Anne McLaughlin – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Anne McLaughlin on 2015-12-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps the UK Mission to the UN is taking to address the recent findings by Haiti’s National Electoral Office of contestations of irregularities to acts of fraud aimed at changing the results of the presidential elections in October 2015.

Mr Hugo Swire

Officials at the UK Mission to the UN regularly discuss Haiti with international partners and the Secretary General’s Special Representative on Haiti. In addition, our (non-resident) Ambassador to Haiti and our (resident) Chargé d’affaires have met the European Observer Mission (EOM) to the Haitian presidential elections, as well as observer teams from the OAS and ParlAmerica, on several occasions to discuss their findings. While some irregularities did take place and are being investigated, none of the official observer groups has substantiated specific claims of fraud, or called the results of the election into question. The EOM’s analysis has been shared with the Haitian Prime Minister, Evans Paul and relevant Ministries in Haiti. It was also shared with the Commission d’Evaluation Electorale (Electoral Review Commission, ERC). While the Commission’s report also pointed to some irregularities they concluded that the Presidential runoff should take place.