A Realistic Plan for Safer Elections in Haiti
This plan is a framework pretty much just like all of the other documents I posted or
published online. This plan contains two parts:
Provisional Electoral Commission Composition
Suggestions for a safer electoral process
1) Cost savings
2) Safer streets on election days
An election is a project. It is a complex
project. It is also a special project because lives and a nation’s future are at
stake. It is a project that requires the charisma of high moral value human beings and the
expertise of qualified strategic project managers.
In that regard, I strongly believe that the
Provisional Electoral Commission should be made of the following experts:
Experts in strategic project management (at
least 4 members of the 9 members)
Experts in Finance and Accounting (at least
2 members of the 9 members)
Expert in Logistics and Real Estate (at
least 1 member of the 9 members)
Expert in Sociology and Public Relations (at
least 1 member of the 9 members)
Expert in Public Safety (at least 1 member
of the 9 members)
If you have several different problem areas
to resolve and you have only one tool with which to try to resolve those problem areas,
there is a theory that proves that it is more effective to resolve a little bit in each of
the problem areas than to resolve everything in one particular problem area only and
ignore all of the other problem areas.
That theory is the basis for the following
suggestions.
Taking into account the limited resources
the PEC has, taking into account the limited amount of expertise the PEC has, taking into
account the limited Haitian national police force, and taking into account the reluctance
of the international community to get involved, I propose elections to be held in a span
of eight (8) days from a Sunday through the following Sunday. In other words, the
elections do not have to be held in one day nationwide. They can be held county by county
or region by region in a predetermined sequence.
Haiti is geographically subdivided into nine
provincial counties (departments). The nine counties can be regionally juxtaposed the
following way for the election process:
{ Grand Anse & Sud } { Ouest &
Sud-Est} {Centre & Artibonite} {Nord, Nord-Est & Nord-Ouest}
The table below summarizes the process.
D
A
Y
S |
G
R
O
U
P |
{GRAND-ANSE & SUD} |
{OUEST & SUD-EST} |
{CENTRE & ARTIBONITE} |
{NORD, NORD-EST & NORD-OUEST} |
DAY #1 |
Voting
& Results |
- |
- |
- |
DAY #2 |
Certification |
Redeployment |
- |
- |
DAY#3 |
- |
Voting
& Results |
- |
- |
DAY#4 |
- |
Certification |
Redeployment |
- |
DAY#5 |
- |
|
Voting
& Results |
- |
DAY#6 |
- |
- |
Certification |
Redeployment |
DAY#7 |
- |
- |
- |
Voting
& Results |
DAY#8 |
- |
- |
- |
Certification |
| |
|
|
|
|
The method above, if adopted, will provide
two great advantages to the election process:
Operational cost savings
Increased Safety for the voters
The method above, if adopted, means that the
PEC needs to hire and train much fewer personnel than its current method demands. The
reason is that the same personnel used during election day (DAY#1) in juxtaposed county
group { GRAND-ANSE & SUD} will be reused (redeployed to be exact) in county group {
OUEST & SUD-EST} on election day (DAY#3). Fewer personnel always translate into
decreased expenses.
When the news come out that the 2005
elections in Haiti would cost $ 43 millions, some of us wanted to pull our hair out. Until
today, I hardly believe the elections should cost even $30 millions.
More important for me is the fact that now
the Haitian national police force only needs to concentrate its security forces in one
area of the country at a time instead of having to provide security for the whole country
like the PEC has it planned on October 19th, 2005. The Haitian national police
now has the opportunity to strategically place its elite forces on election days (DAY#1,
3, 5 & 7) in only the counties where voting would be scheduled to be held. I believe
that temporary concentration of forces will put the Haitian police force at an advantage
against any paramilitary forces that may intend to perturb the election.
I will conclude by saying that security or
safety in a country is first of all a state of mind and second a matter of strategy rather
than just the availability of resources for the police force. Technologies have played a
significant role in helping the police forces everywhere bring an acceptable measure of
safety to the general population, starting with the telegraph way back when, the two-way
radio, the telephone way back when and now GPS.
