BCEN ready for the municipal appeals, while Canada deplores cancellation of polls
PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti, May 2, CMC – The National Office of Electoral Disputes (BCEN) says it will begin hearing later this week appeals made by candidates in the municipal elections on October 25 last year.
BCEN vice president, Carlos Hercules, said the three sections of the body will be constituted this week and that it will sit for about two weeks rendering its judgments on appeals made by candidates in the municipal elections in order to complete the publication of the results of those elections.
Each section of the BCEN will be composed of two electoral advisers, two lawyers and a judge of the Court of Appeal who will be selected by a draw on the day of the hearing to prevent attempt at corrupting the officials.
Opposition politicians have claimed that the October 25 polls were rigged and have been calling for fresh elections. They have also filed several appeals rejecting the results in some areas.
Meanwhile, Canada has become the latest country to deplore the cancellation of the April 24 second round of presidential elections to choose a successor to Michel Martelly who left office on February 7 without a successor being elected.
Foreign Minister Stéphane Dion and Minister of International Development and Francophony, Marie-Claude Bibeau, in a joint statement said “Canada deplores the fact that the elections, scheduled to take place on April 24, have been cancelled for the third time, as well as indications that they may not take place until October.
“It is essential that Haitian political actors take the necessary and responsible actions to re-establish constitutional order quickly so that they can devote themselves entirely to resolving the difficulties the Haitian people are facing.
“We are very concerned that commitments made in the February 5, 2016, agreement, when Haiti’s leaders promised their fellow citizens the election process would be completed in 90 days or less, are not being met,” the two ministers said.
They said as a “partner of Haiti and of all Haitians…Canada once again calls on Haitian political actors to do everything they can to ensure that the partial legislative elections and the second round of the presidential election take place quickly and peacefully.
“Canada will continue its dialogue with Haitian leaders in support of Haitians’ democratic aspirations. In accordance with Canada and Haiti’s joint commitments in the International Organisation of La Francophonie, Haiti, more than ever, needs to strengthen its democratic institutions, as an essential step to ensure inclusive governance, peaceful pluralism and inclusive economic growth.”
Canada said it has invested CAD$1.6 billion (One Canadian dollar =US$0.79 cents) in humanitarian and development aid in Haiti since 2006.
European Union announces additional €38 million in aid for Haiti
The European Union (EU) said it was giving an additional €38 million in cash aid to Haiti, which is combating drought and a migration crisis with neighbouring Dominican Republic.
The funding included €12.2 million for food and drinking water to more than 400,000 Haitians, an EU news release said. The El Nino weather phenomenon has devastated crops, with losses of up to 70% in some areas. About 3.6 million Haitians are facing food insecurity, with 1.3 million among them severely food insecure, according to the World Food Program (WFP).
The EU was also allocating €400,000 to assist people in Haiti who had been deported from the Dominican Republic. The neighbouring country began enforcing an immigration policy in summer 2015 primarily targeting people of Haitian origin. Since then, some 87,000 people have been forced across the border into Haiti, where some have never lived. Among them are more than 1,200 unaccompanied minors, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
Some were deported so suddenly that they arrive with only the clothes on their backs. Thousands are living near the border in makeshift dwellings with poor sanitation. In addition to the emergency aid, the EU was also providing €17 million for medium and long-term projects aimed at helping Haiti build its capacity to respond to climate threats. Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas, crippled by long-term political instability and a devastating quake in 2010.
Cuban baseball players paid smugglers $15M for voyages to Mexico, Haiti
Published April 27, 2016
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Cuban baseball players paid a South Florida-based smuggling ring more than $15 million to leave the communist island in secretive ventures that included phony documents, false identities and surreptitious boat voyages to Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, federal prosecutors say.
A recently unsealed grand jury indictment against three men provides fresh details about the smuggling of 17 Cuban players, among them Jose Abreu of the Chicago White Sox and Leonys Martin of the Seattle Mariners. The smugglers usually took a percentage of any Major League Baseball contract a player signed.
The indictment names Bartolo Hernandez, a Weston, Florida-based sports agent whose clients included Abreu; Hernandez associate Julio Estrada, who runs Total Baseball Representation and Training in Miami; and Haitian citizen Amin Latouff of Port-au-Prince, who is not in U.S. custody and remains in Haiti. They are charged with conspiracy and illegally bringing immigrants to the U.S.
Estrada, who was arrested last week, has pleaded not guilty and is free on $225,000 bail. Hernandez pleaded not guilty when originally charged in February and is also free on bond.
Estrada's lawyer, Sabrina Puglisi, said in an email Tuesday that he has never been involved in illegal human smuggling.
"He has always taken care of his players, training them so that they could achieve their dream of playing MLB in the United States," she said.
