Renewed anti-government protests in Haiti - Summary

Tue, 04 Jan 2011

Port-au-Prince - Critics of the Haitian government were protesting again against President Rene Preval, Radio Metropole reported.

They built barricades on key streets in the Haitian capital Port- au-Prince since late Monday, the radio station said Tuesday. Earlier, Preval said in a televised address that he intended to remain in office until May, instead of leaving in February according to the original schedule.

The country, the poorest in the Americas, is beset by a series of challenges, beginning with the slow recovery from the January 12, 2010 quake, which claimed at least 230,000 lives.

It is immersed in a cholera epidemic that has killed at least 3,300 people in recent weeks. And controversy shrouds the outcome of the November 28 presidential election, for which no official results have been announced amid complaints of fraud.

Experts from the Organization of American States (OAS) are currently overseeing the count.

Preval is accused of having manipulated the election to favor his party's candidate, Jude Celestin. If unofficial results announced so far are eventually confirmed, Celestin would join conservative Mirlande Manigat in the runoff, leaving popular singer Michel Martelly out of the race for the presidency.

The runoff was originally scheduled for January, with the new president to take office in February.

On Tuesday, Sean Penn, the US actor who maintains a camp for the homeless in Port-au-Prince, criticized the international community over delays in aid for Haiti, telling a German magazine much of the pledged aid had still not arrived.

He told Stern magazine that the Caribbean country would not be suffering a cholera epidemic if governments and aid groups had acted faster to ensure that all Haitians had clean water to drink.

Penn accused aid groups of preferring to hand out food instead of helping Haitians to rebuild homes. He said that of 10 billion dollars pledged to Haiti last March, "hardly anything" had arrived.

According to Stern, which published his remarks in German, Penn said that if those nations had sent money as pledged and ensured clean water for every Haitian, installing pipes and filters, the cholera epidemic would not have broken out.

Cholera returned in October to Haiti where it had not been seen for 100 years.

Penn charged that both Germany and the United States were withholding aid. He said the danger of corruption in Haiti was not a valid reason to withhold aid from those in desperate need.

Stern released the remarks to other media a day before the magazine hits the streets. It said the camp run by Penn's JP HRO organization was serving 55,000 people and was exemplary.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/360709,protests-haiti-summary.html.