It's Mirlande vs. Sweet Micky (Haiti)

[rabs]

I am still in the dark about what Preval did to piss off Hil. Whatever it was, it was enough to get Célestin bumped out of the runoff. More turmoil likely ahead.

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Haiti's runoff election pits Martelly against Manigat

By Trenton Daniel and Jacqueline Charles | The Miami Herald

Haiti's presidential runoff election will pit a popular singer and political novice against a former first lady with a record of political opposition, election officials announced early Thursday morning.

Michel ``Sweet Micky'' Martelly, 49, was chosen over Jude Célestin, the government-backed candidate, to compete for the Haitian presidency in a March 20 runoff. His opponent, former first lady Mirlande Manigat, 70, was set to be one of the two candidates in the runoff since preliminary results of a disputed Nov. 28 election showed her in first place.

The decision over who would get a chance to replace President René Préval came after a sleepless night during which 100 Haitian and foreign journalists kept vigil inside a defunct Gold's Gym in Petionville as officials deliberated for more than 10 hours.

Elections spokesman Richardson Dumel finally appeared alone at 7:14 a.m., offering first the results of the 105 contested legislative races. The presidential runoff results were listed on the council's website. Dumel offered no explanation when he finally announced at 7:34 a.m. that Martelly and Manigat were headed into Haiti's first presidential runoff in 25 years.

The long wait only added to the suspense. The final announcement followed a day of rumors and months of political uncertainty, diplomatic wrangling and pressure by the international community, including the United States.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/02/03/108012/mood-in-haiti-is-tense-ahead-of.html#

[EFerrari]

1. Al Jazeera just showed people in Haiti putting up signs addressed to Clinton

and objecting to "sham elections".

[Bacchus39]

3. really? where? n/t

s

[Peace Patriot]

2. What happened to Hillary's phony "OAS" election team in this McClatchy news story?

...made up of six people from the U.S. (notorious for interfering in Haiti), France (notorious for interfering in Haiti and being their slavemasters) and Canada (rightwing/corporate gov't) and one Jamaican.

???

Ah, just noticed, this is a Miami Hairball article.

NO WONDER IT'S SO...um, disinformative.

Aristde/Lavalas party (majority part in Haiti) banned from the ballot. SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT of Haitians DIDN'T VOTE. Some of things they don't tell you. And Hillary comes in and does a "recount" among three candidates who shared 25% of the electorate between them, bumps out Preval's preferred candidate (pissed off at him, or he at the U.S., maybe cuz he finally contacted Aristide and is going to give him a passport), and elevates a weird pop singer with probable mafia connections to run against Mirlande ("capitalism with a freindly face") Manigat. A recount that was so disturbingly PHONEY that CEPR and others have cried foul and called for a whole new election.

The sheer energy of these "black holes" in the "news" is cosmic. Millions of stars blink out. Whole civilizations vanish as if they never were. Genesis reversed.

Could time be going backwards--thus erasing Hillary's "OAS" recount?

[Judi Lynn]

4. Democracy There, Democracy Here

Democracy There, Democracy Here
Greg Grandin
February 4, 2011

A lot’s been happening regarding the fallout from Haiti’s flawed November presidential election—which has shaped up to be a sequel to the Bush-backed 2004 coup that drove president Jean-Bertrand Aristide from office—and I’ve been meaning to write a longer post on the topic, but in the meantime, this interview run at the Council on Foreign Relations with Jacques-Philippe Piverger, the director of something called PineBridge Investments, gives a crisp snapshot of the Washington/Wall Street/Haitian elite attitude toward democracy.

Exiled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, living in South Africa since 2004, also wants to come home. How worried are people about Aristide's return? What could be the political impact?

It would be destabilizing since there's a large faction of the population that would potentially be supportive of him being in the government.

As the great historian/musician/songwriter Ned Sublette, who forwarded me the interview, puts it, “Can't have that, can we?”

As the world’s attention fixes on Egypt and its remarkable democratic revolt, here in the Western Hemisphere there’s been much machination on the part of the US State Department to make sure democracy remains contained in Haiti. On Thursday, Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) picked the former first lady Mirlande Manigat and musician Michel "Sweet Mickey" Martelly to advance to the March 20 runoff, even though they only received a combined 11 percent of the vote in the first round. There are many critics, including the Congressional Black Caucus, though the story is largely ignored in the United States. Congresswoman Maxine Waters said the US, Canada and France—three countries active in the overthrow of Aristide—used their “tremendous power and influence to determine the outcome of the first round'' and denied Haitians “the opportunity to express their will.”

More:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/158308/democracy-there-democracy-here