International observers and Haitian human rights groups on Tuesday sharply criticized the country’s violence-marred legislative elections as poorly policed and organized. At least two people were killed during voting Sunday that was disrupted by attacks and other problems that forced the early closure of at least 26 polling centers. Pierre Esperance, executive director of a national network of human rights groups, said the disruptions were a blow to democracy in the impoverished Caribbean nation. “The rights of the Haitian people have been trampled,” he said. The elections, which were four-and-a-half years overdue in a country still struggling from the effects of a devastating 2010 earthquake, were to choose the Chamber of Deputies and two thirds of the Senate.
… Esperance accused the police of being passive accomplices to the violence. “With the complicity of the police and the Haitian justice, individuals entered the voting centers with automatic weapons to keep citizens from voting,” he charged.
… Elena Valenciano, the head of a European Union observer mission, said ramshackle logistics and poor infrastructure was also an impediment to free elections.
Some voting centers were so small that voters had little privacy when casting their ballots from behind flimsy cardboard partitions, sometimes sharing the same table with officials checking election rolls.
Full Article: Observers criticize unruly Haiti elections – Yahoo News.