Haiti’s presidential campaign is coming to South Florida.
Candidates in the Oct. 25 presidential elections will be presenting their programs to South Florida’s burgeoning Haitian community Sunday when Port-au-Prince-based Radio Television Caraibes and the Friends of Haiti diaspora organization sponsor a presidential debate in North Miami.
It is the first such gathering of Haitian presidential candidates in South Florida. Two other similar forums were held in New Jersey on Sept. 12 and Washington, D.C., on Sept. 15.
While the Washington town hall came under fire because candidates were asked to speak in English as opposed to French or Creole, Magalie Theodore, a member of Friends of Haiti, said, “this one is going to be in Creole.”
So far, 10 of 54 Haitian presidential candidates have agreed to debate their programs in South Florida, Theodore said.
Theodore said candidates will be questioned by several well-known journalists including Valery Numa of Vision 2000; Jean Monard Metellus of Radio Caraibes and Robenson Geffrard, the lead elections reporter for Haiti’s Le Nouvelliste newspaper.
The candidates are seeking to replace President Michel Martelly, who is constitutionally barred from seeking back-to-back terms, have confirmed their participation. The 10 candidates who have agreed to participate are: Mario Andresol, Charles Henri Baker, Steven Benoit, Fred Brutus, Aviol Fleurant, Eric Jean-Baptiste, Moise Jean-Charles, Steeve Khawly, Samuel Madistin and Michelet Nestor.
The debate takes place with less than a month to go before the election, and as uncertainty and a lack of trust continue to dog the nine-member Provisional Electoral Council.
On Monday, the council, known by its French acronym CEP, published the long-awaited final results of the first round of the violence- and fraud-marred Aug. 9 legislative elections. Despite an earlier announcement that the vote needed to be re-run in certain constituencies, the council announced that two senators and eight deputies were elected of the 139 posts up for grabs. All others will head into a runoff on Oct. 25, CEP President Pierre-Louis Opont said at a news conference.
The decision and an elections tribunal’s method of calculating the winners in the Senate races has been denounced by several candidates and political parties.
“If the (CEP) has applied the same mode of calculation to all of the candidates, Verite would have had two senators and nine deputies elected in the first round,” the Verite political party said in a letter to Opont. As a result of the CEP’s decision, Verite has two candidates going head-to-head for the second Senate seat in the West department, which includes Port-au-Prince.
The ongoing controversy, and fears over the controversial calculations, which open the door for a messy presidential election, will be among the leading topics Saturday when politicians, pundits and critics show up for Haiti’s most popular political radio talk show, “Ranmase.” The show will broadcast live with a special elections edition, from Moca Cafe and Lounge in North Miami.
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