The case is an outgrowth of the previous prosecution in Miami of four people for the smuggling of Martin out of Cuba, one of whom is serving a 14-year prison sentence. Martin is among the players named in the new indictment as well. None of the players have been charged.
Prosecutors have said the investigation is focused on the smuggling organizations and not on the players. As Cubans, under U.S. policy they are generally allowed to remain in this country once reaching U.S. soil.
As part of the thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations, MLB is in talks with both nations' governments on a potential deal that could make it easier for Cuban ballplayers to play in the U.S. without having to sneak away at international tournaments or risk high-seas defections with smugglers.
But beginning in April 2009, prosecutors say, the South Florida-based smugglers ran a flourishing and lucrative illegal pipeline for Cuban players who must establish third-country residency in order to sign as MLB free agents.
The indictment says that Hernandez, Estrada and Latouff "recruited and paid" boat captains to smuggle players from Cuba to Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The plot included use of fake jobs for the players, such as welder, mechanic, body shop worker — even one who was called an "area supervisor for Wet Set Ski."
The conspirators also used fake foreign and U.S. documents, including falsified passports and visa applications, to get the players to the U.S., according to the indictment.
The case of Abreu, who set a White Sox rookie record with 36 home runs in 2014 and was named American League rookie of the year, is fairly typical although the money involved is higher than most.
According to the indictment, Latouff paid $160,000 in August 2013 to a boat captain to smuggle Abreu from Cuba to Haiti. There a fraudulent visa and false name were provided so that Abreu could fly from Port-au-Prince to Miami.
A short time later, Chicago announced Abreu had signed a five-year, $68 million MLB contract. But the court documents show he still owed the smugglers millions and sent them several wire transfers in 2014 totaling at least $5.8 million.
Prosecutors are seeking forfeiture of more than $15.5 million in total payments from ballplayers to the smugglers, as well as forfeiture of four pieces of property in South Florida, four Mercedes-Benz vehicles and a Honda motorcycle.
Haiti Customs: the Managing director of the APN in Miami to present the project of renovation of the Port of Cap-Haïtien
The Managing director of the National Harbour Authority (APN), Alix Célestin, accompanied with the coordinator of the agency’s administration, Valery Adrien, participated in an investors’ conference in Miami following the initiative of the APN, the USAID and the IFC. For Célestin, who is an engineer, it was an opportunity the renovation for the port of Cap-Haïtien.
This event was within the framework of promoting Haiti’s maritime sites. The National Harbour Authority hopes to stimulate investors to contribute in the development of this expanding sector in order to spearhead of the state economy’s.
The international port of Cap-Haïtien will be reconstructed thanks to 65 million in financing from the USAID. The works which will begin in July with the demolition of sheds and other dilapidated buildings, will last two years and six months.
Kenneth Merten's recent visit to Haiti
In a press release signed by the American State Department and forwarded to the newspaper office of HPN, the Special Coordinator for Haiti, Kenneth Merten was scheduled to visit the country last week.
This visit was "to estimate the progress towards the completion of the electoral process begun in 2015 and the installation of a democratically elected government in Haiti."
Merten was to mainly meet with Haitian government officials involved in the implementation of the agreement of February 5th and with Haiti’s partners from the international community.
On January 6th Kenneth Merten and Assistant-Secrétaire Adjoint of ambassador Thomas Shannon was accompanied with the latter within the framework of a visit to Haiti to complete the electoral process. That visit failed given that the Temporary Electoral Council at that time had to postpone the elections which were scheduled for January 24th due to numerous street protests.
Haiti Security: Plans were diverted towards the Dominican Republic
On Wednesday, April 27th in the evening, the air traffic of the Toussanit Louverture International Airport was severely disrupted. Due to a power failure on the landing runway of the airport, plans heading for Haiti had to be diverted towards the Dominican Republic to land safely.
According to the head office of the National Airport Authority (AAN), the electric problem was caused by construction work to rehabilitate part of the airport reserved for moving and parking planes on the tarmac.
Haiti-justice: social organizations perform a sit-in to demand an audit on the management of the administration Martelly
Several social organizations had a sit-in last Friday in front of the ruins of the national palace, to require the implementation of an Audit Committee to shed light on the management of Michel Martelly's former administration.
The initiative was taken by the Circle of studies in literature gramscienne (Circle Gramsci), the Think Tank on the social problems (Greps), the National Union of Normaliens (Unnoh), the Popular democratic Movement (Modep) and the Movement of freedom and equality of the Haitians for the brotherhood (Moleghaf).
The sit-in also aimed at supporting the commission to evaluate the electoral process of 2015. It condemned the interference of the international community in particular Core Group in the internal affairs of the country.
Following the appeal of these organizations, a sit-in was already organized already, on Friday, April 15th, 2016, in front of the offices of the Superior Court, to denounce the corruption in public administration.
