In a photograph on the wall of Grandchamps, a Haitian restaurant near the eastern edge of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, a woman in a sundress and long earrings carries a plate of seemingly just-gathered string beans. The image is bucolic and sternly glamorous at once, a reminder to the chef, Shawn Brockman (who happens to be the woman’s son-in-law) that she has trusted him with her recipes and he had better watch what he’s doing.
Mr. Brockman grew up in Indiana, of German, Dutch and Scottish stock; his wife, Sabrina, has roots in Cap-Haïtien, a port city in northern Haiti. (The woman in the photograph is her mother, Françoise Grandchamps.) They live a few blocks from the restaurant, which they opened in June.
“I never cooked Haitian food,” Ms. Brockman said. “I could never be as good as my mother.” So the task fell to her husband, who dutifully trailed his mother-in-law in the kitchen and learned her ways.
This may explain the generous maternal quality of his dishes. His griot is as fattening as it should be: hunks of pork shoulder inscribed with Scotch bonnets and lime, braised until near collapse and then tossed in a frying pan for a crackly veneer.
Other plates speak of patience, like stewed chicken bright with tomato, underscored by needles of thyme; and legume, a meld of chayote squash, eggplant and a crowd of supporting vegetables, cooked and then mashed with a pilon (pestle) until their borders disappear.
“When we go to Haiti, I’m always looking over the shoulders of the women who are cooking,” Mr. Brockman said. They would be proud of his excellent pikliz, a hash of cabbage, carrots and jumpy Scotch bonnets, bathed in lime and vinegar long enough to give off a hum of heat without losing crunch.
Akra, plump fingers of fritters with creamy interiors, are made with malanga, a taro-like root vegetable, and stoked by Scotch bonnets. Ragged rounds of unripe plantains are fried, flattened and fried again to make crispy banan peze, whose pique comes from a dunk, between bouts of frying, in Tabasco. Rice is cooked in liquid left over from boiling dried djon-djon mushrooms and emerges almost ashy in color, its loamy flavor like a conflagration of balsamic vinegar, soy and truffles.
The Brockmans want to evangelize on behalf of Haitian food, but also serve the neighborhood. So in the morning there are croissants and bagels. Later in the day, Mr. Brockman repurposes a few Haitian classics as sandwiches: stewed chicken tucked into a pita with watercress and herb mayo; griot boosted by rémoulade; salt fish tempered by avocado.
For dessert, there’s a play on bananas Foster with sweet plantains swapped in, inflamed with rum and then mollified by vanilla ice cream from Lady Moo-Moo, a shop nearby. This is lovely, but the revelation is pain mais, a wedge of not-quite cake or pudding, bound by faintly sweet corn flour, dense with coconut milk and condensed milk and haloed with a ring of canned pineapple, overlaid by a long-stemmed maraschino cherry. (The recipe comes from Florette Denasty, a line cook.)
The broad, high dining room is trimmed in sunny yellow tile and topped with a white pressed-tin ceiling. Above, a light fixture of pipes and Edison bulbs suggests an inverted menorah. In a corner leans a domino table, the tile racks framing images from Jalousie, a shantytown in Port-au-Prince. At the back, a row of shelves stands under the banner “Archie’s Grocery” — the name of the previous tenant, whose history the Brockmans honor by stocking not artisanal exotics but basics (Cheerios, Barilla pasta, sriracha).
Service is unhasty, peaceable and somewhat do-it-yourself: Customers place orders at a counter and fetch drinks, like candy-toned Cola Lacaye, from the freezer. But the cashier, doubling as waiter and at times the only one on the floor, ferries food to tables and hands out sheaves of cutlery, each secured with the tiniest of strings, tied in a bow.
One evening, when I handed him a tip, he looked taken aback and tried to refuse it. When I insisted, he waved toward the kitchen and said, “I’m going to share this with everyone.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/dining/grandchamps-welcomes-you-to-haiti-via-bedford-stuyvesant.html?_r=0&module=CloseSlideshow®ion=SlideShowTopBar&version=SlideCard-6&action=click&contentCollection=Food&pgtype=imageslideshow
lundi 9 novembre 2015
Vodou is elusive and endangered, but it remains the soul of Haitian people
Far from B-movie cliches, vodou is spiritual system and a way of life but even in Haiti, where it became an official religion, it faces prejudice and hostility
Haiti, the saying goes, is “70% Catholic, 30% Protestant, and 100% Vodou”. Vodou is everywhere in the Caribbean nation, a spiritual system infusing everything from medicine and agriculture to cosmology and arts. Yet it is almost nowhere to be seen: ceremonies are not just expensive, but targets of hate crime. Nowadays, some say, Vodou is in danger.
In the heart of remote Île-à-Vache of Haiti’s southern coast, however, the religion is alive and well. Completely off the grid, the island has only two medical clinics for 14,000 residents and so Jeom Frichenel Sisius, the island’s principal Vodou priest, is a spiritual leader, doctor and midwife all at once.
His remedies, which he claims can fix everything from diseases and haunted houses to career and love problems, are kept in a carefully locked shed in a room adorned with skulls and an nzambi (zombie) painted on the walls.
“If someone has a headache and the doctors cannot heal it, I can,” he explains, taking swigs of herbal rum from a gigantic bottle as he speaks. “The only things Vodou can’t do are radiography and mammography.” Vodou is necessary, he stresses, and the only people who fail to understand that are the Christians.
On top of this knowledge and divine healing powers, Sisius also happens to throw the best parties.
Here, Vodou defies cliches of zombies, pins in dolls and black magic. There are none of the cornflour drawings, animal sacrifices or rattles that characterize orthodox Haitian Vodou ceremonies: just a lot of dancing and ecstasy fuelled by rum, drums and divine presence. It’s almost full moon, and lured by the music and beauty of it all, the spirits – lwas – begin to arrive.
Only weeks after Sisius’s ceremony, a great mapou tree fell. Not literally, of course. In local folklore, the sacred species (silk-cotton tree in English) is the embodiment of someone heroic and Haiti was mourning the death of Max Gesner Beauvoir, the supreme chief of Vodou.
Beauvoir, who stumbled into spiritualism after 15 years as a biochemist in the US, worked tirelessly to protect vodouisants from defamation and persecution. At his home in Mariani, he drank coffee with scholars, seekers, journalists and even Christians, patiently explaining what Vodou was (“the soul of Haitian people and a way of life”) – and what it was not.
At a time when Haiti still had tourism, he held spectacles of entranced women, legs akimbo and biting heads of chickens, even staging a honeymoon ceremony for the Clintons.
While perhaps creating some stereotypes of his own, few did more than Beauvoir in battling distorted horror-flick cliches still associated with Haitian Vodou.
“The most popular Haitian word in the world is zombie,” explains Richard Morse, a musician and owner of Port-au-Prince’s Hotel Oloffson (who insists he never met an undead creature). “And that’s a reflection of the world more than it is of Haiti.”
At a time when “world music” was all the rage, Morse came to Haiti in 1987 for musical inspiration. Growing up in suburban Connecticut to a Haitian mother and American father, Morse never expected to get into Vodou beyond the glimpses of folklore he’d seen at home. In 2001, he was officially initiated.
“I only came for the rhythms initially,” he recalls, seated on the veranda of the hotel that became his livelihood and permanent home. “Then I found out that the rhythms don’t walk alone. The rhythms walk with dance steps, with colors, with spirits, with prayer. The rhythms walk with God.”
Every Thursday for the past 23 years, Morse’s 13-member roots band – which includes his wife and son – plays fiery, upbeat interpretations of traditional Vodou prayers. Aid workers dance next to local hipsters, elderly couples next to a local LGBT chapter. This is his part in dispelling myths about the practice.
“Most Americans don’t know that they don’t know what Vodou really is,” explains Elizabeth McAlister, scholar of religion at Wesleyan University, specializing in Haitian Vodou. They think Vodou is about sorcery, maybe love magic, usually some sort of sinister practice.”
The 1920s and 1930s cinema – the heyday of B-films like White Zombie and pulp fiction – helped reinforce caricatures of Africans as hypersexualized, superstitious and demonic.
“The best thing that ever happened to racism is Vodou,” explains Ira Lowenthal, an anthropologist, Vodou arts collector and former aid worker originally from New Jersey, who has lived in Haiti for over 40 years. “They made up their stories about it and their stories confirmed every prejudice of every white person in the world. It tells that person from Ohio that they’re right about black people as scary and dangerous … you can actually see on a screen your own racist beliefs justified.”
The west’s romance with a misguided understanding of Haitian folklore just happened to coincide with the US occupation of the country – which set out to modernize Haiti, while attempting to systematically erase Vodou.
The religion was born with institutional slavery. Ripped from homelands and heritage, thousands of those who would become Haitians were shipped across the Atlantic to an island, where the indigenous population had already been wiped out, for backbreaking labor in cane plantations.
“They were treated as cattle. As animals to be bought and sold; worth nothing more than a cow. Often less,” says Lowenthal.
“Vodou is the response to that. Vodou says ‘no, I’m not a cow. Cows cannot dance, cows do not sing. Cows cannot become God. Not only am I a human being – I’m considerably more human than you. Watch me create divinity in this world you have given me that is so ugly and so hard. Watch me become God in front of your eyes.’”
And so Vodou, unlike eastern spirituality which is often focused on the mind, begins in the human flesh: Haitians dance, rather than think, their way to ecstasy; a transcendence into a more beautiful reality.
Divine possessions are reserved for Haitians, who inherit their spirits through bloodlines, explains Lowenthal, who attended countless rituals in mountain villages during his research. Foreigners can never be vehicles – chwals (“horses”) – to be ridden by the divine.
“That power is stunning. It’s not scary. It’s stunning. It shows you what a human being can do. And what we can’t do. White people lost their spirits centuries ago. We lost it all. The Haitians believe we used to have spirits, but we were too stupid to keep them.”
Without the lwas, Haiti might never have become a nation at all.
On the night of 14 August 1791, slaves from nearby plantations gathered deep in the woods of Bois Caïman, of what was then the French colony of Saint-Domingue. By the fire, a young woman possessed by Ezili Dantor, the warrior-mother lwah often iconized as Black Madonna, slit the throat of a large black creole pig and distributed its blood to the revolutionaries, who swore to kill the blancs – white settlers – as they drank it.
With otherworldly strength, the legend goes, the world’s richest colony was overthrown and the first black republic proclaimed. Haitian Vodou became a religion with rebellion and freedom at its heart.
Perhaps these are the roots of the west’s fear of Vodou, Lowenthal speculates: it is an unbreakable revolutionary spirit threatening to inspire other black Caribbean republics – or, God forbid, the United States itself.
“These people will never be conquered again,” Lowenthal emphasizes. “They will be exploited, they will be downtrodden, they will be impoverished – but you can tell not a single Haitian walks around with his head down … They’re more human than the people who enslaved them. They were better than their masters, able to live in another realm. There’s no other more articulate response to oppression than that. And that’s why Vodou is here – because Vodou is the soul of Haitian people.”
***
Ricardo Marie Dadoune (known to friends and worshippers as “Bébé”) has known he was homosexual since he was eight years old. He’s now 26 and has a boyfriend, though he doesn’t broadcast it: several gay men he knows have already been killed.
In a bustling neighborhood in Port-au-Price, his peristyle (vodou temple) is tucked away between colorful barbershops and vendors hawking barbecued chicken. On a table in a windowless room, plaster saint statuettes are lined up next to African dolls, perfume bottles, candles and a ram’s skull, horns still attached. Ricardo shakes a beaded rattle in all four directions and then pours rum on the cement floor three times: first to his left, then to his right and finally right in front of his orange flip-flops.
“This is a safe place,” he explains. “When we have a ceremony here, nothing happens. People like us here, so we’re not afraid to come and enjoy.”
He may be in a Justin Bieber T-shirt and jeans now, but the peristyle is the only place Ricardo can dress the way he really prefers: with lipstick, earrings, a cloth on his head the way women do in the countryside, and a dress.
While homosexuality in Haiti is not illegal, it is not socially acceptable. To avoid discrimination, violence and even murder, many gays and lesbians lead double lives.
“In other countries the gays are free,” he says. “They can wear what they want to wear, but not here in Haiti. After the ceremony I have to take off the clothes because I can’t walk the street dressed like a woman here.” Today, peristyles across Haiti have become makeshift religious gay clubs, safe havens where the LGBT community isn’t just tolerated but actively welcomed.
The lwas, much like the Haitian ancestors themselves, travel far: underwater, from the heart of Africa all the way to Hispaniola.
While Haitians too worship an almighty God – Bondye in Creole – he is believed to stand above petty human matters. The lwas, not so much. Each with its own area of expertise, lwas have individual tastes: some like champagne and perfume, others five-star Barbancourt rum and animal sacrifices. Spirits only choose those they love, and some prefer to occupy non-straight chwals.
“Many, many gays and lesbians are valued members of Vodou societies,” explains McAlister, who has devoted years to researching LGBT in Haitian religion. “There is an idea that Vodou spirits that are thought to be gay ‘adopt’ and protect young adults who then become gay.”
“Vodou ‘does gender’ totally differently than the Christian tradition,” McAlister explains. After all, Vodou has gender fluidity at the core: men might become mediums for female spirits, women for male spirits. “But Christians, especially evangelicals, have zero flexibility for this; they see homosexuality as a sin, period.”
Stigmatized as a primitive, or even wicked religion, Vodou is inherently progressive and inclusive, McAlister continues.
“Vodou tends to be radically unjudgmental,” she explains. “The alcoholic, the thief, the homeless, the mentally ill, all of these people are welcomed into a Vodou temple and given respect.”
In reality, McAlister emphasizes, Vodou is far more similar to a close-knit church community than most Americans could ever imagine. Or as Morse puts it: with food-centered rituals to please spirits, it’s sort of like Thanksgiving – just several times a year. And it’s feminist too, advocating equal status for male and female priests.
For missionaries and churches already hell-bent on demonizing Vodou, the religion’s progressive outlook may be just another nail in the coffin. Throughout history, Christians have often identified Vodou as the root of all Haiti’s problems.
As 2010’s earthquake killed perhaps 230,000 and displaced 1.5 million people, US reverend Pat Robertson asserted that Haiti had brought it upon itself through a “pact with the devil”, referring to Bois Caïman’s uprising. The subsequent cholera epidemic, most likely caused by leaked sewage from a UN camp, was also blamed by some on vodouisants, triggering mobs to murder dozens across the country.
It is perhaps not surprising that a religion born out of colonial subjugation and the trauma of slavery would irk Christians – who also happened to be the slave-masters. On arrival, slaves had eight days to convert – though their native faith was often later on blended with Catholic practices, resulting in today’s wildly eclectic pantheon of African spirits alongside Catholic saints “creolized” to walk among them.
In fear of a rival power base, the church repressing Vodou became a recurring theme in Haitian history, McAlister explains.
“The Christians humiliate us by saying that Vodou is evil,” Ricardo says. “It’s not true. Vodou is not a bad thing. They have their faith, we have ours.”
Two days earlier, evangelicals came to his temple and interrupted his ceremony to preach the gospel. They told him he must embrace Jesus as his personal savior, as he continued to perform his rituals, unfazed. This time, it didn’t turn violent.
