Haitians Shun Senate Elections | Black Agenda Report

Haitians Shun Senate Elections

Bill Quigley

22 Apr 2009

🖨️ Print Article

by Al Jazeera English

When Haiti held its first democratic elections in the 1990s after decades of occupation and US sponsored dictatorship, optimistic voters waited all night to cast their ballots and turnout was in the 90 percent range. Much has changed in the years since. Haiti's popular president, John Betrand Aristide has been kidnapped and exiled by the United States and France. The country has been brutally re-occupied by a multinational UN force. Lavalas, the party which gets better than 85% of Haitian votes every time it is permitted to compete, is banned, and its militants hunted by the occupiers. Another election, this one for the Haitian senate, occurred last week. By all accounts, almost nobody voted. Since the American press didn't cover it at all, we here reprint this April 20 dispatch from Al-Jazeera.

Haitians shun senate elections

by Al Jazeera English

Originally published on April 20 by Al Jazeera English.

Haiti's long-delayed senate elections have been marred by extremely poor voter turnout.

Official results are still days away but Al Jazeera's Teresa Bo, reporting from the capital, Port-au-Prince, said only eight per cent of registered voters cast ballots on Sunday.

Most cited poverty, disenchantment with the current government and resentment over the banning of a popular party as reasons for not voting, she said.

The polls, delayed since 2007 and held under the watch of 9,000 UN peacekeepers on Sunday, were seen as an important step in the country's return to democracy.

It was also critical to the efforts of Rene Preval, the president, to retool the constitution and implement economic projects.

Edward Joseph, an observer with the Haiti Democracy Project, a Washington-based think tank, said voter apathy or fear of election violence could be behind the meagre turnout.

"When you see this kind of low turnout, you have to wonder how interested people are in an election," he told The Associated Press news agency.

Boycott urged

Fanmi Lavalas, a party widely supported by the country's poor, was barred by Haiti's provisional electoral council from fielding candidates, for not fulfilling legal requirements.

It urged the estimated four million registered voters to boycott the elections and has vowed to take action if the government insists on the legitimacy of the polls.

The populist party is led by Jean Bertrand Aristide, the president who fled into exile after being ousted in a 2004 coup.

But there was also violence, with protesters raiding polling stations and destroying ballots in Mirebalais, causing voting to be halted in the central plateau city, Radio Metropole said.

"The people stole the ballots, they destroyed the ballots. People were with guns," Charles Messier, a United Nations spokesman, said.

"So, we had some violence yesterday night and even this morning." occupied haiti election day

occupied haiti election day

In the northern town of Marchand Dessalines, police and UN forces exchanged fire with civilians leaving at least one member of the security forces injured, local officials said.

Civil right

Police in the capital, Port-au-Prince, banned vehicles from the streets and shut down public transportation to keep order, a move that exacerbated the poor turnout.

A total of 79 candidates were vying for 12 seats in the country's 30-member senate.

Preval sought to defend the low turnout as he cast his ballot.

"Voting is a civil right but in this country it is not mandatory ... I know the Haitian people, they vote only if they feel like voting," he said on Sunday.

"I'm aware they say the participation rate is going to be low but tomorrow the results will come out and we will know who wins and how many people voted."

The elections were postponed from 2007 after the electoral council was dissolved amid infighting and an alleged assassination attempt on one of its members.

Riots then toppled Haiti's government.

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.

More Stories

Isaac Saney
Cuba Must Not Fall! Imperialism, Resistance and the Global Stakes of Defending the Cuban Revolution
04 Feb 2026
The survival of Cuba's socialist project remains one of the most critical holdouts against hemispheric domination, making its defense a global litmus test for sovereignty.
Black Alliance For Peace
On the Anniversary of the Declaration of a ‘Zone of Peace’, the U.S. Heightens its Murderous Assault on the Cuban People and Revolution
04 Feb 2026
Branding Cuba an "extraordinary threat" on the anniversary of a regional peace declaration, the U.S. has escalated an assault designed to destroy hemispheric solidarity and justify hybrid war.
Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement
Georges Ibrahim Abdallah: “Together, and only together, do we win.”
04 Feb 2026
After 41 years in French captivity, revolutionary militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah speaks, offering an analysis of October 7th, global fascism, and the Palestinian resistance.
Prince Kapone
Reuters’ ‘Market Story’ and the American Pole: PetroChina, Venezuelan Oil, and the Siege That Calls Itself Trade
04 Feb 2026
Reuters sells custodial plunder as a pricing issue, turning blockade into “market caution.” We restore the missing record: seizures, supervision, and the re-routing of Venezuelan oil revenue through…
Mafa Kwanisai Mafa
Trump, White Farmers and the War on Zimbabwe’s Sovereignty: Why Africans Must Reject this Neo-Colonial Push
04 Feb 2026
The push by white farmers to enlist Donald Trump in a compensation battle over Zimbabwean land is a brazen, neo-colonial plot to undo African liberation history.