Is it clear that elections will be held in November?
Yup, November 28th.
Unless Preval's opposition manage to convince the international community that the CEP, appointed by Preval, is manned by less than impartial memnbers.
Remember that these are the people that banned the single biggest party in 2008 which led to a turnout of less than 5% - and that election was declared fair and open by the UN and the Canadian representatives doing the monitoring.
And contrary to popular opinion the reason that each and every candidate was barred was not due to them all having criminal records. The official reason was that while Aristide was still officially the leader of the party he had to sign off on the candidate list. He would not as he was at loggerheads with the current party members in Haiti (remember Preval who appointed the CEP was Aristide's prime minister) so the CEP did not let any candidates run. Fair enough, I guess - rules is rules. But the whole bloody lot of them want their heads banging together.
As I say - it does not matter - the whole thing is a red herring. Do not be concerned with who is running, who is not or who is monitoring the election - nothing is real.
It is on the one hand a race to see who gets the travel first class on the gravy train and gets the first stab at abusing the money and power, and on the other hand it is a process necessary to pay lip-service to the international community whose money is about to be abused.
But the rest of us get in with it anyway. As I said before it would be nice to do business with the help of officialdom rather than in spite of them - even ambivalence would be OK.
I am trying to put a positive spin on things - but after a read through it seems that I do not sound very optimistic.