For a long time, even Haiti itself shied away from a religion so quintessential to its national identity. While President Michel Martelly described Beauvoir’s passing as a “great loss for the country”, the government itself wasn’t always so sympathetic, with Vodou officially outlawed until 1934. Even though it became an official religion in 2003, no one knows how many vodouisants Haiti has today.
Vodou is still something many Haitians, including the diaspora, keep underground. Peristyles, even sacred mapou trees, are regularly targets for vandalism and arson. Worshippers risk harassment and violence, with lynchings not unheard of.
Countless attacks against it have forged a newfound solidarity among priests and worshippers as they carve out a political voice. And slowly, things are changing: a new statute is allowing Vodou leaders to perform funerals and weddings, and university courses are now researching the religion. While Beauvoir’s successor is yet to be announced, his legacy may be only the beginning.
Ricardo is cautiously optimistic: one day, Vodou may be a catalyst for a more inclusive Haiti. He’s waiting to go abroad – anywhere – where he can open about who he is (“This is my life, this is who I am and I will be gay forever”).
But until then, he’ll be in the peristyle. “There is a lot of love inside the Vodou: it is our heart and blood. So we will not back down. We have an important and strong force with us. Without it, we could not exist today.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/07/vodou-haiti-endangered-faith-soul-of-haitian-people
Saturday 7 November 2015 13.30 GMT Last modified on Saturday 7 November 2015 17.33 GMT
Haiti, the saying goes, is “70% Catholic, 30% Protestant, and 100% Vodou”. Vodou is everywhere in the Caribbean nation, a spiritual system infusing everything from medicine and agriculture to cosmology and arts. Yet it is almost nowhere to be seen: ceremonies are not just expensive, but targets of hate crime. Nowadays, some say, Vodou is in danger.
In the heart of remote Île-à-Vache of Haiti’s southern coast, however, the religion is alive and well. Completely off the grid, the island has only two medical clinics for 14,000 residents and so Jeom Frichenel Sisius, the island’s principal Vodou priest, is a spiritual leader, doctor and midwife all at once.
His remedies, which he claims can fix everything from diseases and haunted houses to career and love problems, are kept in a carefully locked shed in a room adorned with skulls and an nzambi (zombie) painted on the walls.
“If someone has a headache and the doctors cannot heal it, I can,” he explains, taking swigs of herbal rum from a gigantic bottle as he speaks. “The only things Vodou can’t do are radiography and mammography.” Vodou is necessary, he stresses, and the only people who fail to understand that are the Christians.
On top of this knowledge and divine healing powers, Sisius also happens to throw the best parties.
Here, Vodou defies cliches of zombies, pins in dolls and black magic. There are none of the cornflour drawings, animal sacrifices or rattles that characterize orthodox Haitian Vodou ceremonies: just a lot of dancing and ecstasy fuelled by rum, drums and divine presence. It’s almost full moon, and lured by the music and beauty of it all, the spirits – lwas – begin to arrive.
Only weeks after Sisius’s ceremony, a great mapou tree fell. Not literally, of course. In local folklore, the sacred species (silk-cotton tree in English) is the embodiment of someone heroic and Haiti was mourning the death of Max Gesner Beauvoir, the supreme chief of Vodou.
Beauvoir, who stumbled into spiritualism after 15 years as a biochemist in the US, worked tirelessly to protect vodouisants from defamation and persecution. At his home in Mariani, he drank coffee with scholars, seekers, journalists and even Christians, patiently explaining what Vodou was (“the soul of Haitian people and a way of life”) – and what it was not.
At a time when Haiti still had tourism, he held spectacles of entranced women, legs akimbo and biting heads of chickens, even staging a honeymoon ceremony for the Clintons.
While perhaps creating some stereotypes of his own, few did more than Beauvoir in battling distorted horror-flick cliches still associated with Haitian Vodou.
“The most popular Haitian word in the world is zombie,” explains Richard Morse, a musician and owner of Port-au-Prince’s Hotel Oloffson (who insists he never met an undead creature). “And that’s a reflection of the world more than it is of Haiti.”
At a time when “world music” was all the rage, Morse came to Haiti in 1987 for musical inspiration. Growing up in suburban Connecticut to a Haitian mother and American father, Morse never expected to get into Vodou beyond the glimpses of folklore he’d seen at home. In 2001, he was officially initiated.
“I only came for the rhythms initially,” he recalls, seated on the veranda of the hotel that became his livelihood and permanent home. “Then I found out that the rhythms don’t walk alone. The rhythms walk with dance steps, with colors, with spirits, with prayer. The rhythms walk with God.”
Every Thursday for the past 23 years, Morse’s 13-member roots band – which includes his wife and son – plays fiery, upbeat interpretations of traditional Vodou prayers. Aid workers dance next to local hipsters, elderly couples next to a local LGBT chapter. This is his part in dispelling myths about the practice.
“Most Americans don’t know that they don’t know what Vodou really is,” explains Elizabeth McAlister, scholar of religion at Wesleyan University, specializing in Haitian Vodou. They think Vodou is about sorcery, maybe love magic, usually some sort of sinister practice.”The 1920s and 1930s cinema – the heyday of B-films like White Zombie and pulp fiction – helped reinforce caricatures of Africans as hypersexualized, superstitious and demonic.
“The best thing that ever happened to racism is Vodou,” explains Ira Lowenthal, an anthropologist, Vodou arts collector and former aid worker originally from New Jersey, who has lived in Haiti for over 40 years. “They made up their stories about it and their stories confirmed every prejudice of every white person in the world. It tells that person from Ohio that they’re right about black people as scary and dangerous … you can actually see on a screen your own racist beliefs justified.”
The west’s romance with a misguided understanding of Haitian folklore just happened to coincide with the US occupation of the country – which set out to modernize Haiti, while attempting to systematically erase Vodou.
The religion was born with institutional slavery. Ripped from homelands and heritage, thousands of those who would become Haitians were shipped across the Atlantic to an island, where the indigenous population had already been wiped out, for backbreaking labor in cane plantations.
“They were treated as cattle. As animals to be bought and sold; worth nothing more than a cow. Often less,” says Lowenthal.
“Vodou is the response to that. Vodou says ‘no, I’m not a cow. Cows cannot dance, cows do not sing. Cows cannot become God. Not only am I a human being – I’m considerably more human than you. Watch me create divinity in this world you have given me that is so ugly and so hard. Watch me become God in front of your eyes.’”
And so Vodou, unlike eastern spirituality which is often focused on the mind, begins in the human flesh: Haitians dance, rather than think, their way to ecstasy; a transcendence into a more beautiful reality.
Divine possessions are reserved for Haitians, who inherit their spirits through bloodlines, explains Lowenthal, who attended countless rituals in mountain villages during his research. Foreigners can never be vehicles – chwals (“horses”) – to be ridden by the divine.
“That power is stunning. It’s not scary. It’s stunning. It shows you what a human being can do. And what we can’t do. White people lost their spirits centuries ago. We lost it all. The Haitians believe we used to have spirits, but we were too stupid to keep them.”
Without the lwas, Haiti might never have become a nation at all.
On the night of 14 August 1791, slaves from nearby plantations gathered deep in the woods of Bois Caïman, of what was then the French colony of Saint-Domingue. By the fire, a young woman possessed by Ezili Dantor, the warrior-mother lwah often iconized as Black Madonna, slit the throat of a large black creole pig and distributed its blood to the revolutionaries, who swore to kill the blancs – white settlers – as they drank it.
With otherworldly strength, the legend goes, the world’s richest colony was overthrown and the first black republic proclaimed. Haitian Vodou became a religion with rebellion and freedom at its heart.
Perhaps these are the roots of the west’s fear of Vodou, Lowenthal speculates: it is an unbreakable revolutionary spirit threatening to inspire other black Caribbean republics – or, God forbid, the United States itself.
“These people will never be conquered again,” Lowenthal emphasizes. “They will be exploited, they will be downtrodden, they will be impoverished – but you can tell not a single Haitian walks around with his head down … They’re more human than the people who enslaved them. They were better than their masters, able to live in another realm. There’s no other more articulate response to oppression than that. And that’s why Vodou is here – because Vodou is the soul of Haitian people.”
***
Ricardo Marie Dadoune (known to friends and worshippers as “Bébé”) has known he was homosexual since he was eight years old. He’s now 26 and has a boyfriend, though he doesn’t broadcast it: several gay men he knows have already been killed.
In a bustling neighborhood in Port-au-Price, his peristyle (vodou temple) is tucked away between colorful barbershops and vendors hawking barbecued chicken. On a table in a windowless room, plaster saint statuettes are lined up next to African dolls, perfume bottles, candles and a ram’s skull, horns still attached. Ricardo shakes a beaded rattle in all four directions and then pours rum on the cement floor three times: first to his left, then to his right and finally right in front of his orange flip-flops.
“This is a safe place,” he explains. “When we have a ceremony here, nothing happens. People like us here, so we’re not afraid to come and enjoy.”
He may be in a Justin Bieber T-shirt and jeans now, but the peristyle is the only place Ricardo can dress the way he really prefers: with lipstick, earrings, a cloth on his head the way women do in the countryside, and a dress.
While homosexuality in Haiti is not illegal, it is not socially acceptable. To avoid discrimination, violence and even murder, many gays and lesbians lead double lives.
“In other countries the gays are free,” he says. “They can wear what they want to wear, but not here in Haiti. After the ceremony I have to take off the clothes because I can’t walk the street dressed like a woman here.” Today, peristyles across Haiti have become makeshift religious gay clubs, safe havens where the LGBT community isn’t just tolerated but actively welcomed.
The lwas, much like the Haitian ancestors themselves, travel far: underwater, from the heart of Africa all the way to Hispaniola.
While Haitians too worship an almighty God – Bondye in Creole – he is believed to stand above petty human matters. The lwas, not so much. Each with its own area of expertise, lwas have individual tastes: some like champagne and perfume, others five-star Barbancourt rum and animal sacrifices. Spirits only choose those they love, and some prefer to occupy non-straight chwals.
“Many, many gays and lesbians are valued members of Vodou societies,” explains McAlister, who has devoted years to researching LGBT in Haitian religion. “There is an idea that Vodou spirits that are thought to be gay ‘adopt’ and protect young adults who then become gay.”
“Vodou ‘does gender’ totally differently than the Christian tradition,” McAlister explains. After all, Vodou has gender fluidity at the core: men might become mediums for female spirits, women for male spirits. “But Christians, especially evangelicals, have zero flexibility for this; they see homosexuality as a sin, period.”
Stigmatized as a primitive, or even wicked religion, Vodou is inherently progressive and inclusive, McAlister continues.
“Vodou tends to be radically unjudgmental,” she explains. “The alcoholic, the thief, the homeless, the mentally ill, all of these people are welcomed into a Vodou temple and given respect.”In reality, McAlister emphasizes, Vodou is far more similar to a close-knit church community than most Americans could ever imagine. Or as Morse puts it: with food-centered rituals to please spirits, it’s sort of like Thanksgiving – just several times a year. And it’s feminist too, advocating equal status for male and female priests.
For missionaries and churches already hell-bent on demonizing Vodou, the religion’s progressive outlook may be just another nail in the coffin. Throughout history, Christians have often identified Vodou as the root of all Haiti’s problems.
As 2010’s earthquake killed perhaps 230,000 and displaced 1.5 million people, US reverend Pat Robertson asserted that Haiti had brought it upon itself through a “pact with the devil”, referring to Bois Caïman’s uprising. The subsequent cholera epidemic, most likely caused by leaked sewage from a UN camp, was also blamed by some on vodouisants, triggering mobs to murder dozens across the country.
It is perhaps not surprising that a religion born out of colonial subjugation and the trauma of slavery would irk Christians – who also happened to be the slave-masters. On arrival, slaves had eight days to convert – though their native faith was often later on blended with Catholic practices, resulting in today’s wildly eclectic pantheon of African spirits alongside Catholic saints “creolized” to walk among them.
In fear of a rival power base, the church repressing Vodou became a recurring theme in Haitian history, McAlister explains.
“The Christians humiliate us by saying that Vodou is evil,” Ricardo says. “It’s not true. Vodou is not a bad thing. They have their faith, we have ours.”
Two days earlier, evangelicals came to his temple and interrupted his ceremony to preach the gospel. They told him he must embrace Jesus as his personal savior, as he continued to perform his rituals, unfazed. This time, it didn’t turn violent.
For a long time, even Haiti itself shied away from a religion so quintessential to its national identity. While President Michel Martelly described Beauvoir’s passing as a “great loss for the country”, the government itself wasn’t always so sympathetic, with Vodou officially outlawed until 1934. Even though it became an official religion in 2003, no one knows how many vodouisants Haiti has today.
Vodou is still something many Haitians, including the diaspora, keep underground. Peristyles, even sacred mapou trees, are regularly targets for vandalism and arson. Worshippers risk harassment and violence, with lynchings not unheard of.
Countless attacks against it have forged a newfound solidarity among priests and worshippers as they carve out a political voice. And slowly, things are changing: a new statute is allowing Vodou leaders to perform funerals and weddings, and university courses are now researching the religion. While Beauvoir’s successor is yet to be announced, his legacy may be only the beginning.Ricardo is cautiously optimistic: one day, Vodou may be a catalyst for a more inclusive Haiti. He’s waiting to go abroad – anywhere – where he can open about who he is (“This is my life, this is who I am and I will be gay forever”).
But until then, he’ll be in the peristyle. “There is a lot of love inside the Vodou: it is our heart and blood. So we will not back down. We have an important and strong force with us. Without it, we could not exist today.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/07/vodou-haiti-endangered-faith-soul-of-haitian-people
U.S. needs strict Haitian pledge of accountability
Historically, United States has underut democratic efforts in Haiti
Congress lobbies Obama for policies that allow clean elections there
BY MARK WEISBROTTribune News Service
When an earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010, killing more than 200,000 people, former President Bill Clinton said that the reconstruction would provide an opportunity to “build back better.”
Some $9.6 billion was pledged by the international community, including the U.S. government. But nearly six years later, although about $7.6 billion has been disbursed, there is not much to show for it.
Hundreds of thousands of Haitians displaced by the earthquake remain without adequate shelter. USAID, the U.S. State Department’s development agency, pledged to build 15,000 homes but has so far only delivered 900.
Most of U.S. taxpayers’ money, it seems, didn’t get outside the Beltway. Of USAID contracts, for example, more than 50 percent of payments went to contractors in the Washington, D.C., area, while only 1 percent went directly to Haitian companies or organizations.
Everyone worries about money being potentially lost to corruption in the Haitian government, so just a small fraction of the billions pledged went to desperately needed budget support. But the large-scale corruption, fed by lack of accountability, is much closer to home.Haiti needs a government that can collect taxes, especially from the rich elite and companies that can pay them, and provide services. This should have been the target of “building back better,” rather than foreign contractors. But the U.S. government has never shown much interest in building a democratic, legitimate government in Haiti.
Haiti needs a government that can collect taxes, especially from the rich elite and companies that can pay them, and provide services. This should have been the target of “building back better,” rather than foreign contractors. But the U.S. government has never shown much interest in building a democratic, legitimate government in Haiti.
