American Secretary of State John Kerry had in a stopover in Haiti on Tuesday, calling on Haitians to vote peacefully in the forthcoming elections, warning that "violence or intimidation" didn't have a place, Yahoo News has reported.
Kerry reiterated that the United States was looking forward to seeing the elections conducted as scheduled on Oct. 25 in a peaceful manner.
"Over the next three weeks there is all the opportunity ...to take advantage of the election process and make sure this election is without incident, without violence, without intimidation, and that people go to the polls and vote," said Kerry who spoke in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital.
The last legislative elections Haiti, held on Aug. 9, had some districts mired in chaos and intimidation of the electorate, so much that repeat elections are scheduled since there were no valid winners, the Washington Post reported.. The repeat elections will be conducted concurrently with the presidential elections later this month. With more than 54 presidential contenders, analysts are predicting that there'll be no clear winner in the upcoming elections; a scenario that will probably force the top two contenders with most votes into a runoff on Dec. 27.
Haiti has had 30 coups in the last 200 years, according to ABC News. And this fact wasn't lost on Kerry, who standing side by side with Haitian President Michell Martelly, stressed that holding elections was the only way "legitimate transfer of power can take place."
Martelly for his part was quick to voice his country's appreciation for Washington's funding of the election police, and training and equipping the country's police force that's estimated to be 12,000 members strong. He also was glad that Washington had helped boost Haiti's perennially troubled economy, promising to leave power in February as the constitution clearly stated.
