ARISTIDE
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters):
THE CHALLENGES are daunting and the time short as impoverished Haiti struggles to organise a credible vote and put an elected president in the National Palace by a February 7 constitutional deadline.
Thousands of poll workers must be hired, and 3.4 million identification cards that voters need to cast ballots must be distributed.
Authorities are plan-ning to use horses and donkeys to carry ballots, and voting material to remote villages inaccessible by roads.
The poorest country in the Americas, Haiti is stumbling toward its first national elections since 2000 mired in political and gang violence, patrolled by United Nations peacekeepers and still struggling to establish a stable democracy after decades of dictatorship and military rule.
MISSED DEADLINE
The last official voting date set by Haiti's electoral council was November 20. Authorities have long conceded they cannot meet that date, but have not set a new one. Mid-December - possibly the 18th - is the best current guess.
Some analysts expect the first round of voting to be postponed until early January, which may or may not leave enough time for a run-off, if needed, and an inauguration on February 7, as scheduled.
The scramble is aimed at giving the turbulent Caribbean country of 8.5 million people an elected government to replace the one appointed when Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted on February 29, 2004, by a bloody rebellion and under pressure from foreign powers to quit.
"If we don't have a new leader at the presidential palace by February 7, 2006, this country will face a catastrophic situation," said Guy Philippe, a leader of the rebels who helped oust Aristide and now a presidential candidate.
CONTROVERSIAL CANDIDATES
Elections officials have approved 35 candidates for president, notably excluding Dumarsais Simeus, a wealthy Haitian-American businessman, on the grounds that he is legally barred from running because he took American citizenship.
The controversy surrounding Simeus and the jailing of popular priest Gerard Jean-Juste, heir apparent to Aristide's Lavalas political movement, has led to accusations that Haitian authorities are trying to manipulate the vote.
Time is growing short for the sequence of events leading up to the scheduled February 7 inauguration.
