Haitian elections: Cité Soleil remains a challenge
by Vario Sérant
Caribbean Net News Haiti Correspondent
Email: vario@caribbeannetnews.com
Monday, December 12, 2005
CITÉ SOLEIL, Haiti: "The Mission of
Stabilization of the United Nations in Haiti (MINUSTAH) is determined to allow
citizens of Cité Soleil to exert their voting rights like the other citizens
of the country," stated a UN spokesman on Thursday.
Damian Onsès Cardona, who met the press Thursday, tried to reassure the
population concerning the elections in Cité Soleil (the principal northern
city in Haiti) by recalling the voters registration process in this shantytown
a few months ago. "The fact that, for one
month, during the recording process in Cité Soleil, almost ten thousand people
were registered without any incident, let’s predict that the elections will be
able to proceed in a similar climate," said Cardona.
The MINUSTAH spokesman pointed out many ways to approach the security issue in
Cité Soleil. In Cardona's view, it is
essential "to ensure the proper conduct of the elections".
"The majority of people of Cité Soleil have
the right to vote, in spite of the threat of the armed groups which want to
kidnap the democratic will of the population of this district," added Cardona.
The MINUSTAH spokesman also underlined the need for a "presence of the State"
and "respect of the law". Cardona also
stressed the need "for supporting humanitarian and development actions to
bring a minimum of dignity to the living conditions of these inhabitants of
Cité Soleil". "The new government must
consider Cité Soleil as a priority," Cardona said. He added that MINUSTAH
envisages doing its best "to engage the international community in those
efforts aimed at taking Cité Soleil off marginality".
Two days earlier, the special representative of the UN General Secretary in
Haiti and civil chief of the MINUSTAH, had declared that one should not expect
a military solution for violence in Cité Soleil before the elections.
"The solution of such problems never were and will not be a military one",
emphasised Juan Gabriel Valdès, while stating "that one could not ask a
foreign force to regulate a problem which goes back a hundred years" (an
inaccurate reference to the real date of creation of "Cité Simone Ovide
Duvalier", below Cité Soleil). The remarks of
the Chilean diplomat contrasted with those expressed many times by the
military spokesmen of MINUSTAH. During a
press conference on September 8, 2005, El Ouafi Boulbars had predicted that
order and security would be restored soon in the urban areas of Cité Soleil.
"In the near future, the problem of Cité Soleil will be solved in one way or
another," the Moroccan colonel said at the time.
The Haitian national police force (PNH) has acknowledged its impotence in the
situation in Cité Soleil. "We are not going to lie; the police force notes
that Cité Soleil remains a challenge," conceded a police spokesman, Frantz
Lerebours, on November 16, 2005. The
insecurity in Haiti has increased severely in recent weeks with, in
particular, an upsurge of abductions in the metropolitan area of
Port-au-Prince. No less than thirty cases of
kidnappings were recorded for just the first five days of December, according
to the PNH. While waiting for payment of ransoms, the victims of these
abductions are reportedly held in Cité Soleil.
During a press conference on December 7, 2005, the police spokesman, Frantz
Lerebours, reacting to this mounting insecurity, talked about a plan which is
"being studied within the Central Management of the Criminal Investigation
Department (DCPJ), in order to adapt the strategy of the police force to the
methods of the gangsters".
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