Electoral Verification Commission to verify elections
Haitian lawmakers have gone on their annual leave with a warning to the Interim President appointed Electoral Verification Commission that their legitimacy is guaranteed by the government. Many of the senators and deputies will return to their jobs on June 13, and they have openly stated their concerns about the work of the Commission that is chaired by a former member of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), Francois Benoit.
“I remind the Commissioners of that Commission that the legitimacy and the duration of our mandate (as parliamentarian)] are guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the Republic,” said Cholzer Chancy, the President of the Chamber of Deputies.
The main function of the five-member Commission is to restore confidence in the electoral process by examining poll results from last year when opposition figures claimed that they had been rigged in favor of the government’s candidate. The Commission are expected to develop a methodology for a technical analysis of available data to the Votes Tabulation Center and are also to “purify the voting process by analyzing the signing sheets, the partial electoral lists, count sheets, minutes of counting, minutes of deficiency, incidence minutes, ballots and already registered.”
In addition, the Commission is also expected to “evaluate all decisions of litigation organs of the Provisional Electoral Council having been the subject of denunciations, of regularly documented complaints, and propose to appropriate review of these decisions that for the purposes of law.”
On Monday, 21 out of the 24 senators and 82 of the 92 deputies were present for the last sitting of the first regular session of the parliament, which opened on January 11. Some of the legislators openly expressed fears that Interim President Privert could take advantage of their absence to dissolve parliament, in order to stay in power beyond the terms of the February 5 agreement.
The second round of the presidential election to elect a successor to Michel Martelly who left office on February 7, was scheduled for April 24, as stipulated in the February 5 political accord to transfer power from the caretaker government to an elected one. But last month, Privert said he expects an election calendar to be published by the end of May, thereby throwing into doubt the installation of a new head of state by May 14.