This mobilization gathered dozens of activists, provide with signs on which were posted messages hostile to Martelly, accusing him of having been involved in corruption.
The administration of the former president was the object of deep criticisms for its implication in corruption scandals of corruption and waste of public money.
As a result, the Government’s Commissioner, Jean Danton Léger, has already put in place a travel ban on several citizens, including the former head of the Ministry of the Economy and the finances, Wilson Laleau.
HAITI HAD ZIKA MONTH BEFORE 2015 BRASIL’S OUTBREAK
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
Two months after Haiti confirmed it was having an outbreak of the painful mosquito-borne virus chikungunya in 2014, Haitians began complaining about a new fever epidemic and wondered whether it was Zik or Zika, the other virus carried by the same mosquito.
Haiti health officials and experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quickly dismissed the Zika rumors, regarding the fever symptoms as another bout of fast-spreading chikungunya.
Now, infectious-disease specialists at the University of Florida believe that diagnosis was wrong. Zika, according to new research, was not only present in the Western Hemisphere before it was confirmed in Brazil in March 2015 — it was in Haiti.
“What seems to have happened is that the chikungunya outbreak was followed by [dengue] and Zika,” Dr. J. Glenn Morris, Jr., a professor of medicine and the director of the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, which runs a lab in Haiti, said about the June 2014 rumors sweeping Haiti.
Moris said the UF study, while focused on samples taken in December 2014, suggest that it’s not “an unreasonable possibility that” the dengue-like symptoms that Haitians were reporting in June of 2014 were Zika cases.
Following Haiti’s April 2014 chikungunya outbreak, UF’s laboratory began monitoring the virus and collecting blood samples from schoolchildren in the Gressier/Leogane region, southwest of Port-au-Prince, where the laboratory is located.
Soon, the center’s nurses began noticing that some of the children started coming down with a fever.
“The nurses said, ‘Everybody is getting it again,’” Morris said, recalling how almost everyone dismissed the illness as a second wave of chikungunya.
Everyone except for one curious virologist: John Lednicky, who would become the lead author of UF’s study on the findings. The study was published Monday in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.
The scientists from UF’s environmental and global health department and the Emerging Pathogens Institute specialists began doing additional lab studies. Sick schoolchildren had blood sampled and were screened for dengue, chikungunya and malaria. After the samples came back negative for all three, they were classified as “mystery” viruses.
Using a more sophisticated testing method, researchers subsequently sequenced and identified the Zika virus. The plasma samples that yielded Zika virus were taken in December 2015, three months beforeBrazilian scientists confirmed that Zika was present in the South American country.
The Haitian strain, while genetically similar to the Brazilian, is more similar to the strain from the French Polynesian islands, said Dr. Jacques Boncy, director of Haiti’s National Public Health Laboratory.
In June 2014, Boncy was asked about whether Zika was present in Haiti. He told the Miami Herald that Zika had been confirmed in Yap Island and in French Polynesia, islands in the Pacific, but it was “not in the Caribbean region.”
Now, after speaking with Morris, Boncy says he may have been wrong.
“They did sequencing, and that is where they saw three children who came back positive for Zika,” he said.
Boncy said that before Zika was confirmed in Brazil, it was reported on Easter Island, a Chilean territory, where an annual festival is believed to be the source of transmission. On March 3, 2014, Chile notified the Pan-American Health Organization/World Health Organization of Zika’s existence on the island.
Haiti has United Nations troops from Chile stationed in the country, and a number of Haitians are employed in Brazil’s construction industry — factors that could have led to Zika’s transmission in the country.
“We will never know where the current Zika outbreak in the Americas started,” said Daniel Impoinvil, CDC research epidemiologist involved in helping Haiti monitor the spread of the virus. “Most likely it was imported into Haiti and once it is imported, you can expect additional cases.”
Impoinvil noted that during the time period of the UF study, Haiti was 20 weeks into a major chikungunya outbreak.
“The symptoms of chikungunya, dengue and Zika are remarkably similar,” he said. “Given the similar symptoms and the lack of history of Zika in the Americas and around the world at that time, Zika would not necessarily have been considered as a source of infection.”
As of April 2, there have been 2,024 suspected reported cases of Zika in Haiti since the virus’ Jan. 15 confirmation, the CDC said. A dozen of the cases involve pregnant women.
CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden recently confirmed that a study looking at brain scans of babies born with suspected Zika-related microcephaly in Brazil confirms that the virus causes the birth defect. Babies with the birth defect have been born with smaller than usual heads to mothers infected with Zika in Brazil and several other countries, according to the WHO.
“We haven’t yet found any cases of microcephaly, but we have found about three cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome,” Boncy said. Guillain-Barré Syndrome, also linked to Zika, is a neurological syndrome in adults that leads to difficulty in walking.