In 1991, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown in a military coup. It was later determined that leaders of the coup had been paid by the CIA.
In 2004, Aristide was deposed again through a multi-year effort by Washington, which took him into forced exile for seven years. In 2011, Washington intervened once again by arranging for the Organization of American States (OAS) to reverse the first round results of Haiti’s presidential elections.
This was done without a recount or even a statistical test of the sample of ballots examined, and independent research showed that there was no statistical basis for the decision.
Now we are witnessing a potential repeat of the 2010-11 elections. The legislative elections in August were plagued by fraud and violence, with only 18 percent of eligible voters participating and more than 20 percent of the ballots lost.
On Oct. 25, the first round of presidential elections was held, and although the violence was limited and voter turnout marginally higher, observers have raised serious questions about whether massive fraud occurred.
Over 900,000 party monitors were given credentials that may have allowed them to vote at multiple voting centers. A black market in these passes was created, and with only an estimated 1.6 million total votes cast, it is easy to imagine the election being bought by the party with the biggest bankroll.
[Last week, second-place presidential candidate Jude Celestin challenged the results, calling the elections “undemocratic.”] It remains to be seen if the authorities tried or were even able to screen for fraud. Will the United States and its allies, who are paying for the elections, simply accept the result — as in the past, if their side wins?
In 1995, members of Congress, led by the Congressional Black Caucus, forced President Clinton to reverse the military coup that his predecessor’s administration had sponsored, temporarily returning democracy to Haiti.
Members of the current Congress have written numerous letters to President Obama and lobbied the administration, even passing legislation, demanding accountability and a change of course that will allow for Haiti to have democratic, clean elections for a legitimate, functioning government.
They will have to step up the pressure, as they did in the early 1990s, if they are to have an impact.
MARK WEISBROT IS CO-DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR ECONOMIC AND POLICY RESEARCH.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article43667814.html#storylink=cpy
Why Haiti deserves visitors
Long before I arrive in Haiti I get a sense of what the name itself conjures up. There are no direct flights from the UK, so I’ve flown in via the Dominican Republic, Haiti’s conjoined twin on the island of Hispaniola. The tourists on my flight cannot understand why anyone would risk Haiti: “I hope you survive!”; “Will you have armed guards?” and, perhaps the key question, “Why?” But tour operators like the one I’m travelling with, Wild Frontiers, feel that Haiti’s time has finally come, especially with Cuba looking more visitor-crowded and less adventurous than before. There is also a sense that responsible tourism to Haiti could put money where it is really needed.
Hispaniola is shaped like a large canine tooth extracted from the gob of Mexico and thrown into the centre of the Caribbean Sea. Haiti is the western third of it, and I’m arriving on a small plane from the east of the island, gazing out at the mountainous terrain and totting up reasons for Haiti’s unsavoury reputation. So far I’ve got deadly earthquakes, dire poverty, the brutal Tontons Macoutes, the tyrant Papa Doc Duvalier, plus, of course, the zombies – mustn’t forget the zombies. On the plus side, I scribble “fresh fruit”. Then, out of the aeroplane window, the verdure of the Dominican Republic is giving way abruptly to something eroded and bone-like. Over Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, we enter a pall of dust, and the plane bounces and sways before landing. I cross out fresh fruit.
It was not always this way. Expectations of this land were high when Columbus touched down in 1492, noting the extreme fertility, the abundance of food and clean water, the gold, and the handsome, happy people. “With 50 men,” he noted ominously, “we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we wanted.” And that is what the conquistadores did, shipping in fresh workers from west Africa when the locals died. By 1660, the western third of Hispaniola was French, the other part Spanish, and in all but name, the two countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic were established. They both had wars of independence, years of American occupation, and brutal dictators, but Dom Rep, as everyone now refers to it, somehow emerged as a place where you can buy a pizza 24 hours a day and visit shopping malls. But what about Haiti?The first thing I notice in Port-au-Prince is the people: they are all out on the street. Men and women carrying their goods on their heads: bananas to sell, water, a roll of naif paintings to hang up outside a hotel. There are horses, mules and donkeys amid a tangle of good-natured, slow-moving traffic. And behind all this frenetic activity, rising above the heads, is a mixture of ruins and new buildings. It is five years since one of the most devastating earthquakes in human history razed huge areas of the city, killing up to 220,000 people. Finally, Port-au-Prince is being rebuilt, and very attractively too, judging by what’s been done already.
I visit the reconstructed Marché de Fer, the bustling central market, where a stately rastaman called Dominic shows me around (for $1 – this is a place where you need lots of small dollar bills). After spices, vegetables and beauty products, we enter an area selling flouncy blue dresses and sinister-looking dolls. I tackle the voodoo question head on.
“Is voodoo scary?”
Dominic chuckles gently: “No way. It’s our religion.”
He shows me some veve, intricately beaded flags that carry the symbols of certain spirits.
“This one is Ayida Weddo, the rainbow snake.”
Voodoo is a polytheistic faith that came to the island with slaves from west Africa, and took on a camouflage veneer of Roman Catholicism. Its importance to Haiti was firmly established when, in 1791, a voodoo ceremony triggered the only slave revolt which has led to the founding of a state. Ever since, the religion has prospered, often in the teeth of official disapproval. Western attitudes have sometimes been fearful, and frequently condescending: “proper” religions have gods and miracles; voodoo has spirits and mumbo jumbo. Unfortunately, Papa Doc, dictator during the 1960s, further tarnished the religion’s image by encouraging the belief that he was Baron Samedi, the spirit of the dead.
At the refurbished National Museum I get to see Papa Doc’s bowler hat, cane and evil little machine gun, plus photos of Haiti’s many other presidents. It is a wonderful little museum – from the slave torture devices to the inscribed names of early rebels (Hyacinthe and Chickenshit included); from the ostentatiously Napoleonic insignias of the first black leaders to the earlier simplicity of Taino Indian stone carvings (the Tainos were all but wiped out within a century of Columbus’s arrival). There is even an anchor that claims to be from Columbus’s ship, the Santa María, wrecked on the north coast.After a night at the Montana Hotel, elegantly rebuilt from the ruins of the quake, I meet Serge, my local guide, who takes me to the highlands behind Port-au-Prince.
He’s a fascinating character: having grown up in an orphanage, he had a successful career as a dancer, then worked as a researcher on almost every film project in Haiti for the past decade. We leave the car and walk around Wynne Farm, a project encouraging farmers to plant trees and work sustainably. Hummingbirds thrum past and we spot two nests, one with a pair of tiny chicks inside, neither of them larger than the tip of my little finger. Serge’s conversation runs through modern slavery, voodoo, cuisine, art, music and the iniquities of Minustah, the UN stabilisation mission that still exerts a powerful influence in the country. Over the treetops we enjoy vast panoramas of green hills, heavily farmed. Haiti has a severe deforestation problem.
We head downhill, to the home of Janey Wynne, the owner of Wynne Farm, and a plant enthusiast. Her current obsession is bamboo. “It could save Haiti’s poor farmers,” she says. Some of her poor neighbours just sold a bundle of canes for US$200 – a small fortune. We drink herbal tea, eat mango cake and then tour the garden, which is magical: there’s macadamia, ginger, naranjilla, datura, and several strange fruits I’ve never seen before.
Serge finally drags me away: he wants us to visit Croix-des-Bouquets, a village on the east side of Port-au-Prince, where a tradition of metal-working has developed. As we drive, I note that Janey’s enthusiasm has worked: Serge is clutching a handful of seeds and some cuttings for his garden.
En route, we stop at an upmarket art gallery, a chance to orientate myself. Haitian art is complex and colourful, incorporating various schools and traditions, and long since “discovered” by collectors. Top names, such as Prospere Pierre-Louis, command substantial prices, but there is always the chance of finding an emerging talent.
When we reach Croix-des-Bouquets, Serge introduces me to Jacques Eugene, who makes mask-like pieces, punctured and perforated, adorned with twisted cutlery and car parts. His inspiration comes in dreams, from a voodoo spirit called Ezili Danto.
Down the road we pass dozens of workshops and shops. At one we meet Serge Jolimeau, one of the stars of Haitian art, whose work hangs all around us: huge, textured heads surging with vitality. In Jolimeau’s hands the metal becomes fluid and magical. The trouble is, once I’ve seen what I can’t afford, I don’t want the cheap stuff.
We drive north-west along the coast, stopping at simple fishing villages such as Luly, where the people are sitting in the shade, weaving fish traps. The beach is something of a curate’s egg: gorgeous pink conch shells mixed with plastic bottles in one great fascinating mess, like the country itself. At Montrouis I tour the Museum Ogier-Fombrun, part of the delightfully laid-back Moulin-sur-Mer beach hotel. At this former French plantation, 600 slaves eked out miserable lives to help create what was France’s richest colony. Now the place is home to a superb collection of artefacts, and tranquil gardens filled with semi-tame birds.
The visitors here seem to be mainly Haitian emigres from the US. The few European tourists tend to head south – to Jacmel, and a few well-kept beach resorts. Haiti, however, has a lot more to offer. Up in the north is the city of Cap Haïtien, a crumbling masterpiece of colonial-era architecture: brightly painted, well-kept houses mixed with the dilapidated and ruined. Like everywhere in Haiti, I find the people friendly but not effusive: smiles are not freely given, they have to be elicited. I stay at Habitacion Jouissant, a much-extended, shady bungalow on a patio high above the sea, where at dawn, wooden sailing boats can be spotted heading off to the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Cap Haïtien has some great markets and, nearby, good beaches and a potentially world-class attraction in La Citadelle Laferrière, an imposing fortification that sits on a high ridge above the village of Milot, where it’s worth seeking out Maurice Etienne, owner of a guesthouse-cum-cultural centre. Maurice’s great-great-grandfather was a soldier in La Citadelle, and Maurice has turned himself into an expert on the place. When I arrive, two American archaeologists are picking his brains.
Built by Haiti’s first post-slavery president, Henri Christophe, between 1805-1820, La Citadelle was both a warning to France and a bold statement that the former slaves were capable of great achievements. As the latter it was a success, but sadly the French did return, blockading the ports and demanding reparations for their lost, slave-driven businesses. Haiti capitulated, embarking on a withering series of debt repayments that would sap its strength for generations to come.
After our visit, Maurice and I have lunch on his patio. He’s optimistic about Haiti’s future now, and with La Citadelle, he knows Milot has a real winner. We eat fresh fruit – yes, there’s plenty of it – and he talks of Haiti’s unique culture, more strongly African than anywhere else in the Caribbean.
“Once, a government delegation came here from west Africa and we entertained them with voodoo drummers.” He laughs. “When it ended, we found the head of the group was in a deep trance.”
I’m beginning to feel a similar trance-like state coming on.
Back in Port-au-Prince, I meet up with Serge again, and ask him a question that’s been bothering me: do zombies exist? He is perfectly sure they do, but there is nothing supernatural about them. He found some when researching a film years ago. “They are people who get drugged, then buried alive and dug up at midnight. After that they are kept as drugged slaves, working in bad conditions.”
“And people are really afraid of it – being made into zombies?”
“It’s like a cultural memory of slavery, really – a fear that it could return, to you personally.”
In a few words, Serge has blown away all the nonsense that is talked about zombies, and revealed something deeper and very real. And then, a few minutes later, I’m heading into the airport to leave, and I’m thinking, I’ve barely scratched the surface here. This place deserves time, and it deserves visitors who want more than a beach.
• The trip was provided by Wild Frontiers, 020 7736 3968, which offers 11-day, small-group tours to Haiti, visiting sights such as Bassin Bleu and La Citadelle; with whale- and dolphin-watching, walking in the Central Plateau, and overnights in homestays. Departures in March and December 2016, from £2,450 full board (on a twin-share basis), including entry to attractions, and the services of local guides and a tour leader. Single supplement: £270. Flights with American Airlines start from approximately £950 and require an overnight in Miami on the outbound sector. Local excursions and tours available with Voyages Lumierehttp://www.theguardian.com/travel/2015/nov/08/haiti-tourists-returning-after-earthquake
mercredi 4 novembre 2015
IDB spending $65 million to improve transportation in Haiti Wednesday, November 04, 2015
WASHINGTON, DC, USA (CMC) — The Inter American Development Bank (IDB) said yesterday that it will be providing US$65 million to Haiti to improve transportation in the French-speaking Caribbean Community (Caricom) country.
The IDB said the money will improve the efficiency and safety of its transportation system and will advance regional and international integration.
It said the five-year programme, which will be carried out by the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Communications, will increase competitiveness, connectivity and accessibility by reducing transportation costs, improving safe transport services and enhancing the country's regional and international integration.
"Specifically, the programme will rehabilitate a 29.5-kilometre stretch of the RN1 highway between Camp Coq and Vaudreuli. The grant also includes resources necessary for the rehabilitation, improvement and or maintenance of Haiti's primary and secondary road networks."
Haiti has a road network of 3,572 kilometres, of which just 15 per cent is in good condition.
"Road safety is complicated not only by the poor conditions of roadways and vehicles, but also by the lack of signage and enforcement of transit regulations. Road transport is the leading mode of transportation for cargo and passengers in Haiti, making improvement of infrastructure fundamental for economic development and for enhanced integration of the country's regions," the IDB added.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/IDB-spending--65-million-to-improve-transportation-in-Haiti_19236827
The IDB said the money will improve the efficiency and safety of its transportation system and will advance regional and international integration.
It said the five-year programme, which will be carried out by the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Communications, will increase competitiveness, connectivity and accessibility by reducing transportation costs, improving safe transport services and enhancing the country's regional and international integration.
"Specifically, the programme will rehabilitate a 29.5-kilometre stretch of the RN1 highway between Camp Coq and Vaudreuli. The grant also includes resources necessary for the rehabilitation, improvement and or maintenance of Haiti's primary and secondary road networks."
Haiti has a road network of 3,572 kilometres, of which just 15 per cent is in good condition.
"Road safety is complicated not only by the poor conditions of roadways and vehicles, but also by the lack of signage and enforcement of transit regulations. Road transport is the leading mode of transportation for cargo and passengers in Haiti, making improvement of infrastructure fundamental for economic development and for enhanced integration of the country's regions," the IDB added.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/IDB-spending--65-million-to-improve-transportation-in-Haiti_19236827
lundi 2 novembre 2015
Haitians flow into cemeteries to mark Voodoo day of the dead
 |
| A woman in the role of a spirit known as a Gede dances during a Voodoo ritual in tribute to Baron Samdi and the Gede family of spirits during Day of the Dead celebrations at the National Cemetery in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2015. Ricardo Arduengo AP |
BY DAVID MCFADDEN
Associated Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI
Revelers streamed into cemeteries across Haiti on Sunday bearing beeswax candles, food offerings and bottles of rum infused with hot peppers to mark the country’s annual Voodoo festival of the dead.
At Port-au-Prince’s sprawling national cemetery, Voodoo priests and priestesses gathered around a blackened monument that is believed to be the oldest grave. There, they lit candles and stoked small fires as they evoked the spirit Baron Samedi, the guardian of the dead who is typically depicted with a dark top hat and a white skull face.
Some filled their mouths with fiery rum and sprayed it over the tomb’s cross. As if in a trance, one young man wrapped in a paisley print sheet chewed up bits of a broken glass bottle, but onlookers who scrambled on burial vaults to get a better look didn’t buy his performance. “Thief!” they shouted, as he spat out blood.
