2000 Haitian parliamentary election

none Haiti yes 1997 2006 Chamber of Deputies 21 May 2000 (first round)9 July 2000 (second round) All 82 seats in the Chamber of Deputies yes yes yes Fanmi Lavalas 72 Christian Movement for a New Haiti 3 Other 7 yes 1997 2006 Senate 21 May 20009 July 200026 November 2000 All 27 seats in the Senate yes yes yes Fanmi Lavalas 27 Prime Minister Jacques-Édouard Alexis Fanmi Lavalas Jacques-Édouard Alexis Fanmi Lavalas Parliamentary elections were held in Haiti on May 21 and July 9, 2000, electing all 82 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and nineteen seats in the Senate. A further eight seats in the Senate were elected on November 26, alongside the presidential elections. The first round of legislative elections generated so much conflict that the fall elections were boycotted by the opposition. Spring elections The elections had been delayed several times and irregularities were reported before, during and after voting day. Judgments of the balloting overseen by Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) varied from "deeply flawed,"2001 Human Rights Watch World Report 2001: Haiti: Human Rights Developments https://www.hrw.org/legacy/wr2k1/americas/haiti.html live https://web.archive.org/web/20081116175205/http://www.hrw.org/legacy/wr2k1/americas/haiti.html 2008-11-16 February 14, 2021 to free and fairErikson Daniel P. February 2005 Haiti after Aristide: Still on the Brink Currently History and "the best so far"Henry Carey June 12, 2000 Not perfect, but improving The Miami Herald http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/haiti-archive/msg04236.html February 14, 2021 On election day, according to the OAS Observation Mission, "polling took place in an atmosphere of calm characterized by a high voter turnout." It reported few violent incidents during the day but said that the process "began to deteriorate at the close of the polls," with armed groups in three areas stealing and burning ballot boxes.OAS http://www.haitipolicy.org/archives/Archives/June-August2000/oas9.htm The OAS Electoral Observation Mission in Haiti: Chief of Mission Report to the OAS Permanent Council 13 July 2000 Results for the Chamber of Deputies were not disputed, but the CEP's tabulation of the Senate races was widely contested. (In Haiti, candidates for parliament must win an absolute majority of votes cast or face a second-round runoff.) In all but one geographical department, the CEP counted only votes cast for the top four contenders, ignoring those accruing to all other candidates, some 1.1 million votes. This inflated the percentages accorded the two leading contenders in each department, boosting many over the 50 percent-plus-one threshold necessary to avoid a runoff. Opposition parties and the OAS Election Observation Mission disputed the number of Senate candidates announced as having won an absolute majority. The OAS pointed out these problematic calculations and called on the CEP to count all the votes before proceeding to the second round. The head of the Electoral Council, Léon Manus, initially maintained that the calculation method "was in keeping with past practice",Hallward Peter Peter Hallward May–June 2004 Option zero in Haiti http://newleftreview.org/II/27/peter-hallward-option-zero-in-haiti New Left Review New Left Review II 27 and told the OAS not to interfere. He later changed his mind and did a recount but after receiving what he took as threats to his life, he left the country.Morrell James R. August 2000 Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory http://www.haitipolicy.org/archives/Publications&Commentary/snatch2.htm haitipolicy.org Center for International Policy The CEP declined to amend its announced results and on June 20 it suspended all observation activity. Opposition parties announced their intentions to boycott the run-off elections on July 9 Inter-Parliamentary Union http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/arc/2138_00.htm Elections held in 2000 Parliamentary Chamber, Sénat Haiti Inter-Parliamentary UnionNohlen Dieter Elections in the Americas: A data handbook, Volume I 2005 9780199283576 Dieter Nohlen p. 381. Voting stations during the run-off elections for 46 deputies and two senators on July 9, 2000 were virtually empty. After this run-off election, Fanmi Lavalas was deemed to have won eighteen of the nineteen open Senate seats. The various contestations about which candidates should have gone through run-off elections obscured the fact that the very popular Fanmi Lavalas party would have likely won the disputed seats if they were subjected to a run-off; journalist Michele Wucker writes that OAS observers "reported that the irregularities would not have affected the final outcome significantly." Wucker Michele Haiti: So Many Missteps World Policy Journal 46 Spring 2004 After a second-round voting took place on July 9 for 46 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and two seats in the Senate on July 9, the Fanmi Lavalas party won eighteen of the nineteen Senate seats and 72 of the 83 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Voter turnout, which had been reported to be around 60% for the first round of elections, was negligible for the second round. In response to the disputed election the United States cut off aid and blocked previously agreed loans from the Inter-American Development Bank. "In 2001, a bankrupt Aristide agreed to virtually all of the concessions demanded by his opponents: he obliged the winners of the disputed Senate seats to resign, accepted the participation of several ex-Duvalier supporters in his new government, agreed to convene a new and more opposition-friendly CEP and to hold another round of legislative elections several years ahead of schedule. But the US still refused to lift its aid embargo." Fall elections The legislative elections on November 26, 2000 were to address the portion of the Senate that President Préval had kept intact after his dissolution of the Parliament in January 1999. These nine senators' terms had not yet expired by January 1999. During the joint presidential and legislative elections of November 26, 2000, boycotted by all the major opposition parties, these seats were won by Fanmi Lavalas Party. By the time President Aristide started his second term in February 2001, Fanmi Lavalas held 27 of the Senate seats. An Organization of American States fact-finding mission found that 10 senatorial seats should have gone to a second-round runoff because the candidates did not win an absolute majority as required by the constitution. This resulted in the European Union and the United States banning economic assistance to the country until 2005, which were supported by Haitian opposition members.Hufbauer Gary Clyde https://books.google.com/books?id=g-uzlJDD7DwC Economic Sanctions Reconsidered Schott Jeffrey J. Elliott Kimberly Peterson Institute for International Economics 2007 Washington 34 9780881325362 enCNN.com - Haiti opposition supports threat of U.S. sanctions - September 6, 2000 http://edition.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/americas/09/06/haiti.sanctions.reut/index.html 2022-09-01 CNN Results Chamber of Deputies File:Élections Générales Haïti 2000 (députés).svg Fanmi Lavalas 72 Christian National Movement 3 Louvri Baryé Party 2 Espace de Concentration 2 Other parties and independents 3 4245384 IPU Senate File:Élections Générales Haïti 2000 (sénateurs).svg Fanmi Lavalas 27 4245384 IPU References Category:Elections in Haiti Haiti Parliamentary Category:Election and referendum articles with incomplete results Haiti Haiti