Thanks very much.
It's not even necessary to take up the committee's time right now, but I wonder whether you might table--perhaps you're going to do so in any case with your final report--the statistics that would give us an opportunity to make the comparison between the previous election, both numbers of electors registered and the turnout, and this election. I think it's the combination of those two things that makes the achievement quite remarkable in terms of the level of participation. Separate from each other, the percentage turnout isn't as overwhelmingly impressive as when you take into account the number of electors who were actually registered.
You may want to comment, but I don't want to use up all my time asking questions.
Second, I'm more confused than ever about the status of what was clearly the provisional electoral commission. I had thought--and maybe I came away with the wrong impression--that by definition, because it was provisional until there was a duly elected government in place, that what would have been anticipated is legislation brought in to create...I don't know what it's called, but as we have in Canada, a totally independent, permanent Elections Haiti apparatus, as we have with Elections Canada. Could you clarify that?
The third thing is, I have to say, there is nothing worse than politicians who go somewhere for a few days and think they get a total impression. It's ridiculous, but it was really impressive how much you could sense a real hopefulness and pride people took in turning up at the polls with their identification, which meant they weren't facing all kinds of questions, and so on. There had been some criticism about the significant reduction in the number of polling stations, and a concern about whether this would limit access.
Could you comment on whether the recommendation would be to go with the 802, or is there some interim number between that and the previous 11,000 or 12,000, maybe even 13,000? I understand the reason for reducing, but it appears, as you've said, that it didn't severely reduce the number of participants, in fact, the opposite. Is there some recommendation about extending even more opportunities to vote, which would be based on more experience, more know-how, and so on, or would a recommendation be to stick with that?
I have one final comment. Against the backdrop of what clearly was a pretty positive experience, hundreds of political prisoners were languishing in prisons, invisible to the international community but not invisible to Haitians themselves. I think they were overwhelmingly supporters of Lavalas, not charged with anything, not entitled to any due process of law. It's hard to imagine that not being something you would comment on as part of the environment in which it's hard to say an election is completely fair and free. Somebody suggested, and it's not a bad analogy, it's like imprisoning the whole leadership of a political party in Canada and expecting that party to say yes, it was tough, but it was fair and free other than that.
I'm wondering if you chose not to comment on that part of the political landscape. It's hard to understand why it wouldn't be important to take note of this factor in the context in which you were trying to conduct this election.