Minutes later, the crowd perched atop the tombs gave respect to a priestess with a purple scarf wrapped around her head as she danced in a spastic manner and made a keening lament.
Other Haitians gathered among the tombs to quietly remember dead relatives and ask spirits to grant favors or provide guidance. One man paid a soothsayer for advice on how to increase his chances at winning bets at Haitian outlets that play on New York State Lottery numbers.
Vendors who set up shop in the cemeteries did a brisk business selling pictures of Catholic saints alongside candles, rum and rosary beads.
Voodoo, or Vodou as preferred by Haitians, evolved in the 17th century when colonists brought slaves to Haiti from West Africa. Slaves forced to practice Catholicism adopted saints to coincide with personalities in the African religions. Voodoo was sanctioned as an official religion in 2003 and it is practiced widely across the country of 10 million inhabitants.
This year’s two-day celebration comes shortly before Haitian officials are expected to announce the top two finishers in a presidential first-round vote. Electoral authorities say they plan to release the preliminary results of the presidential vote on Tuesday, after the Voodoo festival concludes.
Voodoo priest Pierre Saint Ange cracked a rope whip on a crumbling tomb and told onlookers not to “fight with guns or burn tires” in coming days.
“We are asking for peace,” he cried, standing near three women with their faces smeared in white paint.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article42160887.html#storylink=cpy
Swampscott siblings lend a hand in Haiti
Posted: Monday, November 2, 2015
By Gayla Cawley / The Daily Item
Gayla Cawley
Posted on Nov 2, 2015by Gayla Cawley
SWAMPSCOTT — Two Swampscott High siblings say their volunteer trip to Haiti during this summer taught them that even small gestures of charity and friendship can go a long way.
Brother and sister Joseph and Shama Varghese went to Haiti for 10 days in August as part of a group from their church, the Shepherd’s House of Woburn, to help build an orphanage and school for children.
Although the group was only there for a short time, and by Shama’s admission, “there wasn’t much you can do in 10 days,” the siblings know they made a difference.
“We definitely accomplished something,” Joseph Varghese said.
Shama said “you could see people in the orphanage were really happy. I guess a small amount makes a big difference.”
The siblings talked about their trip during a meeting last month of the Swampscott Rotary Club, which helped with the fundraising for the trip.
“We especially enjoyed hearing Shama and Joseph tell us about their trip, hearing their stories of interaction with the children at the school and seeing their trip pictures,” said Buck Weaver, a member of the Rotary Club. “And we are most impressed by the dedication and spirit of giving that Shama and Joseph have shown. They are certainly the kind of young adults that we are all proud to know.”
Shama, 16, a junior, said the church had been planning on doing some type of missionary work. She said planning for the trip started in May and resulted in a group of five youths and four adults from the church making the trip to Haiti. She said the connection with the Rotary Club was established because Weaver is her orthodontist.
Joseph, 14, a freshman, said the group stayed at the orphanage that was being built. He said work was also done on a nearby pastor’s house that had become worn down after years of use, as the children in the area would often seek refuge there.
Shama said a different orphanage had existed prior to the one they worked on, but had been completely destroyed by the 2010 earthquake, resulting in the death of three orphans. She said she and her brother helped with painting in the three buildings — the orphanage, school and pastor’s house — because the walls were very worn down. She said she would advise others looking to do similar service work to keep an open mind.
“I understand going to other countries is scary,” Shama Varghese said. “They do need help. Originally it (Haiti) was a poor country. The big disaster made it even worse. Just expect the best of the trip.”
Joseph said other work included building doors and windows. He said with the pastor’s house, he helped with breaking walls. He said the group was able to buy a bunch of school supplies for the children who would be attending the new all-grade school, which is set to open sometime this month.
He said he was struck by how much energy the children had. When the group was there, he said the children were on summer break, but that didn’t prevent them from waking up each morning at 5 a.m. for their daily devotionals, followed by another bible study later in the day and the rest of the day taken up by constant playing outside.
Gayla Cawley can be reached at gcawley@itemlive.com
http://www.itemlive.com/news/swampscott-siblings-lend-a-hand-in-haiti/article_5922726a-8121-11e5-b51c-af2d41894417.html
By Gayla Cawley / The Daily Item
Gayla Cawley
Posted on Nov 2, 2015by Gayla Cawley
SWAMPSCOTT — Two Swampscott High siblings say their volunteer trip to Haiti during this summer taught them that even small gestures of charity and friendship can go a long way.
Brother and sister Joseph and Shama Varghese went to Haiti for 10 days in August as part of a group from their church, the Shepherd’s House of Woburn, to help build an orphanage and school for children.
Although the group was only there for a short time, and by Shama’s admission, “there wasn’t much you can do in 10 days,” the siblings know they made a difference.
“We definitely accomplished something,” Joseph Varghese said.
Shama said “you could see people in the orphanage were really happy. I guess a small amount makes a big difference.”
The siblings talked about their trip during a meeting last month of the Swampscott Rotary Club, which helped with the fundraising for the trip.
“We especially enjoyed hearing Shama and Joseph tell us about their trip, hearing their stories of interaction with the children at the school and seeing their trip pictures,” said Buck Weaver, a member of the Rotary Club. “And we are most impressed by the dedication and spirit of giving that Shama and Joseph have shown. They are certainly the kind of young adults that we are all proud to know.”
Shama, 16, a junior, said the church had been planning on doing some type of missionary work. She said planning for the trip started in May and resulted in a group of five youths and four adults from the church making the trip to Haiti. She said the connection with the Rotary Club was established because Weaver is her orthodontist.
Joseph, 14, a freshman, said the group stayed at the orphanage that was being built. He said work was also done on a nearby pastor’s house that had become worn down after years of use, as the children in the area would often seek refuge there.
Shama said a different orphanage had existed prior to the one they worked on, but had been completely destroyed by the 2010 earthquake, resulting in the death of three orphans. She said she and her brother helped with painting in the three buildings — the orphanage, school and pastor’s house — because the walls were very worn down. She said she would advise others looking to do similar service work to keep an open mind.
“I understand going to other countries is scary,” Shama Varghese said. “They do need help. Originally it (Haiti) was a poor country. The big disaster made it even worse. Just expect the best of the trip.”
Joseph said other work included building doors and windows. He said with the pastor’s house, he helped with breaking walls. He said the group was able to buy a bunch of school supplies for the children who would be attending the new all-grade school, which is set to open sometime this month.
He said he was struck by how much energy the children had. When the group was there, he said the children were on summer break, but that didn’t prevent them from waking up each morning at 5 a.m. for their daily devotionals, followed by another bible study later in the day and the rest of the day taken up by constant playing outside.
Gayla Cawley can be reached at gcawley@itemlive.com
http://www.itemlive.com/news/swampscott-siblings-lend-a-hand-in-haiti/article_5922726a-8121-11e5-b51c-af2d41894417.html
lundi 26 octobre 2015
Autoridades haitianas y observadores satisfechos con elecciones
El primer ministro de Haití, Evans Paul, calificó el proceso electoral de "exitoso" y consideró que constituye un "triunfo para el país", que deberá esperar diez días para conocer los resultados preliminares de los comicios, según anunció el presidente de la Comisión Electoral Provisional de Haití (CEP).EL UNIVERSAL
Domingo 25 de octubre de 2015
Puerto Príncipe.- Tanto las autoridades haitianas como los observadores internacionales manifestaron su satisfacción por el desarrollo pacífico y la buena organización de las elecciones presidenciales, legislativas y municipales celebradas hoy, así como por los índices de participación.
El primer ministro de Haití, Evans Paul, calificó el proceso electoral de "exitoso" y consideró que constituye un "triunfo para el país", que deberá esperar diez días para conocer los resultados preliminares de los comicios, según anunció el presidente de la Comisión Electoral Provisional de Haití (CEP), reseñó la agencia Efe.
"Algunos habrán resultado elegidos y otros no. Nadie habrá perdido, Haití habrá ganado", señaló.
La apertura de los colegios estuvo marcada por la tranquilidad, excepto por algunos incidentes aislados en el noreste del país, como en Morau y Champagne, entre otras poblaciones, y por retrasos registrados en algunos centros de votación.
El número de detenidos durante la jornada electoral fue de 74, según señaló en declaraciones a Efe el primer ministro, frente a los más de 200 arrestos efectuados el 9 de agosto, día de la primera vuelta de las legislativas, por incidentes en los que murieron diez personas.
Sin embargo, el jefe de la policía nacional haitiana, Godson Orelus, reveló más tarde que 234 personas fueron detenidas en incidentes durante la jornada electoral de hoy.
En una conferencia de prensa tras el cierre de los centros de votación de las elecciones presidenciales, legislativas y municipales, Orelus explicó además que en ocho puestos del norte no se pudieron celebrar los comicios, ya que no llegaron las papeletas porque fueron interceptadas por bandidos.
Además, la policía se incautó de trece armas de fuego.
El despliegue de fuerzas de seguridad también ha contribuido al normal desarrollo de los comicios, con la presencia de 12.000 efectivos de la Policía Nacional de Haití (PNH) y de la Minustah, que se vieron reforzados con la presencia, como novedad, de drones y cámaras de seguridad en algunos de los centros de votación más críticos.
La mejora en la organización de los comicios también ha sido determinante para el normal desarrollo de esta jornada, en opinión de la responsable de la Misión de Observación de la UE para Haití (MOE Haiti), la española Elena Valenciano, quien destacó que algunas de las medidas adoptadas por el CEP "han sido decisivas para que esto sea más tranquilo".
Por su parte, el jefe de la Misión de Observación Electoral de la Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA) en Haití, Celso Amorim, celebró la gran participación de los electores, en una situación sin incidentes, que ha motivado a la gente a participar en el proceso.
En las legislativas del 9 de agosto, apenas acudió a ejercer el derecho a sufragio el 18 % de los 5,5 millones de ciudadanos aptos para votar.
También la directora en Haití de la Fundación Internacional para los Sistemas Electorales (IFES, por sus siglas en inglés), Alexandra Rossi, alabó las mejoras en el proceso y consideró que "el éxito de este día será el resultado de un trabajo de equipo por parte de la institución electoral independiente, del Gobierno, de la población, de los partidos políticos y de los medios de comunicación".
Los votantes más esperados en el día de hoy fueron el actual presidente, Michel Martelly, el candidato opositor Jude Celestin, el expresidente Jean Bertrand Aristide y la candidata de su partido Familia Lavalas, Marysse Narcisse, cuya presencia suscitó el entusiasmo de los electores que se encontraban en los respectivos centros de votación.
Una vez finalizadas las votaciones, convoyes de la Minustah recorrieron los centros electorales para recoger las urnas con los sufragios y proceder al recuento de votos.
Los 5,8 millones de votantes haitianos inscritos acudieron hoy a la cita con las urnas para elegir entre medio centenar de candidatos al sucesor de Martelly en la Presidencia del país, así como para designar a miembros del parlamento y autoridades municipales.
Las encuestas previas daban por seguro que se necesitará una segunda vuelta, el 27 de diciembre, para definir el ganador de las elecciones presidenciales
http://www.eluniversal.com/internacional/151025/autoridades-haitianas-y-observadores-satisfechos-con-elecciones
Haitianos votaron en calma y con esperanza de poner fin a inestabilidad política
Haitianos votaron en calma y con esperanza de poner fin a inestabilidad política
POR AFP - ACTUALIZADO EL 25 DE OCTUBRE DE 2015 A: 06:38 P.M.
Los haitianos acudieron el domingo a elegir al próximo presidente de la República en un ambiente de calma y con una notoria asistencia de votantes a las urnas. También eligieron legisladores y autoridades municipales. Entre quienes sufragaron estaban el presidente Michel Martelly y el exmandatario Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Los haitianos votaron en calma este domingo para elegir presidente y a sus representantes políticos, en medio de condiciones logísticas delicadas y con la esperanza de sacar al país más pobre de América de una inestabilidad política crónica.
Los 5,8 millones de electores acudieron a los centros de votación hasta las 16:00 locales (2 p. m. hora de Costa Rica) para la primera vuelta de la elección presidencial, la segunda vuelta de las elecciones legislativas y las municipales. Los resultados no se conocerán hasta principios de noviembre.
En Puerto Príncipe, la capital, las colas de electores en los centros de votación se alargaban tras una apertura con retraso de las urnas debido a la gran cantidad de delegados de los partidos políticos. Pero, a pesar de los problemas logísticos, los haitianos ejercieron su derecho al voto en calma.
Mayor seguridad. La Policía era más visible que en la primera vuelta de las legislativas, el 9 de agosto, muy perturbada por incidentes violentos y fraudes. Ese día dos personas murieron en enfrentamientos entre partidos rivales y la votación se anuló en un cuarto de las circunscripciones del país.
De hecho, la participación era mayor en estos comicios, que se desarrollaban en calma.
En esta ocasión "la Policía tiene el control de la situación", se congratuló Frantz Lerebours, vocero de la Policía Nacional haitiana, quien se manifestó "satisfecho" pese a "algunos intentos de perturbación". La Policía realizó 73 arrestos de "personas que estaban en posesión de varias papeletas de voto, otros que tenían acreditaciones falsas".
En estos comicios hubo un despliegue de 10.000 agentes, con el apoyo de más de 5.000 policías y militares de la Misión de las Naciones Unidas para la estabilización de Haití (Minustah).
La logística parecía ser el principal problema. Por ejemplo, en el liceo de Pétion-ville, que concentraba más de 70 circuitos electorales, las urnas estaban apoyadas en pequeñas mesas o en rincones de bancos, lo que dificultó la votación.
"Es realmente lamentable, pero siempre es así en las elecciones", lamentó Frantz Ernso, un observador de la sociedad civil haitiana.
"La gente vota en cuclillas frente a bancas. En términos de espacio, no hubo mejoras en relación al 9 de agosto", sostiene, constatando la estrechez de los lugares de votación donde están instaladas las cuatro urnas necesarias para elegir alcaldes, diputados y senadores, además del nuevo jefe de Estado.
Poco después de las 10:00a. m.), Jude Celestin, uno de los favoritos para en las presidenciales, llegaba a su centro de votación.
"Vamos directo hacia una victoria en la primera ronda", dijo el candidato del partido Lapeh a la AFP, pidiendo a sus seguidores que continuasen votando pacíficamente.
Otros como Patrick Cherilus, un ciudadano de 40 años, ejercieron su derecho al voto con un interés particular en las elecciones municipales: "Me gustaría que Pétionville esté limpia y bonita, como cuando nací. Pero hoy en día está llena de basura".
"El país necesita más escuelas, más puestos de trabajo y los centros de salud para niños", agregó.
La Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA) desplegó 125 observadores en todo el país y el jefe de la misión, el excanciller brasileño Celso Amorim, aseguró que estaba satisfecho con el desarrollo de los comicios. "Ha habido algunos retrasos, pero todos los centros se abrieron progresivamente", afirmó.
Después del arrasador sismo de enero del 2010, que dejó más de 200.000 muertos y un millón y medio de personas en la calle, el país más pobre de América inició un largo proceso de reconstrucción, ralentizado por el conflictivo contexto político.
