Democracy delayed, democracy denied

As if there weren't enough problems surrounding the upcoming Haitian election, today we find out that the election will be pushed back yet again:

The nine-member Provisional Electoral Council set a new date of Jan. 8 for presidential and legislative elections, followed by a Feb. 15 runoff.

Council members said they would be unable to set up polling sites by Dec. 27 — the election date announced last week by interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue — because of crumbling infrastructure and a lack of trained election workers in the poorest nation in the Americas...

(T)he latest postponement means Haiti will now miss an important deadline.

Under the constitution, the five-year term of the president is supposed to begin and end on Feb. 7, to mark the anniversary of the 1986 demise of the 29-year father-and-son Duvalier dictatorship. The new election date makes it impossible to have a new government installed by then, election officials said.

Once again, the countries involved in Haiti at the moment (including Canada) deserve nothing but criticism for failing to provide enough resources to allow Haitians to vote. And the delay will be all the worse if it allows for more anti-democratic planning to take hold in the interim.