Haiti PM Again Promises Elections “Soon”

Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe at the Department of State in Washington, D.C., October 9, 2014. [State Department photo)

News Americas, WASHINGTON, D.C., Fri. Oct. 10, 2014: Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe again promised elections in the French Caribbean nation “soon” after being pressed yesterday by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

In remarks in the Treaty Room of the State Department before a private meeting Thursday, PM Lamothe insisted that “everything is ready for the election to take place.” The hold up he placed squarely at the feet of six senators who he said has “been sitting on the (electoral ) law for the past 200 days, seven months.”

“We have the financing that’s in place. The electoral council is in place. We have the security plan that’s in place. We’re missing one thing, which is the electoral law, and the electoral law has to be voted by the senate,” Lamothe said. “So we are working feverishly in a dialogue with different sectors to try to get them to vote that law in order for us to have elections as soon as possible. But if it was up to us, we would have it tomorrow.”

Secretary of State Kerry, speaking before Lamonthe, said there remains work to be done in Haiti through the completion of the “task of having local and legislative elections as soon as possible.”

“This resistance – the unwillingness to allow the people to be able to have this vote – really challenges the overall growth and development progress of the country,” Kerry added. “You need to have a fully functioning government.”

Meanwhile, Lamonthe for his part insisted that Haiti has come “a long way after a devastating earthquake that took away 250,000 lives, 500,000 people were wounded” and today 98 percent of the country’s population that became homeless following that disaster has been relocated.