for which his government was widely blamed for permitting if not instigating--Namphy summarily dismissed the previous independent Electoral Council and supervised the handpicking of the council that is in charge of Sunday’s voting.

Although the United States and other nations protested the un-democratic nature of the Namphy government’s election plans, they have indicated that they will accept the results if they appear reasonably credible and if the Haitian people accept them.

On Thursday, the State Department appealed to the Haitian government to prevent violence and intimidation during the voting.

The United States sent an official observer delegation to the Nov. 29 election but was not invited to do so for this election, State Department spokesman Charles Redman said. He added that the United Nations, the Organization of American States and the European Communities all have decided against sending observers.