Mischa Berlinski - Peacekeeping

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At four in the afternoon they counted the ballots.

There were twenty or more of us in the concrete schoolroom. On the chalkboard were the remains of the lessons from the day before: arithmetic exercises and the conjugations of the French verb avoir . The local election officials were seated at a long table, the ballot boxes arrayed in front of them, and the observers squeezed themselves into the students’ rickety chairs. No wind tempered the still heat of the room.

Until the moment that the president of the Voting Bureau cut the seal on the ballot box, the room was filled with nervous laughter, but when the ballot box was open, the room went quiet.

All across the Grand’Anse — indeed, all across Haiti — the ballot boxes were being opened at that moment, and all across the Grand’Anse — all across Haiti — we were leaning forward, hardly breathing.

The president of the Voting Bureau reached into the plastic box and pulled out the first ballot. He unfolded it and inhaled. He looked at it with a puzzled expression and whispered in the ear of the first secretary.

“Blank,” he said.

He showed the ballot to the audience of observers, who all began simultaneously to roar in protest, like sprinters after a false start.

The first secretary said, “I confirm it’s blank,” and placed the ballot on her desk, faceup in front of her. She made a check on her tally sheet, the president made a check on his tally sheet, and the observers all scratched a mark in their notebooks.

The president removed a second ballot from the box and unfolded it. He held it between his thumb and forefinger.

He said, “Sénateur Maxim Bayard.”

He passed the ballot to the first secretary, who said, “Maxim Bayard.”

She placed the ballot on a new pile.

The president said, “Sénateur Maxim Bayard,” and handed another ballot to the first secretary.

“Maxim Bayard,” said the first secretary.

The judge got his first vote on the fourth ballot. When the president said, “Johel Célestin,” the observer for the judge in the rear of the room began to clap.

“Silence!” the president said.

“Johel Célestin,” the first secretary said.

The counting of votes continued in this manner for several hours — there were three separate ballot boxes of almost three hundred votes each. The president did not hurry, and he read out the results of each ballot as if the name were a surprise. From time to time the Sénateur or the judge would go on a little run of votes — three or four for one candidate or for the other, and you’d think one of them was tearing away with the race; but whenever one candidate would pull ahead, the other would come back.

The only time the counting of the votes was interrupted was when a sparrow flew into the schoolroom and could not find its way out. The small bird flew in frantic circles from desk to desk. The president interrupted the counting of the votes, and the observers laughed as one after another tried to catch the bird and failed. When the sparrow found the window and flew out, the president resumed his count.

When he was done, the president announced his official tally, ballot box by ballot box.

In ballot box number one, there were 280 votes counted. Seven were blank, 5 showed votes for both the Sénateur and the judge. There were 123 votes for the Sénateur, 101 for the judge, the remaining votes disbursed among the minor candidates.

In ballot box number two there were eleven blank votes, three double votes, 130 votes for the judge, and 109 for the Sénateur.

In ballot box number three there were two blank votes, one double vote, 119 votes for the judge, and 99 for the Sénateur.

The judge’s observers disagreed with the count of the third ballot box. Their count showed the Sénateur with 96 votes, not 99. The president agreed to recount the vote. By now night had fallen and the room was lit only by gas lantern. The president and first secretary, by the same slow and methodical method as the first count, arrived again at 99 votes. The judge’s observers admitted that the count was correct.

“I declare the count official and valid,” the president said. “Long live Haiti! Long live democracy!”

Then the first and second secretaries carefully sealed the ballots and the tally sheets where the president had kept the official vote counts. The results of the election were affixed to the wall of the schoolroom: the judge had, by a slender margin, won this polling station. But there were many other polling centers throughout the Grand’Anse. Out in front of the polling center there was a Uruguayan armored vehicle to collect the ballots and tally sheets. More remote corners of the province were being reached by helicopter, and a few polling centers were accessible only by donkey. The ballots and tally sheets would be transported to Jérémie, then sent on to the national tabulation center in Port-au-Prince.

The judge counted the votes collected by his electoral observers and knew that he had won. He had a substantial plurality and was very close to a majority. Everybody supposed that if the election went to a second round, the judge would win easily.

But nobody knew how the CEH would produce the official election results. Just as the CEH had the power to choose illegitimate candidates, so too the CEH had the power to eliminate obviously fraudulent results — a ballot box, say, in which the voters unanimously favored one candidate over his rivals, or a box in which the number of votes counted far exceeded the number of voters assigned to that urn. The judge knew that these powers could be easily abused, and there was no court of appeals to decisions of the CEH but the CEH itself. The judge was worried that the CEH, either through incompetence or malfeasance, would hand the victory to the Sénateur at the last moment.

It took almost three weeks before the CEH announced the results. The town and nation passed the time in a frenzy of anxious anticipation. Almost daily we were assaulted by rumors. But the manifest content of these rumors was never political, reminding me that the Freudian notion of displacement could apply to entities larger than a single troubled soul. In the weeks we awaited the final decision of the CEH, an invisible zombie with a lethal touch prowled the streets. Schools closed as worried parents kept their children home, and the annual Miss Creole Beauty Pageant was suspended. Then the cathedral was burgled and the chalice of the Eucharist stolen, presumably to serve black magic ends. The night before the election results were announced, a woman in Sainte-Hélène began to rave about red water; and in the slum behind the grand marché , two men died at the same time in different houses, the last words on both men’s lips inexplicably the same.

* * *

Late in December, the CEH in Port-au-Prince called a press conference. The judge decided to hold a party at his election headquarters to watch the election results on television with his supporters.

The press conference was scheduled for seven in the evening, but it was midnight before the CEH spokesman ventured out into the ballroom of the Hotel Montana. The delay was designed to reduce the possibility of violence on the part of supporters of the defeated candidates. Grinding tension took over campaign HQ as we waited. Terry chain-smoked on the terrace, and Nadia sat cross-legged, rocking quietly and staring out at the Place Dumas, where a small crowd of the judge’s supporters were assembled. The judge walked around the room, shaking hands and rubbing shoulders. The campaign staff and volunteers were drinking beer. A phone rang, someone answered and then told the group that his friend in Port-au-Prince reported that riot police were beating a protester in front of the Hotel Montana. Then another phone rang and someone’s friend in Port-au-Prince informed us that we would soon learn that the election had been canceled entirely. Out front, a chant went up, “Judge Blan today / A road tomorrow.”