Prime Minister Jean Charles, confirmed that the government would bear the cost of the next general elections scheduled for 9 October, after the announcement of the end of the electoral assistance by the United States and the European Union "the Government will pay the elections. So far, we have a large part of the money [around $ 30 million] now it is to complete the administrative work to allow the full financing of elections."

However, a point that does not seem to have been raised is the cost of these elections. Let the facts, the new Provisional Electoral Council has submitted a budget of 55 million, including the repeat of the presidential election (2 rounds). Note that this new budget is +/- 83% of the total budget of previous elections.

Recall that the second round of parliamentary and local elections, which are not repeated have already been funded. Besides it would remain few million of the funds collected by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for the organization of the 2015 elections or at April 30 2016, nearly 9.7 million (9,696,989.41 dollars) regardless of expenses "not yet paid", specified the UNPD, manager of these funds, which do not however indicate what remains to be pay... https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-17931-haiti-news-zapping-politics.html

Even if it remains this full amount, the difference would be the results of the costs incurred by the resumption of the presidential election or just over $ 45 million. Whereas the budget of the elections 2015 funded by Haiti, Brazil, Canada, the United States, Japan and the European Union totaled $66.5 million, we must conclude that the two rounds of "Presidential election is +/- 68% of the budget what is hardly consistent nor convincing.

Furthermore, Friday, July 8, the day after the announcement of John Kirby, spokesman of the State Department on the end of the US Electoral Assistance https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-17963-haiti-politic-the-united-states-suspend-their-assistance-for-elections-in-haiti.html Prime Minister Jean Charles said Haitian authorities had not sought the US financial support for the preparation of the election of 9 October 2016, recognizing, however, that assistance from the international community would be beneficial for Haiti to complete the missing funds.

However, beyond these political declarations, nothing confirms that Haiti is not negotiating with the United States. Indeed, Thursday, July 7, at the press briefing in Washington, an American reporter asked John Kerby "Did the Haitians try to bargain with the U.S. for getting some sort of electoral assistance ?" answer "I don’t talk", the reporter rephrase "Did they ask and did the U.S. say no?" answer "I’m not going to get into the details of diplomatic conversations"... far from categorical statements of the Haitian PM...

SL/ HaitiLibre