Haitian election shows civic spirit.

• Author: Conaway, Janelle

Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza expressed satisfaction that Haiti's elections of February 7 took place under normal conditions. He attributed the successful holding of elections to the civic spirit that led Haitians to go to the polls.

At the end of his trip to this Caribbean nation, during which he supervised the work of the GAS Special Mission and Electoral Technical Assistance Program in Haiti, Insulza underscored the importance of the way citizens had behaved, belying some analysts' predictions of violence.

Insulza, who was accompanied by Assistant Secretary General Albert Ramdin, said that calm deserved to be high-lighted with as much emphasis as had been placed on earlier predictions of possible unrest.

"Yesterday, security was non-news," Insulza maintained. "That in itself deserves to be underscored because it reflects the will of a people to progress toward institutional stability."

The postponement of these elections--just days before the first round of voting was to take place on January 8--caused widespread international concern. Haitian electoral authorities subsequently announced that the first round of voting in the presidential and legislative elections would take place on February 7, with a second round scheduled for March 19.

On January 19 and 20, a high-level international mission visited Port-au-Prince to...