By Samuel Maxime, Haiti Sentinel, July 14, 2015
Members of the international community were in attendance for the launching of the 2015 election season in a ceremony that was presided by the embattled CEP President Pierre Louis Opont. Opont had revealed a week earlier that as director general of the 2010 electoral council, the actual results published were not the will of the Haitian people.
Last week Pierre Louis Opont had to deny rumors that he had told police that there was an assassination plot hatched against him. Threats of violence have been reported by electoral councilors and the murder of a technician for the human rights representative to the body has raised the concern for an electoral process that needs to be recalibrated.
The CEP president has managed to silence calls for his resignation by announcing that even after the final list of candidates has been released, his Provisional Electoral Council would still be able to remove a candidate from the race and they could not return. Candidates are conflicted between their interests in seeing an opponent arbitrarily removed and wanting to speak their minds.
Although the ceremony held Friday July 9, 2015 was to announce the opening of the electoral campaign season, President Michel Martelly had organized a campaign-opening rally the day earlier in Cap-Haitien. Opont's electoral council has looked the other way as Martelly's PHTK political party has been campaigning for two years ahead of others.
When Martelly broke precedent and did not issue a clearance for former ministers to participate in elections, the Provisional Electoral Council followed up by eliminating those candidates, who for the inescapable institutional void, could not obtain the dècharge for elections.
All political parties were, by law, suppose to have received minimum campaign financing from the government weeks ago but had not. Meanwhile, the PHTK candidate for president, Jovenel Moïse, received a $27 million investment from the government and more than 1,000 hectares of land. He was not asked to present a financial clearance required for candidacy.
The Martelly National Palace leaked two correspondences it had with the Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes regarding Jacky Lumarque. The communications gave the appearance that Lumarque had been managing government funds and not cleared for it.
Without due process, Pierre Louis Opont announced the disqualification of Lumarque. And even when the President of the CSC/CA said in an interview with Le Nouvelliste a day after that Lumarque had not been managing government funds, Opont said candidates can find their way out of his elections, but no one can find their way into his elections.
There are dozens of candidate disqualifications that deserve reconsideration for a fair and inclusive election in Haiti. Pierre Louis Opont, after revealing his role in the 2010 election result change, said that he would release the actual results but since that interview on July 2, has not.
Opont should be the subject of a query into treason but rather is president of the 2015 elections. Even a candidate who gets the vote of the Haitian people is not safe. All bets are off.
Haiti: Election President Opont must resign, says Manigat
By Staff Writer, Haiti Sentinel, July 17, 2015
Former First Lady and 2010 presidential candidate, Mirlande Manigat, said that the presence of Pierre Louis Opont as president of the Provisional Electoral Council demonstrates the moral decay in Haiti. Earlier this month, Opont had admitted his role in the release of election results that did not reflect the will of the Haitian people in 2010 when he was director general of the electoral council. Rather than being subject to investigations, Opont is president of the CEP and is attempting to organize general elections in 2015. Manigat has joined others in calling for his resignation.
In the note by Mirlande Manigat, the former First Lady and university professor recalled the events of the 2010 elections and said there were many suspicions that were expressed about the level of fraud that had taken place. Manigat says the admission by Opont only confirms what was known information, that the voice of the Haitian people was not respected. She says Opont can not be expected to organize elections in 2015.
On July 2, 2015, Opont, during a live interview, said that in 2010, the actual results of the elections are not what were released. He was director general of CEP then and had the duty of ensuring the results would be disseminated throughout Haiti but said that they were changed by international observes spearheaded by the Chief of Staff of then-State Secretary Hillary Clinton, Cheryl Mills.
Opont had chosen to remain silent and claimed that the reason he did not tell the truth for four years is because he believed the country would have broken into violence. Opont's explanation has some credence, President Michel Martelly's supporters had rioted and vandalized certain parts of Port-au-Prince and Les Cayes. Martelly's supporters received funding from a Dominican senator and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The resignation of Pierre Louis Opont is required by many who have commented on the subject but candidates and parties aren't calling for his departure, partly because Opont's electoral council has made a number of exclusions of candidates on arbitrary bases that parties still participating feel they have benefited from. The other reason is because Opont has announced a policy in which any candidate, at any time, can be removed from elections, and he has shown, especially in the case of Jacky Lumarque, that exclusions could be made on unfounded information.