Tras la caída de la dictadura de los Duvalier en 1986, Haití estuvo marcado por la inestabilidad política con una sucesión de elecciones impugnadas y varios golpes de Estado.
La profunda crisis entre el gobierno y la oposición desde la llegada a la presidencia de Michel Martelly en mayo del 2011 impidió la realización de elecciones locales y legislativas.
5,8 millones de personas estaban convocadas para sufragar
Finalmente, este domingo los electores eligieron nuevamente a sus alcaldes, pues a falta de comicios, estos fueron progresivamente reemplazados desde 2013 por funcionarios ejecutivos designados por la presidencia.
La jornada electoral también permitió elegir a diputados y senadores.
A causa de la repetida postergación de las elecciones legislativas, el Parlamento haitiano cesó en sus funciones el 13 de enero último. Tras la votación, la Asamblea Nacional y el Senado podrán finalmente reanudar su trabajo en enero de 2016.
Oficialmente hay 54 candidatos para suceder a Martelly. Algunos, con escasas o nulas posibilidades, anunciaron el abandono de su campaña en favor de candidatos más populares, pero como no renunciaron formalmente en los plazos legales exigidos, las fotos de todos ellos, con su nombre, símbolo y número del partido al que representan, figuran en las hojas de votación: un rompecabezas para la mitad de los votantes que son analfabetos.
(Noticia en desarrollo. Esta versión se actualizó a las 3:05 p. m. )
http://www.nacion.com/mundo/latinoamerica/Tranquilidad-retrasos-apertura-electorales-Haiti_0_1520248046.html
Los haitianos acudieron el domingo a elegir al próximo presidente de la República en un ambiente de calma y con una notoria asistencia de votantes a las urnas. También eligieron legisladores y autoridades municipales. Entre quienes sufragaron estaban el presidente Michel Martelly y el exmandatario Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Los haitianos votaron en calma este domingo para elegir presidente y a sus representantes políticos, en medio de condiciones logísticas delicadas y con la esperanza de sacar al país más pobre de América de una inestabilidad política crónica.
Los 5,8 millones de electores acudieron a los centros de votación hasta las 16:00 locales (2 p. m. hora de Costa Rica) para la primera vuelta de la elección presidencial, la segunda vuelta de las elecciones legislativas y las municipales. Los resultados no se conocerán hasta principios de noviembre.
En Puerto Príncipe, la capital, las colas de electores en los centros de votación se alargaban tras una apertura con retraso de las urnas debido a la gran cantidad de delegados de los partidos políticos. Pero, a pesar de los problemas logísticos, los haitianos ejercieron su derecho al voto en calma.
Mayor seguridad. La Policía era más visible que en la primera vuelta de las legislativas, el 9 de agosto, muy perturbada por incidentes violentos y fraudes. Ese día dos personas murieron en enfrentamientos entre partidos rivales y la votación se anuló en un cuarto de las circunscripciones del país.
De hecho, la participación era mayor en estos comicios, que se desarrollaban en calma.
En esta ocasión "la Policía tiene el control de la situación", se congratuló Frantz Lerebours, vocero de la Policía Nacional haitiana, quien se manifestó "satisfecho" pese a "algunos intentos de perturbación". La Policía realizó 73 arrestos de "personas que estaban en posesión de varias papeletas de voto, otros que tenían acreditaciones falsas".
En estos comicios hubo un despliegue de 10.000 agentes, con el apoyo de más de 5.000 policías y militares de la Misión de las Naciones Unidas para la estabilización de Haití (Minustah).
La logística parecía ser el principal problema. Por ejemplo, en el liceo de Pétion-ville, que concentraba más de 70 circuitos electorales, las urnas estaban apoyadas en pequeñas mesas o en rincones de bancos, lo que dificultó la votación.
"Es realmente lamentable, pero siempre es así en las elecciones", lamentó Frantz Ernso, un observador de la sociedad civil haitiana.
"La gente vota en cuclillas frente a bancas. En términos de espacio, no hubo mejoras en relación al 9 de agosto", sostiene, constatando la estrechez de los lugares de votación donde están instaladas las cuatro urnas necesarias para elegir alcaldes, diputados y senadores, además del nuevo jefe de Estado.
Poco después de las 10:00a. m.), Jude Celestin, uno de los favoritos para en las presidenciales, llegaba a su centro de votación.
"Vamos directo hacia una victoria en la primera ronda", dijo el candidato del partido Lapeh a la AFP, pidiendo a sus seguidores que continuasen votando pacíficamente.
Otros como Patrick Cherilus, un ciudadano de 40 años, ejercieron su derecho al voto con un interés particular en las elecciones municipales: "Me gustaría que Pétionville esté limpia y bonita, como cuando nací. Pero hoy en día está llena de basura".
"El país necesita más escuelas, más puestos de trabajo y los centros de salud para niños", agregó.
La Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA) desplegó 125 observadores en todo el país y el jefe de la misión, el excanciller brasileño Celso Amorim, aseguró que estaba satisfecho con el desarrollo de los comicios. "Ha habido algunos retrasos, pero todos los centros se abrieron progresivamente", afirmó.
Después del arrasador sismo de enero del 2010, que dejó más de 200.000 muertos y un millón y medio de personas en la calle, el país más pobre de América inició un largo proceso de reconstrucción, ralentizado por el conflictivo contexto político.
Tras la caída de la dictadura de los Duvalier en 1986, Haití estuvo marcado por la inestabilidad política con una sucesión de elecciones impugnadas y varios golpes de Estado.
La profunda crisis entre el gobierno y la oposición desde la llegada a la presidencia de Michel Martelly en mayo del 2011 impidió la realización de elecciones locales y legislativas.
5,8 millones de personas estaban convocadas para sufragar
Finalmente, este domingo los electores eligieron nuevamente a sus alcaldes, pues a falta de comicios, estos fueron progresivamente reemplazados desde 2013 por funcionarios ejecutivos designados por la presidencia.
La jornada electoral también permitió elegir a diputados y senadores.
A causa de la repetida postergación de las elecciones legislativas, el Parlamento haitiano cesó en sus funciones el 13 de enero último. Tras la votación, la Asamblea Nacional y el Senado podrán finalmente reanudar su trabajo en enero de 2016.
Oficialmente hay 54 candidatos para suceder a Martelly. Algunos, con escasas o nulas posibilidades, anunciaron el abandono de su campaña en favor de candidatos más populares, pero como no renunciaron formalmente en los plazos legales exigidos, las fotos de todos ellos, con su nombre, símbolo y número del partido al que representan, figuran en las hojas de votación: un rompecabezas para la mitad de los votantes que son analfabetos.
(Noticia en desarrollo. Esta versión se actualizó a las 3:05 p. m. )
http://www.nacion.com/mundo/latinoamerica/Tranquilidad-retrasos-apertura-electorales-Haiti_0_1520248046.html
Haïti: satisfaction générale après des élections pacifiques
Par AFP — 25 octobre 2015 à 21:41
Haïti: satisfaction générale après des élections pacifiques
Les autorités haïtiennes, les observateurs internationaux et les électeurs se sont réjouis dimanche du bon déroulement des élections générales en Haïti permettant aux citoyens, qui se sont déplacés nombreux, de voter notamment pour choisir leur futur président.
Le scrutin clos, le président du conseil électoral provisoire (CEP) a qualifié d'«exploit» cette journée de vote. Lors d’une conférence de presse dimanche soir, il a tenu à remercier les différents acteurs qui ont participé au déroulement pacifique des élections dont les résultats ne seront connus que début novembre.
«A tous ces partis politiques qui, dans la précarité, se sont présentés à ce rendez-vous tant important pour l’avenir du pays, je leur dis que l’histoire le retiendra», a déclaré Pierre-Louis Opont. «Merci aux électeurs qui ont su garder leur calme et qui je l’espère ont pu choisir les nouveaux dirigeants qui auront la charge de l’Etat pour les prochaines années.»
Car à travers le pays, les files d’attente se sont étendues devant l’entrée des bureaux de vote, une scène qu’Haïti n’avait pas connue depuis près d’une décennie.
Les 5,8 millions d’Haïtiens votaient pour le premier tour de l’élection présidentielle, le second tour des législatives et le tour unique des municipales.
Cet engouement détonne nettement avec la précédente journée d’élections: le 9 août, le premier tour des législatives avait été fortement perturbé par des violences et des fraudes provoquant deux morts et une abstention massive.
A l’entrée du grand marché de Canapé-Vert, au coeur de la capitale, des agents mandatés par le CEP veillaient à ce que les personnes soient bien en possession de leur carte d’identité.
Les policiers en faction aux abords et à l’intérieur de ce grand centre de vote avaient le sourire et ont géré sans difficultés l’affluence.
«La police a mis une bonne stratégie sur pied, ça me satisfait. Beaucoup de corrections ont été faites suite aux dérives qui ont eu lieu le 9 août», observe Willy Saint-Fort après avoir glissé ses bulletins dans les quatre urnes posées sur l’étal d’ordinaire occupé par des fruits et légumes
. Discutant tranquillement avec ses amis, l’homme de 43 ans évoque un moment historique pour son pays. «Je veux féliciter les citoyens et citoyennes qui ont pris conscience que, pour que le pays change, c’est à nous Haïtiens d’agir, de nous mettre ensemble pour qu’on ait des bons dirigeants», exulte-t-il. «Il n’est plus question de gouvernement provisoire ou de violences.»
- 'Un pas important' - A l’instar du conseil électoral provisoire, le chef de la mission d’observation électorale, dépêchée par l’Organisation des Etats américains (OEA), a salué cet élan civique.
«Le peuple haïtien démontre la volonté de participer, je trouve tout cela positif,» a témoigné Celso Amorim. «C’est un pas important qu’Haïti est en train de faire aujourd’hui.»
Pour ces scrutins, c’est finalement la logistique qui s’est avérée le problème majeur. Faute d’espace par exemple dans le lycée de Pétionville, les isoloirs ont été posés sur des petites tables ou des coins de banc.
«C’est vraiment lamentable mais c’est toujours comme ça pour les élections», se désole Frantz Ernso, un observateur d’une organisation de la société civile haïtienne. «Les gens votent accroupis devant des bancs.»
Depuis le séisme ravageur de janvier 2010, qui avait fait plus de 200.000 morts et jeté à la rue un million et demi d’habitants, Haïti a entamé un long processus de reconstruction, ralenti par le contexte politique conflictuel.
La crise profonde entre l’exécutif et l’opposition depuis l’arrivée à la présidence de Michel Martelly en mai 2011 a empêché la tenue des élections locales et législatives.
Les élus municipaux, faute de scrutins, ont été progressivement remplacés par des agents exécutifs intérimaires, nommés directement par la présidence. Le parlement haïtien a lui cessé de fonctionner le 13 janvier dernier. Il y a officiellement 54 candidats en lice pour succéder au président haïtien Michel Martelly.
AFP
http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2015/10/25/haiti-satisfaction-generale-apres-des-elections-pacifiques_1408834
Haïti: satisfaction générale après des élections pacifiques
Les autorités haïtiennes, les observateurs internationaux et les électeurs se sont réjouis dimanche du bon déroulement des élections générales en Haïti permettant aux citoyens, qui se sont déplacés nombreux, de voter notamment pour choisir leur futur président.
Le scrutin clos, le président du conseil électoral provisoire (CEP) a qualifié d'«exploit» cette journée de vote. Lors d’une conférence de presse dimanche soir, il a tenu à remercier les différents acteurs qui ont participé au déroulement pacifique des élections dont les résultats ne seront connus que début novembre.
«A tous ces partis politiques qui, dans la précarité, se sont présentés à ce rendez-vous tant important pour l’avenir du pays, je leur dis que l’histoire le retiendra», a déclaré Pierre-Louis Opont. «Merci aux électeurs qui ont su garder leur calme et qui je l’espère ont pu choisir les nouveaux dirigeants qui auront la charge de l’Etat pour les prochaines années.»
Car à travers le pays, les files d’attente se sont étendues devant l’entrée des bureaux de vote, une scène qu’Haïti n’avait pas connue depuis près d’une décennie.
Les 5,8 millions d’Haïtiens votaient pour le premier tour de l’élection présidentielle, le second tour des législatives et le tour unique des municipales.
Cet engouement détonne nettement avec la précédente journée d’élections: le 9 août, le premier tour des législatives avait été fortement perturbé par des violences et des fraudes provoquant deux morts et une abstention massive.
A l’entrée du grand marché de Canapé-Vert, au coeur de la capitale, des agents mandatés par le CEP veillaient à ce que les personnes soient bien en possession de leur carte d’identité.
Les policiers en faction aux abords et à l’intérieur de ce grand centre de vote avaient le sourire et ont géré sans difficultés l’affluence.
«La police a mis une bonne stratégie sur pied, ça me satisfait. Beaucoup de corrections ont été faites suite aux dérives qui ont eu lieu le 9 août», observe Willy Saint-Fort après avoir glissé ses bulletins dans les quatre urnes posées sur l’étal d’ordinaire occupé par des fruits et légumes
. Discutant tranquillement avec ses amis, l’homme de 43 ans évoque un moment historique pour son pays. «Je veux féliciter les citoyens et citoyennes qui ont pris conscience que, pour que le pays change, c’est à nous Haïtiens d’agir, de nous mettre ensemble pour qu’on ait des bons dirigeants», exulte-t-il. «Il n’est plus question de gouvernement provisoire ou de violences.»
- 'Un pas important' - A l’instar du conseil électoral provisoire, le chef de la mission d’observation électorale, dépêchée par l’Organisation des Etats américains (OEA), a salué cet élan civique.
«Le peuple haïtien démontre la volonté de participer, je trouve tout cela positif,» a témoigné Celso Amorim. «C’est un pas important qu’Haïti est en train de faire aujourd’hui.»
Pour ces scrutins, c’est finalement la logistique qui s’est avérée le problème majeur. Faute d’espace par exemple dans le lycée de Pétionville, les isoloirs ont été posés sur des petites tables ou des coins de banc.
«C’est vraiment lamentable mais c’est toujours comme ça pour les élections», se désole Frantz Ernso, un observateur d’une organisation de la société civile haïtienne. «Les gens votent accroupis devant des bancs.»
Depuis le séisme ravageur de janvier 2010, qui avait fait plus de 200.000 morts et jeté à la rue un million et demi d’habitants, Haïti a entamé un long processus de reconstruction, ralenti par le contexte politique conflictuel.
La crise profonde entre l’exécutif et l’opposition depuis l’arrivée à la présidence de Michel Martelly en mai 2011 a empêché la tenue des élections locales et législatives.
Les élus municipaux, faute de scrutins, ont été progressivement remplacés par des agents exécutifs intérimaires, nommés directement par la présidence. Le parlement haïtien a lui cessé de fonctionner le 13 janvier dernier. Il y a officiellement 54 candidats en lice pour succéder au président haïtien Michel Martelly.
AFP
http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2015/10/25/haiti-satisfaction-generale-apres-des-elections-pacifiques_1408834
Élections sans incident majeur en Haïti
Dimanche 25 octobre 2015
Près de six millions de Haïtiens étaient appelés aux urnes aujourd'hui pour choisir leur nouveau président et leurs représentants au Parlement et aux assemblées locales. Les opérations de vote se sont déroulées sans incident majeur.
