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Haiti Sets New Date for Presidential, Legislative Elections


A man carries a presidential election poster past a destroyed kindergarten in Les Anglais, Haiti, Oct. 10, 2016. Presidential elections scheduled for the previous day were postponed after the passage of Hurricane Matthew.
A man carries a presidential election poster past a destroyed kindergarten in Les Anglais, Haiti, Oct. 10, 2016. Presidential elections scheduled for the previous day were postponed after the passage of Hurricane Matthew.

Haiti announced Friday that its long-delayed presidential and legislative elections would be held Nov. 20, after a delay caused by Hurricane Matthew, which killed hundreds of people in the poverty-stricken Caribbean nation this month.

The Provisional Electoral Council said the second round of elections was scheduled for Jan. 29.

Haiti's elections had been scheduled for last week. The country's previous elections, in 2015, were canceled because of violence and fraud, leaving Haiti in political limbo.

The most recent president, Michel Martelly, left office in February and has not been replaced. Parliament elected Jocelerme Privert as interim president, but his 120-day mandate expired in June.

Even before the calamitous damage caused by Hurricane Matthew, the Americas' poorest nation was struggling to recover from a devastating earthquake more than six years ago. Thousands of people who lost their homes in the earthquake are still living in tents.

The nation of 11 million also has been racked by a cholera epidemic that began in the aftermath of the earthquake in 2010. Since then, the disease has killed more than 10,000 people and sickened more than 800,000, according to an Associated Press report. Hundreds of new cases are being reported each week.

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