With elections coming up in Haiti, major earthquakes, a cholera epidemic and fears of political violence rear their ugly heads in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation. Electoral officials still say the presidential and legislative polls will go ahead as scheduled on November 28, despite the cholera outbreak. The epidemic has killed more than 290 people and sickened more than 4,000 since last week, triggering a major multinational treatment and prevention operation.
Pierre-Louis Opont, director general of Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council said, “On November 28, at 6 a.m., the polls will open.”
At present however the epidemic's unusually high death rate was slowing the World Health Organization said. The epidemic had followed the devastating January 12 earthquake.
The vote will elect a successor to President Rene Preval, a new 99-member parliament and 11 new members of the 30-seat Senate.
Fears of campaign violence have increased after an attack late on Monday by suspected armed bandits on a bus carrying journalists to a rally by leading presidential candidate Jacques-Edouard Alexis in northern Haiti. The bus driver was killed and police said they later killed one of the attackers.
Leonard Doyle, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), a UN agency responsible for co-ordinating the management of relief camps says his organization is tracking the mobile phones of those who fled the Artibonite region after the cholera outbreak began. The IOM is texting them with cholera-prevention advice, hoping this will help contain the spread. Mr Doyle assured that should the disease take hold in Port-au-Prince those living in the camps would have access to chlorine, to clean water, and to medical advice, but not so the people living in the slums created by Papa Doc Duvalier.