Des échauffourées ont brièvement éclaté à certains endroits, mais les policiers, qui étaient postés à l'entrée des bureaux, y ont rapidement mis fin à l'aide de pistolets à décharge électrique.
Dans certains secteurs de Port-au-Prince et sur le Plateau central, des retards dans l'organisation du scrutin ont prolongé l'attente des électeurs qui souhaitaient exercer leur droit de vote.
Parmi les 54 candidats qui tentent de succéder à Michel Martelly, on note Maryse Narcisse, appuyée par l'ancien président Jean-Bertrand Aristide, et Jude Célestin, les deux favoris des sondages.
Le choix du président sortant Michel Martelly est plutôt Jovenel Moise, un nouveau venu en politique qui souhaite le rétablissement de l'armée. Il s'oppose entre autres à l'ancien sénateur, Moise Jean Charles, l'un de ceux qui a le plus critiqué Michel Martelly, et qui se veut un défenseur de la classe la plus pauvre d'Haïti.
En plus de leur prochain président, les 5,8 millions d'électeurs doivent choisir 129 députés et plusieurs autres représentants locaux.
Le grand défi de l'économie
Le résultat des élections risque de causer une surprise. À cause du nombre élevé de candidats, difficile de prédire qui l'emportera. Les sondages, peu fiables, se sont contredits tout au long des semaines de la campagne.
Une chose semble claire cependant. Peu importe celui qui sera élu président, il aura devant lui de grands défis, dont celui de remettre l'économie du pays sur les rails et de diminuer sa dépendance à l'aide internationale. C'est d'ailleurs en majeure partie grâce à l'aide étrangère qu'a été organisé tout le processus électoral, d'un coût estimé à 70 millions de dollars.
Sécurité à grand déploiement
La sécurité demeure une inquiétude importante. La police nationale haïtienne, formée de 12 500 membres, a joué un rôle prépondérant par rapport à la dernière élection présidentielle en raison du nombre réduit des troupes de maintien de la paix des Nations unies. L'ONU assure une présence au pays depuis 2004, lorsqu'une rébellion violente avait balayé le pays.
Les résultats complets sont attendus à la fin du mois de novembre, selon le Conseil électoral provisoire.
http://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/international/2015/10/25/004-election-presidentielle-haiti-narcisse-celestin-martelly.shtml
Près de six millions de Haïtiens étaient appelés aux urnes aujourd'hui pour choisir leur nouveau président et leurs représentants au Parlement et aux assemblées locales. Les opérations de vote se sont déroulées sans incident majeur.
Des échauffourées ont brièvement éclaté à certains endroits, mais les policiers, qui étaient postés à l'entrée des bureaux, y ont rapidement mis fin à l'aide de pistolets à décharge électrique.
Dans certains secteurs de Port-au-Prince et sur le Plateau central, des retards dans l'organisation du scrutin ont prolongé l'attente des électeurs qui souhaitaient exercer leur droit de vote.
Parmi les 54 candidats qui tentent de succéder à Michel Martelly, on note Maryse Narcisse, appuyée par l'ancien président Jean-Bertrand Aristide, et Jude Célestin, les deux favoris des sondages.
Le choix du président sortant Michel Martelly est plutôt Jovenel Moise, un nouveau venu en politique qui souhaite le rétablissement de l'armée. Il s'oppose entre autres à l'ancien sénateur, Moise Jean Charles, l'un de ceux qui a le plus critiqué Michel Martelly, et qui se veut un défenseur de la classe la plus pauvre d'Haïti.
En plus de leur prochain président, les 5,8 millions d'électeurs doivent choisir 129 députés et plusieurs autres représentants locaux.
Le grand défi de l'économie
Le résultat des élections risque de causer une surprise. À cause du nombre élevé de candidats, difficile de prédire qui l'emportera. Les sondages, peu fiables, se sont contredits tout au long des semaines de la campagne.
Une chose semble claire cependant. Peu importe celui qui sera élu président, il aura devant lui de grands défis, dont celui de remettre l'économie du pays sur les rails et de diminuer sa dépendance à l'aide internationale. C'est d'ailleurs en majeure partie grâce à l'aide étrangère qu'a été organisé tout le processus électoral, d'un coût estimé à 70 millions de dollars.
Sécurité à grand déploiement
La sécurité demeure une inquiétude importante. La police nationale haïtienne, formée de 12 500 membres, a joué un rôle prépondérant par rapport à la dernière élection présidentielle en raison du nombre réduit des troupes de maintien de la paix des Nations unies. L'ONU assure une présence au pays depuis 2004, lorsqu'une rébellion violente avait balayé le pays.
Les résultats complets sont attendus à la fin du mois de novembre, selon le Conseil électoral provisoire.
http://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/international/2015/10/25/004-election-presidentielle-haiti-narcisse-celestin-martelly.shtml
Soulagement en Haïti après des élections sans incidents
Par RFIPublié le 26-10-2015
En Haïti, la journée de dimanche était chargée avec pas moins de trois scrutins : le premier tour de la présidentielle et le deuxième tour des législatives et des municipales. Dans l'ensemble, c'est le soulagement et la satisfaction qui dominent. Satisfaction car les Haïtiens sont allés voter en nombre. Soulagement aussi parce que le vote s'est déroulé dans le calme alors qu'on redoutait des violences comme lors du premier tour le 9 août dernier.
En Haïti, ce dimanche, les bureaux de vote ont ouvert avec un léger retard à cause des problèmes logistiques, mais au fil de la journée, les gens ont pu voter et les Haïtiens ont fait mentir toutes les analyses qui craignaient une forte abstention, a constaté notre correspondante à Port-au-Prince, Amélie Baron. Ils ont répondu à l’appel des urnes et malgré la chaleur, ils ont patienté dans le calme, en files indiennes à l’entrée des bureaux de vote. Et ces citoyens ont exprimé leur envie de changement, de voir leur pays sortir de l’instabilité politique.
L’autre différence de taille avec la précédente journée de vote, le 9 août dernier, a été la forte mobilisation policière, aux abords et dans les centres de vote. Une présence dissuasive qui a donc empêché les incidents et les fraudes massives. « Je tiens à féliciter le haut commandement de la police », s'exclamait ainsi au micro de notre envoyé spéciale Stéfani Schüler, un habitant du département du Centre, qui expliquait que lors du premier tour des législatives et municipales, « il y avait seulement un policier » dans son bureau de vote.
En fin de journée, Pierre-Louis Opont, le président du Conseil électoral provisoire, a d'ailleurs tenu à remercier l'ensemble des acteurs qui ont permis ce qu'il qualifie « d'exploit » : « A tous ces partis politiques, qui dans la précarité se sont présentés à ce rendez-vous très important pour l’avenir du pays, je leur dis que l’histoire le retiendra. Merci aux électeurs qui ont su garder leur calme et qui, je l’espère, ont pu choisir les nouveaux dirigeants qui auront la charge de l’Etat pour les prochaines années. » Pierre-Louis Opont a également remercié le gouvernement, le président de la République et les forces de l’ordre haïtiennes pour l’organisation des scrutins.
Dans l'attente des résultats
Après cette satisfaction générale, l’heure est maintenant au dépouillement et il va falloir être patient car les premiers résultats ne seront donnés que le 3 novembre, notamment ceux du premier tour de la présidentielle, le scrutin qui suscite le plus d’intérêt auprès de la population.
Trois candidats font figure de favoris, mais ils ne seront que deux à participer au second tour, prévu le 27 décembre. Autant dire que cette annonce des résultats dans huit jours est désormais attendue avec impatience.
http://www.rfi.fr/ameriques/20151026-soulagement-haiti-apres-elections-incidents-presidentielle-port-prince
vendredi 23 octobre 2015
Paul Haggis' quest for Peace and Justice in Haiti
BY JON DEKEL,
CANADA.COM SEPTEMBER 14, 2012
Five years ago, Canadian director Paul Haggis read an Italian article about a man named Father Rick Frechette. Frechette, an American, arrived in Haiti some 20 years previous for theological reasons but soon found what the children of the poverty stricken nation were in dire need of, even more so than faith, was a doctor.
Spending his weekdays studying in New York and weekends in the slums of Port-au-Prince, in 1988, Frechette attained a medical degree from the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine and had been working in the slums of the country's beleaguered capital ever since. Haggis, three years removed from the Oscar success of Crash and having just finished writing and directing the political film, In The Valley of Elah, was moved by Frechette’s story. So much so that he booked a ticket to Port-au-Prince and went to meet the the good doctor.
“He just seemed like an incredible man so I decided to go down and find him,” Haggis recalls, a slight glaze crossing his eyes. “I remember hanging out with him all day, watching him work in the slums… I’d seen poverty before; I’d never seen this level of poverty.”
As night fell, the two fast friends retired to Frechette’s guesthouse.
“We drank a lot of wine, ate a lot of pasta -- because there are a lot of Italians volunteering there -- and bonded. His stories are just remarkable. All the stories he’s done.
“I saw what he was doing, which was so much for so little, and figured I had to do something to help.”
Half a decade later, Artists for Peace and Justice, the charitable origination which Haggis heads, has raised nearly $10 million for Haiti’s impoverished youth. However, at the time, few in native North America had even heard of the nation which shares an island, Hispaniola, with the Dominican Republic.
“It was very hard to get attention,” Haggis says of his early attempts to raise awareness and money for Haiti. “It’s the poorest country in the western hemisphere, one of the poorest countries in the world, and it’s just off our shores.”
“The Canadians used to go there, it was a vacation spot under [dictators] Papa Doc and Baby Doc and I think it’s a country that we, the western world, helped to rape,” he continues. “France, Britain, America, we did a real number on these people for a long time and so it was really important to me to start this cycle back.”
Sitting on a couch in the lobby of the InterContinental hotel in downtown Toronto mere hours from APJ’s Toronto Film Festival annual charity lunch – which will end with big stars like Jude Law and Alexander Skarsgard witness a moving acoustic set by The Arcade Fire, raising over $550,000 (U.S.) in the process -- Haggis recalls his initial fundraising effort, which involved Frechette, a man who spent a good portion of his life in Haitian slums, coming to Haggis’ Los Angeles home to break bread with his friends.
“He didn’t recognize any of them. He would say, ‘You know that attractive blonde woman there?” I’d say, “Charlize Theron?” he’d say, “What does she do?” and I’d explain that she’s an actress. The only one he recognized was Barbra Streisand, that he knew,” Haggis laughs.
“From there I would take friends down to Haiti and show them the work that was being done and that was when we decided to start our own organization,” he explains. “The donations that were being given through another organization, so much of it was being eaten up by organization costs. And I thought those were way too high so I found a way to minimize that.”
And then, at the dawn of 2010, the earthquake hit and suddenly everybody knew where Haiti was.
Shortly after news of the quake's impact got out, Haggis managed to get in touch with Frechette. When he asked him what supplies he needed, Father Rick simply replied, “Cash.”
Gathering $50,000 in a duffle bag, Haggis tried to make his way to Haiti but, understandably, was having little luck. Stuck at Miami International airport for two days, Haggis eventually made it to Port-au-Prince thanks to pal Sean Penn, who flew out from L.A. to give him a ride.
“I can only imagine what Dresden looked like after the war, and that’s what it looked like,” Haggis recalls of his experience after touching down in January of 2010. “So you see something like that and it’s easy to put that on a screen to move people.”
“Our main objective for APJ initially was to help Father Rick, it was more about creating a better health system. After the earthquake hit we decided it needs to be about education,” Natasha Koifman, a Canadian publicist who has sat on APJ’s advisory board since 2009 recalls. “We need to help Haitians help themselves”
With that new mandate, APJ set its sights on a new goal: to build the first free high school for the children of Port-au-Prince's slums.
“So January 11 is when the earthquake hit and on January 23 Paul and I planned an event at his house that raised over $4 million,” Koifman explains. The Academy of Peace and Justice was completed last year.
“There are 14,000 registered charities in Haiti. Over 12,000 of those have a mandate for education. Not one of those had ever built a high school before we came around,” Haggis, who drew the first concept for the school on a napkin, says. “We go straight to the people. We supply the means, the money. Our school there, which is the very first free high school for the children of the poor, is designed by Haitians, built by Haitians and administrated by Haitians.
“We let them decide what they want instead of being the neo-colonialists who swagger in saying, ‘We know what’s best for you.' Which is what most other folks do there. And because of that they’re really ineffective.”
Next up for the organization is an arts institute.
“We absorbed a film school down there. We got the money to buy a beautiful lot and we got money from the We Are The World foundation to build a recording studio, a recording school and an audio engineering school so we’re slowly, well, not that slowly, we’re putting together a technical school.” Haggis boasts. “And bands like The Arcade Fire (whose singer Regine Chassagne has Haitian roots) are involved."
“We are effective because we can make decisions quickly and act quickly” he explains, moments before heading out to finish the final touches on the afternoon’s lunch, then immediately back to Rome where he’s filming his latest film, Third Person.
An artist for peace and justice’s work is never done.
CANADA.COM SEPTEMBER 14, 2012Five years ago, Canadian director Paul Haggis read an Italian article about a man named Father Rick Frechette. Frechette, an American, arrived in Haiti some 20 years previous for theological reasons but soon found what the children of the poverty stricken nation were in dire need of, even more so than faith, was a doctor.
Spending his weekdays studying in New York and weekends in the slums of Port-au-Prince, in 1988, Frechette attained a medical degree from the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine and had been working in the slums of the country's beleaguered capital ever since. Haggis, three years removed from the Oscar success of Crash and having just finished writing and directing the political film, In The Valley of Elah, was moved by Frechette’s story. So much so that he booked a ticket to Port-au-Prince and went to meet the the good doctor.
“He just seemed like an incredible man so I decided to go down and find him,” Haggis recalls, a slight glaze crossing his eyes. “I remember hanging out with him all day, watching him work in the slums… I’d seen poverty before; I’d never seen this level of poverty.”
As night fell, the two fast friends retired to Frechette’s guesthouse.
“We drank a lot of wine, ate a lot of pasta -- because there are a lot of Italians volunteering there -- and bonded. His stories are just remarkable. All the stories he’s done.
“I saw what he was doing, which was so much for so little, and figured I had to do something to help.”
Half a decade later, Artists for Peace and Justice, the charitable origination which Haggis heads, has raised nearly $10 million for Haiti’s impoverished youth. However, at the time, few in native North America had even heard of the nation which shares an island, Hispaniola, with the Dominican Republic.
“It was very hard to get attention,” Haggis says of his early attempts to raise awareness and money for Haiti. “It’s the poorest country in the western hemisphere, one of the poorest countries in the world, and it’s just off our shores.”
“The Canadians used to go there, it was a vacation spot under [dictators] Papa Doc and Baby Doc and I think it’s a country that we, the western world, helped to rape,” he continues. “France, Britain, America, we did a real number on these people for a long time and so it was really important to me to start this cycle back.”
Sitting on a couch in the lobby of the InterContinental hotel in downtown Toronto mere hours from APJ’s Toronto Film Festival annual charity lunch – which will end with big stars like Jude Law and Alexander Skarsgard witness a moving acoustic set by The Arcade Fire, raising over $550,000 (U.S.) in the process -- Haggis recalls his initial fundraising effort, which involved Frechette, a man who spent a good portion of his life in Haitian slums, coming to Haggis’ Los Angeles home to break bread with his friends.
