PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – Fistfights and sporadic reports of voter fraud marked weekend elections that saw Haitians choose lawmakers for the next Parliament in a contest that was delayed for years.
The legislative elections had been postponed for nearly four years because of a political showdown between Haiti’s executive and opposition. They have been billed as a crucial test of the country’s electoral system ahead of a presidential vote in late October.
Sunday’s first round sought to fill two-thirds of the 30-member Senate and the entire 119-member Chamber of Deputies in the nation still struggling to recover from a 2010 earthquake that devastated the capital and surrounding areas.
But a number of polling stations across the Caribbean country of 10 million people had to wait for ballots a few hours after voting was supposed to start at 6:00 a.m. (1000 GMT). In sections of Port-au-Prince, voters also grew exasperated after being told they couldn’t cast ballots because their names weren’t on official voting lists.
“This is very frustrating. Are they trying to discourage voting?” gardener Gerald Henry complained after election workers turned him away.