Captain Daniel Arambourd, head of police operations related to elections in the UNPol (UN Police), unveiled Thursday at the weekly press briefing of the Minustah, the arrangements put in place to secure the election of Sunday.

"An integrated security plan has been realized with the military of the United Nations Mission for the stabilization in Haiti (Minustah) and the authorities of the Police Nationale d'Haiti (PNH). Obviously, we have learned from the first round to develop this new plan. Regarding the UNPol, this plan includes the deployment of an additional staff of nearly 300 police officers to support the PNH in all departments. It also provides the strengthening of our FPU (Formed Police Unit) in 5 departments, those who were affected by problems in the first round.

I can inform you today that our staff of reinforcement UNPol are effectively deployed since last weekend and now working on the ground with PNH, that the FPU reinforcement will join their destinations today, and that the HNP will deploy reinforcements tomorrow.

I would like to make some clarifications concerning the staff employed : You know that the last resolution, of the Security Council of the United Nations was to increase the staff of the Minustah police of about a thousand men. Well, we started to receive this additional staff since the first round and the situation in terms of units deployed to maintain order on the ground has changed significantly between the two rounds. In fact, we now have approximately 430 FPU, 80 UNPol and 43 vehicles of more that during the first round.

We worked together with the PNH and the military of the Minustah, both on the ground and as the central levels, in order to present the best guarantees of security for this second round of elections.

Nationally, we have approximately: 1,300 UNPOL 2.900 FPU and 8.500 military of the Minustah to work alongside some 7.000 PNH officers and 4,200 electoral security agents (ASE). This represents more than 23,000 people involved in various ways, in the security process of this election. However, the largest player in this process of security remains the Haitian population, and the Haitian people must contribute to the smooth conduct of the election day.

We all know that during an important time like this, regardless the actual security in place, if the population does not propose a disciplined collaboration, there will always be unrest surrounding the elections. We invite the public to offer its full cooperation to the authorities of the PNH, to use the emergency numbers as appropriate: 114 for the PNH, 113 for the operations room of UNPol. Be assured that we will offer our best support to the PNH authorities, so that this day unfolds in the best possible conditions of order and security."

To avoid confusion about the role of the police forces of the United Nations, Captain Daniel Arambourd said that this police force is there to maintain security and not, to manage the problems the frauds, which are not their responsibility but that of the Haitian Government.

HL/ HaitiLibre