“He didn’t recognize any of them. He would say, ‘You know that attractive blonde woman there?” I’d say, “Charlize Theron?” he’d say, “What does she do?” and I’d explain that she’s an actress. The only one he recognized was Barbra Streisand, that he knew,” Haggis laughs.
“From there I would take friends down to Haiti and show them the work that was being done and that was when we decided to start our own organization,” he explains. “The donations that were being given through another organization, so much of it was being eaten up by organization costs. And I thought those were way too high so I found a way to minimize that.”
And then, at the dawn of 2010, the earthquake hit and suddenly everybody knew where Haiti was.
Shortly after news of the quake's impact got out, Haggis managed to get in touch with Frechette. When he asked him what supplies he needed, Father Rick simply replied, “Cash.”
Gathering $50,000 in a duffle bag, Haggis tried to make his way to Haiti but, understandably, was having little luck. Stuck at Miami International airport for two days, Haggis eventually made it to Port-au-Prince thanks to pal Sean Penn, who flew out from L.A. to give him a ride.
“I can only imagine what Dresden looked like after the war, and that’s what it looked like,” Haggis recalls of his experience after touching down in January of 2010. “So you see something like that and it’s easy to put that on a screen to move people.”
“Our main objective for APJ initially was to help Father Rick, it was more about creating a better health system. After the earthquake hit we decided it needs to be about education,” Natasha Koifman, a Canadian publicist who has sat on APJ’s advisory board since 2009 recalls. “We need to help Haitians help themselves”
With that new mandate, APJ set its sights on a new goal: to build the first free high school for the children of Port-au-Prince's slums.
“So January 11 is when the earthquake hit and on January 23 Paul and I planned an event at his house that raised over $4 million,” Koifman explains. The Academy of Peace and Justice was completed last year.
“There are 14,000 registered charities in Haiti. Over 12,000 of those have a mandate for education. Not one of those had ever built a high school before we came around,” Haggis, who drew the first concept for the school on a napkin, says. “We go straight to the people. We supply the means, the money. Our school there, which is the very first free high school for the children of the poor, is designed by Haitians, built by Haitians and administrated by Haitians.
“We let them decide what they want instead of being the neo-colonialists who swagger in saying, ‘We know what’s best for you.' Which is what most other folks do there. And because of that they’re really ineffective.”
Next up for the organization is an arts institute.
“We absorbed a film school down there. We got the money to buy a beautiful lot and we got money from the We Are The World foundation to build a recording studio, a recording school and an audio engineering school so we’re slowly, well, not that slowly, we’re putting together a technical school.” Haggis boasts. “And bands like The Arcade Fire (whose singer Regine Chassagne has Haitian roots) are involved."
“We are effective because we can make decisions quickly and act quickly” he explains, moments before heading out to finish the final touches on the afternoon’s lunch, then immediately back to Rome where he’s filming his latest film, Third Person.
An artist for peace and justice’s work is never done.
With No Clear Frontrunner in Haiti’s Upcoming Presidential Election, Polls Indicate Possibility of a Runoff
October 22, 2015 Posted by Jasmine Nelson
Voter-Haiti-AP_700With Haiti’s plethora of presidential candidates, polls show some aspirants rising to the top, though the frontrunner remains unclear. Two polls give different results of voters’ first choice among 54 candidates. The likeliest scenario? No candidate will get more than 50 percent of the vote on Election Day, October 25, and a runoff will take place December 27.
The election marks a second run for president by Jude Célestin of the Alternative League for Progress and Haitian Emancipation party, or LAPEH. Célestin ran in 2011 under the Unity Party of then-President René Préval, but dropped out when the Organization of American States contested the first-round of voting results, which originally put Célestin ahead of Michel Martelly, who eventually became president. With a Swiss education in mechanical engineering, Célestin took a job in the government’s road construction agency in 1997, becoming director in 2006 under Préval. Célestin is running on a campaign platform to boost job creation and fight government corruption. He has also voiced support for harmonious relations with the Dominican Republic.
Jovenel Moïse is the presidential candidate representing the current ruling Haitian Tèt Kale Party, or PHTK. Moïse is promising to further the Martelly administration’s efforts on education and tourism. As head of Agritrans, Haiti’s first agricultural free zone dedicated to exporting bananas, Moïse is also a proponent of creating jobs and increasing exports through the agricultural sector. “In terms of arable land, we have nothing to envy of other producers at the level of the Caribbean,” he said. This summer, Haiti’s Departmental Electoral Office of Litigation (BCED) considered accusations that Moïse used a portion of Agritrans funds to finance his electoral campaign, but ultimately approved his candidacy in June. The presidential bid is Moïse’s first political race.
Presidential candidate and former Senator Moïse Jean-Charles has long been one of the Martelly government’s most vocal critics. He first entered the Senate in 2009 as a representative of the country’s North department, where he served on the Foreign Affairs, Natural Resources and Rural Development, Finance, and Agricultural committees. He also won three terms as Milot mayor from 1994 to 2004.
Though Jean-Charles represents the Pitit Desalin party, he was a mayor under the banner of Fanmi Lavalas—the party of Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Read more at as-coa.org
http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/10/22/haiti-presidential-candidates-polls/
Haiti Officials Promise Peaceful Vote
Associated Press
October 22, 2015 8:55 AM
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI
About a dozen top Haitian officials appeared on state television Wednesday in an effort to reassure anxious voters that they will keep their promises of organized, fair and peaceful elections this weekend.
If they indeed pull it off, it would be the first time in Haiti's young democracy that a vote was not plagued by disorder and fraud allegations. Elections have never been easy in Haiti, and authorities have made similar pledges after messy first rounds in recent decades.
On Wednesday afternoon, the prime minister, various Cabinet members, the police chief and the elections director spoke on the national broadcast about preparations for Sunday elections that will see Haitians casting ballots for president, Parliament and local offices.
Looking directly into a TV camera, Prime Minister Evans Paul told Haitians citizens that the weekend balloting will be held as scheduled and voters will be respected.
"Everybody prepare to go vote, there will be elections,'' Paul said, adding that "a lot of money has been spent, a lot of energy has gone into'' getting ready for this year's three-round electoral cycle. Electoral officials say the total cost of the elections is $69 million, only $14 million put up by Haiti.
Delays and disorder troubled the first round of legislative elections on Aug. 9, which saw just 18 percent voter turnout. That balloting was billed as a crucial test of the country's electoral system ahead of the first-round presidential vote this weekend.
Yet numerous polling stations had to wait hours for ballots after voting was supposed to start at dawn that day. In some areas, voters grew exasperated after being told they couldn't vote because their names weren't on official lists. And some voting centers were so badly marred by violence and intimidation that balloting was cancelled in 25 districts.
But about 2 months later, Pierre Louis Opont, head of the country's Provisional Electoral Council, said authorities have identified all the weak spots and made various changes, including firing three staffers. He asserted there will be no organizational disarray for Sunday's balloting.
"We are sure that security will be in place so that everybody can come out and vote in peace,'' Opont asserted, adding that he's confident that all of the country's roughly 13,700 voting centers will be open at 6:00 a.m. sharp as scheduled.
When a Haitian journalist asked him about the allegations of biased tallies at tabulation centers and an overall lack of transparency, Opont said the electoral council would put out a statement about their "methods'' of tallying votes at some point after the Oct. 25 contest.
Calm and transparent elections are unprecedented in Haiti, where many voters are skeptical of the fairness of the electoral process, given the country's recent history of tumultuous or just plain messy votes. For most of its history, Haitians were ruled by dictatorships.
The Provisional Electoral Council has repeatedly been criticized for votes plagued by disorganization, ballot irregularities and fraud allegations. In 2006, a former electoral council chief was forced to flee the country after he was accused of trying to manipulate results and attackers looted and burned his farmhouse.
While Haiti struggles with significant voter apathy due to chronic failures by the government, there are also voters like Derosier Amos, a university student in agricultural science, who say they are determined to make their voices heard Sunday. "I'm going to vote no matter what because I think it is my responsibility as a citizen,'' he said.
http://www.voanews.com/content/haiti-officials-promise-peaceful-vote/3018262.html
October 22, 2015 8:55 AM
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI
About a dozen top Haitian officials appeared on state television Wednesday in an effort to reassure anxious voters that they will keep their promises of organized, fair and peaceful elections this weekend.
If they indeed pull it off, it would be the first time in Haiti's young democracy that a vote was not plagued by disorder and fraud allegations. Elections have never been easy in Haiti, and authorities have made similar pledges after messy first rounds in recent decades.
On Wednesday afternoon, the prime minister, various Cabinet members, the police chief and the elections director spoke on the national broadcast about preparations for Sunday elections that will see Haitians casting ballots for president, Parliament and local offices.
Looking directly into a TV camera, Prime Minister Evans Paul told Haitians citizens that the weekend balloting will be held as scheduled and voters will be respected.
"Everybody prepare to go vote, there will be elections,'' Paul said, adding that "a lot of money has been spent, a lot of energy has gone into'' getting ready for this year's three-round electoral cycle. Electoral officials say the total cost of the elections is $69 million, only $14 million put up by Haiti.
Delays and disorder troubled the first round of legislative elections on Aug. 9, which saw just 18 percent voter turnout. That balloting was billed as a crucial test of the country's electoral system ahead of the first-round presidential vote this weekend.
Yet numerous polling stations had to wait hours for ballots after voting was supposed to start at dawn that day. In some areas, voters grew exasperated after being told they couldn't vote because their names weren't on official lists. And some voting centers were so badly marred by violence and intimidation that balloting was cancelled in 25 districts.
But about 2 months later, Pierre Louis Opont, head of the country's Provisional Electoral Council, said authorities have identified all the weak spots and made various changes, including firing three staffers. He asserted there will be no organizational disarray for Sunday's balloting.
"We are sure that security will be in place so that everybody can come out and vote in peace,'' Opont asserted, adding that he's confident that all of the country's roughly 13,700 voting centers will be open at 6:00 a.m. sharp as scheduled.
When a Haitian journalist asked him about the allegations of biased tallies at tabulation centers and an overall lack of transparency, Opont said the electoral council would put out a statement about their "methods'' of tallying votes at some point after the Oct. 25 contest.
Calm and transparent elections are unprecedented in Haiti, where many voters are skeptical of the fairness of the electoral process, given the country's recent history of tumultuous or just plain messy votes. For most of its history, Haitians were ruled by dictatorships.
The Provisional Electoral Council has repeatedly been criticized for votes plagued by disorganization, ballot irregularities and fraud allegations. In 2006, a former electoral council chief was forced to flee the country after he was accused of trying to manipulate results and attackers looted and burned his farmhouse.
While Haiti struggles with significant voter apathy due to chronic failures by the government, there are also voters like Derosier Amos, a university student in agricultural science, who say they are determined to make their voices heard Sunday. "I'm going to vote no matter what because I think it is my responsibility as a citizen,'' he said.
http://www.voanews.com/content/haiti-officials-promise-peaceful-vote/3018262.html
En Haïti, des élections tendues pour sortir de l'impasse
Par Victoria KOUSSA —
22 octobre 2015 En Haïti, des élections tendues pour sortir de l'impasse
Depuis cinq ans, aucune élection n’est arrivée à terme en Haïti. Les électeurs de l’Etat de la Caraïbe vont choisir dimanche 25 octobre leur président, leurs députés, leurs sénateurs et leurs maires. Quelques jours avant les scrutins, le pays le plus pauvre des Amériques est déjà secoué par la violence.
54 candidats à la présidence
«L’union fait la force», telle est la devise de Haïti. Mais le nombre considérable de prétendants à la présidence n’est pas très rassurant sur les possibilités de la mettre en pratique. Sur les 54 candidats, seule une quinzaine a déjà fait ses preuves sur la scène politique haïtienne.
Parmi eux, cinq sont donnés favoris dans le sondage réalisé par Sigma Stat Consulting Group, dont Maryse Narcisse (Fanmi Lavalas) et Jude Célestin (Ligue alternative pour le progrès et l’émancipation d’Haïti) qui arrivent en tête. Quant aux autres concurrents, ils sont inconnus du grand public.
Le passé de l’actuel président, Michel Martelly, cultive leur espoir d’être élu : il était chanteur. Un président de la République qui a pris en 2011 la suite d’une histoire politique complexe, avec trente ans de dictature et quelques coups d’Etat. L’enjeu de son mandat : panser les plaies haïtiennes à la suite du séisme dévastateur de janvier 2010, qui a causé la mort de 250 000 personnes et mis plus d’1,5 million d’Haïtiens à la rue. Une épidémie de choléra s’est développée après la catastrophe naturelle et transformée en crise sanitaire : depuis 2010, 9 000 Haïtiens en sont morts. Le virus était arrivé sur l’île avec les Casques bleus venus du Népal, un an avant le drame. Chaque année, des milliers de nouveaux cas sont signalés. L’année 2015 comptabilise plus de 20 000 malades supplémentaires.
Cinq ans après le séisme, près de 85 500 personnes s’entassent encore dans des bidonvilles, d’après Amnesty International. Sur 10,3 millions d’habitants, plus de la moitié vit sous le seuil de pauvreté, avec moins de 2,5 dollars par jour.
Une élection placée sous haute surveillance
Dimanche, ils seront 5,8 millions d’électeurs inscrits à être appelés aux urnes. Les Haïtiens choisiront leurs 142 maires, élus en un tour, qui prendront leurs fonctions fin décembre. Puis, 111 députés et 18 sénateurs seront élus pour occuper les chaises vides du Parlement, une absence qui se fait sentir depuis janvier. Les élections législatives ont déjà été repoussées après de violents affrontements en août, où quatre personnes sont mortes.
Quant au futur président élu, il prendra ses fonctions en février. Une élection présidentielle qui risque, une fois encore, d’être contestée. «En Haïti, nous n’aimons pas perdre. Les 53 perdants à la présidentielle vont s’entendre pour dire qu’il y a eu fraudes», déclare Kesner Pharel, un économiste haïtien, à l’AFP.
Ces dernières semaines, cinq officiers de police ont été tués aux alentours de la capitale, Port-au-Prince, à cause de violences urbaines. Plus de 10 000 policiers nationaux assureront la sécurité du pays dimanche, aux côtés des 2 730 Casques bleus de la Minustah (Mission des Nations unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti). Une équipe d’observateurs de l’Union européenne a également été envoyée sur place pour surveiller la tenue du scrutin.
Victoria KOUSSA
http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2015/10/22/en-haiti-des-elections-tendues-pour-sortir-de-l-impasse_1408049
22 octobre 2015 En Haïti, des élections tendues pour sortir de l'impasse
Depuis cinq ans, aucune élection n’est arrivée à terme en Haïti. Les électeurs de l’Etat de la Caraïbe vont choisir dimanche 25 octobre leur président, leurs députés, leurs sénateurs et leurs maires. Quelques jours avant les scrutins, le pays le plus pauvre des Amériques est déjà secoué par la violence.
