The protests began Friday morning to denounce the runoff election scheduled for Sunday, but after the Provisional Electoral Council, or CEP, announced that the ballot had been canceled the protesters focused their wrath on President Michel Martelly and the CEP, intensifying their demonstrations outside the council’s headquarters.
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“Facing a deteriorating security environment and threats to the electoral process, the CEP made a decision to postpone the electoral process”, said council president Pierre-Louis Opont. He did not say when it now might be held.
But it was called off amid charges that President Michel Martelly had rigged the vote in favor of his candidate, Jovenel Moïse.
Protesters calling for a halt to Sunday’s election and and a new vote have grown increasingly violent in recent days, prompting the council to conclude it was too risky to try to hold an election. The man lay bleeding profusely, but it was unclear how he was injured.
“They want to take power their way, because they can’t take it through the ballot”, he alleged Thursday.
“We’ve said “no” to that regime”. Disputed election results have brought paralyzing street protests and many broad accusations of electoral fraud from civil society and opposition groups.
Swiss-trained engineer Celestin said the government has not remedied cheating in the first round, and called the plans for the second round vote “a farce”.
Haiti’s newly appointed senators voted nearly unanimously to postpone the vote earlier this week, and the Catholic church, business groups and local election observers warned an election under such conditions would not be credible.
Moise had told Reuters earlier on Friday that he expected the vote to take place as planned, and was still in campaign mode.
Elections are always a struggle in Haiti.
Celestin was second in a field of 54 candidates in the October election, nearly eight percentage points behind Moise, a banana-exporter and political newcomer.
In a recorded message on state television, Martelly said a small group of people were trying to destroy the democratic process, and that he had ordered the police to make sure citizens could cast their vote without intimidation.
And on Tuesday, observers from the Organization of American States, expressed “concern on the current political impasse ahead of Sunday’s second round of elections”.
“Given the situation, I don’t think I should leave my house, I don’t know what is going to happen”, said Gaspar Levasaus, a security guard and resident of the Delmas district of the capital Port-au-Prince.
The decision will be seen as a blow to the ambitions of the United States, Haiti’s key foreign partner, which had pushed for voting to go ahead despite the violence.
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“We just want a new president”.
