Voter Registration Snafus Prompt Haiti to Again Postpone Elections

Dogged by organizational problems that left more than 1 million voters unregistered, Haiti on Friday postponed March 19 elections without specifying a new date.

The announcement came only hours after the U.N. Security Council urged Haiti to stick “as closely as possible” to its schedule for elections, which it said were crucial to the Caribbean nation’s fledgling democracy.

“A new electoral timetable for the balloting will be published as soon as possible,” electoral council spokesman Roland Sainristil said. He cited “innumerable difficulties surrounding voter registration.”

President Rene Preval had called legislative and municipal elections after dissolving Parliament in January 1999 to end a political impasse that had paralyzed Haiti’s government since disputed elections in 1997.

Two rounds of voting were originally set for November and December, then delayed to March 19 and April 30. About 29,300 candidates are slated to run for more than 1,000 local and parliamentary offices.

Voter registration was supposed to end Friday, but the council announced it will extend the deadline to March 15.

An estimated 2.9 million people--out of a possible 4 million who are eligible--have already registered, leaving more than 1 million unregistered. But the electoral council was plagued by shortages of materials, pay and staffing disputes, problems in renting offices and thefts of registration documents.

The international community is paying half the $20-million election budget.

Most Haitian politicians had resigned themselves to a delay.

“The provisional electoral council should convene the political parties and find a consensus for a new date,” said senate candidate Serge Gilles, who heads the five-party Space for Concord coalition.

Many opposition politicians asserted that the delays were intended to have the local and legislative votes coincide with presidential elections set for December, when former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide--Preval’s political mentor--will seek a second term. That way, candidates supported by Aristide would stand a better chance of winning in general elections with the popular former president.

“The government has done everything it can to postpone elections until the end of the year,” said Edmond Dupuy, an opposition candidate for the lower house of parliament.

U.N. diplomats said they hoped the new date would be within a week or two of the original.

“It is the view of the Security Council that prompt, free and fair legislative and local elections are essential for the restoration of the national parliament,” the president of the council, Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury of Bangladesh, said in a prepared statement.