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RUMIAAA/HQ USSOUTHCOM J2 MIAMI FL
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 0767

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 PORT AU PRINCE 000031 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR WHA/CAR 
DRL 
S/CRS 
SOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD 
STATE PASS AID FOR LAC/CAR 
INR/IAA (BEN-YEHUDA) 
TREASURY FOR JEFFREY LEVINE 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/05/2016 
TAGS: PGOV PREL KDEM PKAO HA
SUBJECT: HAITI ELECTIONS: MINUSTAH LOGISTICS IN PLACE, 
POLITICAL DECICSIONS REMAIN 
 
Classified By: DCM Douglas M. Griffiths, reasons 1.4 b and d 
 
¶1. (C) Summary: The MINUSTAH head of elections operations and 
logistics reported that MINUSTAH will be prepared 
logistically to administer elections, but that Provisional 
Electoral Council (CEP) must take some policy decisions to 
avoid additional delays.  MINUSTAH is ready to begin training 
poll workers, but some regional (BED/BEC) officials are 
refusing to contact workers identified by authorities in 
Port-au-Prince because they have been left out of the 
selection process.  Civic education and Communal Electoral 
Bureau (BEC) staff have also threatened to disrupt elections 
preparations because they have received only partial salaries 
or no salaries at all.  The CEP and interim government 
continue to debate the feasibility of locating voting centers 
in the still volatile Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Cite 
Soleil; some believe that the centers should be moved to 
areas surrounding Cite Soleil.  Finally, some political 
parties are calling for the CEP to increase the number of 
voting centers throughout the countryside.  To do so would 
delay elections preparations indefinitely, however, and the 
Core Group and the IGOH must lend their full support to 
maintaining the current plan for voting centers.  End Summary. 
 
MINUSTAH Operationally Ready 
---------------------------- 
 
¶2. (SBU) The head of the Joint Operations Center responsible 
for elections operations, Colonel MacLeod (Canadian) and 
Chief of MINUSTAH electoral operations Mike Collins 
(Canadian) met Poloffs January 4 to discuss elections 
preparations and potential pitfalls.  Despite significant 
initial shortcomings, MacLeod said MINUSTAH,s operational 
preparations are on track.  He felt the best date for an 
election would be February 7, because the OAS should be able 
to get out 75 to 80 percent of the ID cards by January 22. 
According to MacLeod, MINUSTAH needs approximately two weeks 
to integrate the OAS card distribution personnel into its 
operation and train them for Election Day. 
 
CEP Regional Offices Rejecting Poll Worker Selections 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
¶3. (SBU) MacLeod said that MINUSTAH and the CEP have trained 
election day supervisors, but they have been unable to begin 
training for poll workers.  The BEC and BED presidents are 
reportedly refusing to contact workers identified by CEP 
personnel because their personal choices for the positions 
are not included. 
 
Salary Issues 
------------- 
 
¶4. (SBU) CEP-contracted civic education workers protested in 
front of the CEP January 2, threatening violence unless they 
were paid.  According to MacLeod, UNDP opposes paying these 
workers because the CEP hired 4,500 workers rather than the 
2,500 called for the CEP-endorsed budget.  Further, the 
workers did not appear to have kept records of their 
activities, and he assumed that many had done no work at all. 
 MacLeod said he and CEP Director General Jacques Bernard 
take the threat of violence seriously, and have recommended 
that the UNDP pay the workers to diffuse the situation and 
demand that workers begin to document their hours worked. 
UNDP has not, however, accepted this recommendation and does 
not intend to make payment. 
 
 
¶5. (SBU) Additionally, some BEC workers have threatened to 
impede elections because they have not been paid full 
salaries.  The disagreement arose after the CEP approved a 50 
 
PORT AU PR 00000031  002 OF 003 
 
 
percent pay raise to BEC workers over UNDP objections. 
Though the CEP covered some of the salary increase, the UNDP 
did not agree to pay the remainder, and workers received less 
than expected as a result. 
 
Voting Centers in Cite Soleil Under Debate 
------------------------------------------ 
 
¶6. (C) MacLeod reported that the PM and others in the IGOH 
and CEP are considering eliminating voting centers in Cite 
Soleil for security reasons.  MacLeod disapproved of the 
idea, noting that MINUSTAH would need to ensure security for 
the voters of Cite Soleil in any case, whether voting in 
their own neighborhood or walking to a center on the 
outskirts of the slum.  Macleod speculated that the gangs had 
cooperated with the registration drive only because they 
wanted people to have ID cards, which will be required for 
many transactions such as money transfers.  Now, he guessed, 
the gangs would attempt to derail elections.  According to 
MINUSTAH elections official Martin Landi, the BEC president 
in Cite Soleil has already begun to politicize voting in Cite 
Soleil by attempting to change the location of voting sites 
and load the list of poll workers with political cronies. 
 
Number and Location of Voting Centers 
------------------------------------- 
 
¶7. (SBU) A number of political parties have threatened to 
boycott the elections unless the CEP relocates some of the 
voting centers and increases their number.  Parties have 
demanded more voting centers in rural some areas and the 
relocation of voting centers closer to population centers. 
Parties also complain that many voters have been incorrectly 
assigned to voting centers outside of their area of 
residence, thus affecting their ability to vote for deputy 
and local candidates.  MacLeod suggested that moving some 
voting centers  would be relatively easy, and would only 
involve reassigning a relatively small number of voters. 
However, moving larger numbers of voters from one deputy 
district to an entirely different one would force MINUSTAH to 
print, sort, and distribute extra ballots.  CEP Director 
General Jacques Bernard has said he plans to yield to the 
party demands that will be easy to accomplish, and sort out 
district assignment errors without necessitating additional 
printing, if possible.  He has given his staff until January 
20 to finalize all of the voter assignments. 
 
¶8. (C) Comment: The issues detailed above can be quickly 
resolved, and we will push the CEP and MINUSTAH leadership to 
take quick actions to do so.  The controversy surrounding the 
location and numbers of voting centers is sensitive, however, 
and we will take additional steps to ensure that the IGOH and 
the Core Group stand behind the CEP and MINUSTAH in 
maintaining the current number of voting centers.  Any 
large-scale effort to revisit the number and location of 
voting centers would derail the distribution of voting lists 
and ballots and indefinitely delay elections preparations. 
Haitian authorities have traditionally organized thousands of 
voting centers throughout the countryside that were 
convenient to Haitians living in even the remotest areas.  At 
the same time, however, this far-flung network of loosely 
supervised voting centers allowed for instances of fraud and 
manipulation of the process.  Bearing in mind the resource 
limitations, MINUSTAH and the CEP have made reasonable 
compromises in limiting the number of voting centers.  The 
parties must be made to understand that mistakes will be 
fixed where possible, but that in order to ensure a timely 
transfer of power, elections must proceed with a more limited 
number of voting centers that ensures the integrity of the 
process.  If some Haitians must travel a bit further than in 
previous elections in order to cast their ballots, then all 
 
PORT AU PR 00000031  003 OF 003 
 
 
actors should come together in encouraging Haitians to make 
this effort and participate in the process.   End Comment. 
 
CARNEY