54 candidats à la présidence
«L’union fait la force», telle est la devise de Haïti. Mais le nombre considérable de prétendants à la présidence n’est pas très rassurant sur les possibilités de la mettre en pratique. Sur les 54 candidats, seule une quinzaine a déjà fait ses preuves sur la scène politique haïtienne.
Parmi eux, cinq sont donnés favoris dans le sondage réalisé par Sigma Stat Consulting Group, dont Maryse Narcisse (Fanmi Lavalas) et Jude Célestin (Ligue alternative pour le progrès et l’émancipation d’Haïti) qui arrivent en tête. Quant aux autres concurrents, ils sont inconnus du grand public.
Le passé de l’actuel président, Michel Martelly, cultive leur espoir d’être élu : il était chanteur. Un président de la République qui a pris en 2011 la suite d’une histoire politique complexe, avec trente ans de dictature et quelques coups d’Etat. L’enjeu de son mandat : panser les plaies haïtiennes à la suite du séisme dévastateur de janvier 2010, qui a causé la mort de 250 000 personnes et mis plus d’1,5 million d’Haïtiens à la rue. Une épidémie de choléra s’est développée après la catastrophe naturelle et transformée en crise sanitaire : depuis 2010, 9 000 Haïtiens en sont morts. Le virus était arrivé sur l’île avec les Casques bleus venus du Népal, un an avant le drame. Chaque année, des milliers de nouveaux cas sont signalés. L’année 2015 comptabilise plus de 20 000 malades supplémentaires.
Cinq ans après le séisme, près de 85 500 personnes s’entassent encore dans des bidonvilles, d’après Amnesty International. Sur 10,3 millions d’habitants, plus de la moitié vit sous le seuil de pauvreté, avec moins de 2,5 dollars par jour.
Une élection placée sous haute surveillance
Dimanche, ils seront 5,8 millions d’électeurs inscrits à être appelés aux urnes. Les Haïtiens choisiront leurs 142 maires, élus en un tour, qui prendront leurs fonctions fin décembre. Puis, 111 députés et 18 sénateurs seront élus pour occuper les chaises vides du Parlement, une absence qui se fait sentir depuis janvier. Les élections législatives ont déjà été repoussées après de violents affrontements en août, où quatre personnes sont mortes.
Quant au futur président élu, il prendra ses fonctions en février. Une élection présidentielle qui risque, une fois encore, d’être contestée. «En Haïti, nous n’aimons pas perdre. Les 53 perdants à la présidentielle vont s’entendre pour dire qu’il y a eu fraudes», déclare Kesner Pharel, un économiste haïtien, à l’AFP.
Ces dernières semaines, cinq officiers de police ont été tués aux alentours de la capitale, Port-au-Prince, à cause de violences urbaines. Plus de 10 000 policiers nationaux assureront la sécurité du pays dimanche, aux côtés des 2 730 Casques bleus de la Minustah (Mission des Nations unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti). Une équipe d’observateurs de l’Union européenne a également été envoyée sur place pour surveiller la tenue du scrutin.
Victoria KOUSSA
http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2015/10/22/en-haiti-des-elections-tendues-pour-sortir-de-l-impasse_1408049
Haïti: Cité Soleil, le bidonville dont se jouent gangs et politiciens
Par Falila Gbadamassi@GeopolisFTV
Publié le 21/10/2015
Les gangs et les politiciens contribuent à faire empirer le quotidien des habitants de Cité Soleil, le plus grand bidonville de l'hémisphère Nord. Comme souvent, à l'approche d'un rendez-vous électoral en Haïti, la commune est livrée à la violence de criminels prêts à tout pour s'arroger un pouvoir qui sera chèrement revendu aux candidats prêts à payer pour remporter des voix.
L’atmosphère s’est tendue à quelques jours du scrutin présidentiel du 25 octobre 2015, dont les Haïtiens n’attendent pas grand-chose. «On nous promet des emplois mais quand ils seront élus, on les verra juste passer dans leur gros 4X4 avec leurs amis», affirme une vendeuse ambulante de fruits à Port-au-Prince, la capitale haïtienne, interrogée par l’AFP. «Pour nous le peuple, ça ne sert à rien d'aller voter», poursuit-elle.
Peut-être, mais «le peuple», celui qui vit à Cité Soleil dans la plus grande des précarités, est devenu un enjeu électoral. Fini le temps où le dictateur Jean-Claude Duvalier et son épouse, sous leurs allures charitables, jetaient des billets par les fenêtres de leur voiture aux «pauvres» Haïtiens qu’ils pillaient de façon éhontée. A l'heure de la démocratie, on achète dorénavant les voix des démunis.
La politique à Cité Soleil, une affaire de gangs
Cité Soleil, fief de l'ancien président Jean-Bertrand Aristide sous la dictature de Jean-Claude Duvalier, est devenu au fil des ans une commune où criminalité et politique sont intimement mêlées. Aristide n'est d'ailleurs pas étranger au phénomène. En 1990, quand il est porté au pouvoir, c’est à Cité-Soleil qu’on se réjouit le plus du plébiscite dont le prêtre fait l’objet, se souvenait Anne Fuller du Miami Herald en 2003 dans un témoignage publié sur le site du groupe de recherche Haïti Democracy Project.
Il décevra très vite cette base électorale mais prendra le soin de la maintenir sous son joug. Au début des années 2000, quand il revient de nouveau au pouvoir, ses soutiens sont des jeunes gangsters qui sèment la terreur dans Cité Soleil. En 2002, Jean-Bertrand Aristide nomme même un certain Fritz Joseph maire du bidonville. Le jeune homme est un ancien du Front révolutionnaire armé pour le progrès d’Haïti, plus tard baptisé Front pour l'avancement et le progrès haïtien (FRAPH), un groupe paramilitaire qui fit chèrement payer aux populations du bidonville leur soutien au prêtre-président quand il fut renversé en 1991, après quelques mois de règne. Comment avait-il pu prendre cette décision?
«La réponse réside dans la continuité entre le FRAPH, un groupe paramilitaire sous une dictature militaire, et les gangs qui soutiennent (alors en 2003) le président Aristide», analysait la journaliste Anne Fuller. Les gangs, réminiscences parfois des Chimères (ces milices qui avaient aidé Aristide à se maintenir au pouvoir), continuent de terroriser au quotidien les habitants du ghetto.
Des violences ont provoqué vendredi 16 octobre à Cité Soleil, le grand bidonville de l'hémisphère Nord qui s’est créé aux abords de la capitale Port-au-Prince, la mort de deux femmes enceintes et d’au moins 13 personnes, selon l’agence américaine Associated Press (AP). Selon certaines sources, elles auraient été causées par des opérations de police qui visent les gangs sévissant dans le ghetto. D’autres expliquent qu’elles sont le résultat d’affrontements entre bandes rivales, à l’instar du journal Le Nouvelliste, l’un des deux quotidiens haïtiens. Près de 2000 personnes ont quitté le bidonville pour fuir les violences.
Argent contre voix
Esaïe Bochard, l'un des agents intérimaires de l'exécutif à Cité Soleil, a confié à l'AP que la police mène effectivement des opérations contre les gangs pour garantir la sécurité avant les élections générales. Le responsable confirme que ces violences ont un lien direct avec la politique. «Les nouvelles violences, enregistrées à Cité Soleil, s’expliquent par le fait que des candidats aux prochaines élections veulent avoir le contrôle de ce bidonville, qui représente une zone électorale importante», confirme Rovelson Apollon, le coordonnateur national de l’observation à la Commission épiscopale justice et paix (Jilap), cité par Alterpresse. Le site d’information haïtien ajoute : «Pour ce faire, les candidats influenceraient les groupes de gangs pour y parvenir.»
Le quotidien canadien Le Devoir relayait déjà la pratique dénoncée par un ancien journaliste lors de la présidentielle de 2011. «Les dirigeants haïtiens ont l'habitude d'accaparer les bandits pour qu'ils les aident politiquement», confiait-il au quotidien «en froissant le pouce et l'index pour signifier qu'ils le font en échange d'argent».
Haïti en miniature Depuis le début de l’année 2015, une guerre sans merci pour le pouvoir a commencé en prévision des élections générales, rapporte Le Nouvelliste. «C’est ainsi que fonctionne la politique à Haïti. Certains politiciens distribuent de l’argent (pour s’acheter des voix) et les gangs tuent pour le récupérer», a confié à l’AP le musicien et activiste Gueldy René. De même, également sollicitée par AP, Jessica Hsu, directrice de l’organisation à but non lucratif Haiti Communitere, qui conduit des projets avec les résidents du bidonville Cité Soleil, fait le même constat. L'humanitaire estime que ces populations défavorisées sont de nouveau utilisées comme des «pions» par les politiciens. «C’est ce qui arrive à chaque fois ici», conclut-elle.
«Si vous prêtez attention deux minutes aux propos de la majorité des candidats à la présidence, vous pouvez être convaincus qu'ils nous viennent de la planète Mars», confiait Frantz Duval, le rédacteur en chef du Nouvelliste, à l'AFP. En d’autres termes, nombre des 54 candidats à la présidence d’Haïti, pays le plus pauvre des Amériques, sont déconnectés des problèmes de leurs compatriotes. Le sort réservé par les politiciens à Cité Soleil, concentré des maux qui rongent Haïti, laisse très peu de place à l'optimisme.
Publié le 21/10/2015
Les gangs et les politiciens contribuent à faire empirer le quotidien des habitants de Cité Soleil, le plus grand bidonville de l'hémisphère Nord. Comme souvent, à l'approche d'un rendez-vous électoral en Haïti, la commune est livrée à la violence de criminels prêts à tout pour s'arroger un pouvoir qui sera chèrement revendu aux candidats prêts à payer pour remporter des voix.
L’atmosphère s’est tendue à quelques jours du scrutin présidentiel du 25 octobre 2015, dont les Haïtiens n’attendent pas grand-chose. «On nous promet des emplois mais quand ils seront élus, on les verra juste passer dans leur gros 4X4 avec leurs amis», affirme une vendeuse ambulante de fruits à Port-au-Prince, la capitale haïtienne, interrogée par l’AFP. «Pour nous le peuple, ça ne sert à rien d'aller voter», poursuit-elle.
Peut-être, mais «le peuple», celui qui vit à Cité Soleil dans la plus grande des précarités, est devenu un enjeu électoral. Fini le temps où le dictateur Jean-Claude Duvalier et son épouse, sous leurs allures charitables, jetaient des billets par les fenêtres de leur voiture aux «pauvres» Haïtiens qu’ils pillaient de façon éhontée. A l'heure de la démocratie, on achète dorénavant les voix des démunis.
La politique à Cité Soleil, une affaire de gangs
Cité Soleil, fief de l'ancien président Jean-Bertrand Aristide sous la dictature de Jean-Claude Duvalier, est devenu au fil des ans une commune où criminalité et politique sont intimement mêlées. Aristide n'est d'ailleurs pas étranger au phénomène. En 1990, quand il est porté au pouvoir, c’est à Cité-Soleil qu’on se réjouit le plus du plébiscite dont le prêtre fait l’objet, se souvenait Anne Fuller du Miami Herald en 2003 dans un témoignage publié sur le site du groupe de recherche Haïti Democracy Project.
Il décevra très vite cette base électorale mais prendra le soin de la maintenir sous son joug. Au début des années 2000, quand il revient de nouveau au pouvoir, ses soutiens sont des jeunes gangsters qui sèment la terreur dans Cité Soleil. En 2002, Jean-Bertrand Aristide nomme même un certain Fritz Joseph maire du bidonville. Le jeune homme est un ancien du Front révolutionnaire armé pour le progrès d’Haïti, plus tard baptisé Front pour l'avancement et le progrès haïtien (FRAPH), un groupe paramilitaire qui fit chèrement payer aux populations du bidonville leur soutien au prêtre-président quand il fut renversé en 1991, après quelques mois de règne. Comment avait-il pu prendre cette décision?
«La réponse réside dans la continuité entre le FRAPH, un groupe paramilitaire sous une dictature militaire, et les gangs qui soutiennent (alors en 2003) le président Aristide», analysait la journaliste Anne Fuller. Les gangs, réminiscences parfois des Chimères (ces milices qui avaient aidé Aristide à se maintenir au pouvoir), continuent de terroriser au quotidien les habitants du ghetto.
Des violences ont provoqué vendredi 16 octobre à Cité Soleil, le grand bidonville de l'hémisphère Nord qui s’est créé aux abords de la capitale Port-au-Prince, la mort de deux femmes enceintes et d’au moins 13 personnes, selon l’agence américaine Associated Press (AP). Selon certaines sources, elles auraient été causées par des opérations de police qui visent les gangs sévissant dans le ghetto. D’autres expliquent qu’elles sont le résultat d’affrontements entre bandes rivales, à l’instar du journal Le Nouvelliste, l’un des deux quotidiens haïtiens. Près de 2000 personnes ont quitté le bidonville pour fuir les violences.
Argent contre voix
Esaïe Bochard, l'un des agents intérimaires de l'exécutif à Cité Soleil, a confié à l'AP que la police mène effectivement des opérations contre les gangs pour garantir la sécurité avant les élections générales. Le responsable confirme que ces violences ont un lien direct avec la politique. «Les nouvelles violences, enregistrées à Cité Soleil, s’expliquent par le fait que des candidats aux prochaines élections veulent avoir le contrôle de ce bidonville, qui représente une zone électorale importante», confirme Rovelson Apollon, le coordonnateur national de l’observation à la Commission épiscopale justice et paix (Jilap), cité par Alterpresse. Le site d’information haïtien ajoute : «Pour ce faire, les candidats influenceraient les groupes de gangs pour y parvenir.»
Le quotidien canadien Le Devoir relayait déjà la pratique dénoncée par un ancien journaliste lors de la présidentielle de 2011. «Les dirigeants haïtiens ont l'habitude d'accaparer les bandits pour qu'ils les aident politiquement», confiait-il au quotidien «en froissant le pouce et l'index pour signifier qu'ils le font en échange d'argent».
Haïti en miniature Depuis le début de l’année 2015, une guerre sans merci pour le pouvoir a commencé en prévision des élections générales, rapporte Le Nouvelliste. «C’est ainsi que fonctionne la politique à Haïti. Certains politiciens distribuent de l’argent (pour s’acheter des voix) et les gangs tuent pour le récupérer», a confié à l’AP le musicien et activiste Gueldy René. De même, également sollicitée par AP, Jessica Hsu, directrice de l’organisation à but non lucratif Haiti Communitere, qui conduit des projets avec les résidents du bidonville Cité Soleil, fait le même constat. L'humanitaire estime que ces populations défavorisées sont de nouveau utilisées comme des «pions» par les politiciens. «C’est ce qui arrive à chaque fois ici», conclut-elle.
«Si vous prêtez attention deux minutes aux propos de la majorité des candidats à la présidence, vous pouvez être convaincus qu'ils nous viennent de la planète Mars», confiait Frantz Duval, le rédacteur en chef du Nouvelliste, à l'AFP. En d’autres termes, nombre des 54 candidats à la présidence d’Haïti, pays le plus pauvre des Amériques, sont déconnectés des problèmes de leurs compatriotes. Le sort réservé par les politiciens à Cité Soleil, concentré des maux qui rongent Haïti, laisse très peu de place à l'optimisme.
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