Winner in Haiti's presidential runoff will face tough tasks

Xinhua, March 22, 2011

The winner of Haiti's presidential runoff between Mirlande Manigat and Michel Martelly will face a very complex scenario, a Haitian expert said Monday.

"The next president must be very intelligent in order to succeed, mainly on reviving the institutional life of the country," Pedro Aguirre, an independent expert who published many books on the electoral process in Latin America, Asia and Europe, told Xinhua in an interview.

As the results of the second round of elections will only be announced on March 31, and the final outcome will be ratified in April, it is "a long and complex process" until Haiti has a new president, Aguirre said.

"Haiti has not recovered from last year's earthquake and also has a cholera epidemic and does not have an institutional life," he said.

Meanwhile, both presidential candidates have only presented "wishful thinking of government programs, rather than a concrete plan on how to improve their country's condition," he said.

Aguirre said Martelly had a great personality, but his government plan was too vague as he hadn't come up with a comprehensive scenario in case disaster strikes.

The expert told Xinhua that this was also the case with Manigat, although she does have more political experience.

He also said the new president may have to face the return of two exiles, Haiti's former leader Jean-Claude Duvalier and former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who still have large followers among different sectors in the Haitian society.

Aguirre was glad Sunday's elections in the Caribbean island had come to a peaceful close, as the international community had initially expressed concern over the elections.

However, he criticized the international community for demanding that the elections be held early because of concern over how the electoral process would unfold.

Due to international pressure, Haiti is now "forced to choose a president between two candidates who do not have enough political experience, as well as a deputy chamber with a lot of diversity and confrontation," Aguirre said.

"It is not enough to hold elections to give a questionable legitimacy to a government with little experience. In a country with such a poor institutional life, the priority for the international community -- mainly the Western countries -- should not have been the elections, but rather first the resources needed for Haiti's recovery," the expert said.

The international community now had to find a way to help Haiti consolidate its fragile new democracy, he said.

"Democracy is not only to hold elections," Aguirre said. "At this time Haiti, more than elections, needs to build solid institutions in order to rebuild the country economically and materially," he said, adding that the government system could be strengthened or restored after that priority was fulfilled.