Preliminary election observation report, 23 November 2010

The signatories set the vote in its context: earthquake victims still housed in subhuman conditions, a cholera epidemic that had already killed several hundred people and was still spreading, storm damage, insecurity sharpened by the campaign, insalubrity and the cost of living. The campaign itself they describe as lively and increasingly modern, with a flagrant gap between candidates' financial means, and they acknowledge that the Conseil Electoral Provisoire had broadly kept to the main stages of the process and made technical arrangements for polling day. Their concerns are specific. Clashes between supporters, assaults on candidates and attacks on political figures were recorded in Aquin, Anse d'Hainault, Tiburon, Les Cayes, Gonaïves, Port-au-Prince, Cité Soleil and Pétion-Ville, and in most of those cases candidates close to the government are pointed to, while the police showed troubling passivity and the courts an evident complicity.

Centre supervisors and polling-station members were appointed illegally and should be removed before the vote. The statement asks the government to guarantee security before, during and after the elections, asks candidates of every party to renounce violence, demands strict application of the electoral law at every stage, asks the council to hold a special verification session of the electoral register before polling day with observers, party representatives and computer experts present, and to release the tabulation centre's procedures manual so that the quarantining of votes that marked the 2009 senatorial elections is not repeated. It closes by inviting the population not to be intimidated and to vote.