Meanwhile, Haiti's Election Fiasco Sucks, But, Considering The Year, This Isn't A Surprise..

Haiti presidential election goes to 2nd round  Excerpts:


Government-backed candidate Jude Celestin and former first lady Mirlande Manigat will advance to a second-round runoff in Haiti's presidential election, officials announced Tuesday as furious protests led by supporters of the third-place contender broke out in the capital.


The results were immediately questioned and matters are far from settled in the race to lead a country wracked by a cholera epidemic and still recovering from a devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.


Much of the concern centered around conflicts between the announced results and those reported recently by a local election monitoring group financed by the European Union — the National Observation Council — which said that Celestin, a protege of outgoing President Rene Preval, would be eliminated


"The Government of the United States is concerned by the Provisional Electoral Council's announcement of preliminary results ... that are inconsistent with the published results of the National Election Observation Council" as well as U.S. observers and vote counts monitored by domestic and international observers, the U.S. Embassy said in an e-mailed statement.
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The Nov. 28 election was plagued by allegations of fraud. Thousands of voters were disenfranchised by confusion on the rolls and there were many reported incidents of ballot-stuffing, violence and intimidation confirmed by international observers.


Officials acknowledged the rolls were both "bloated" and "incomplete," with hundreds of thousands of earthquake dead still registered and many living voters waiting for ID cards. In the last days of counting, tabulators had to sort out clearly fraudulent tally sheets.
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After results were released Tuesday night, flaming barricades were set up near the Petionville restaurant where the tallies were announced. Martelly supporters threw rocks at people passing nearby and gunshots rang out. An Associated Press journalist was robbed.


"If they don't give us Martelly and Manigat (in the second round), Haiti will be on fire," said a protester, Erick Jean. "We're still living under tents and Celestin wastes money on election posters."


In the last eleven months, Haiti has dealt with the fifth deadliest quake in recorded history, almost total devastation of the major metropolitan area and capital's infrastructure, glacial debris removal, two million instantly-homeless people, a burgeoning, unfortunate cholera epidemic, and now, election fraud with not only the threat of turning the entire country into a riot zone, but effectively paralyzing any significant progress until an acceptable answer is reached.  I can't imagine the level of rage on the streets of Port Au Prince that is now the New Normal..


If you ever needed evidence of the existence of the Multiverse, Haiti is it.  Mind you, there are "distorted energies" at work planet-wide, but wow.. There's just so much..  Dissonance..  Working together In Terrible Concert, inhabiting such a small physical area..   There has always, always been a higher level of malevolent energies than in other countries, but now, that level of pain must be almost absolutely unbearable.


What can life be like, moment to moment?  All that sadness, rage, helplessness, all around, all the time, from the constant, to the new and surprising disappointments that present themselves daily.  It's amazing the situation hasn't devolved any further than it has.  Each person has a breaking point.  So do entire populations.  I salute the people of Haiti for not descending into total anarchy, and honor their tremendous internal fortitude for not doing so..  But with election results over a month away, though, I wonder if this event will end up being The Final Straw..