27558: Craig (news) Haitians `have voted massively' (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dan Craig


Haitians `have voted massively'
Election workers overwhelmed

Polls close hours behind schedule
The Toronto Star
Feb. 8, 2006. 01:00 AM

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—Scuffles broke out and polling stations opened hours late 
yesterday as masses of Haitians waited — often in long lines — to vote under 
the protection of United Nations peacekeepers crouching behind machine-guns and 
patrolling alongside armoured vehicles.

Polls closed nearly four hours later than scheduled, leading the country's 
electoral council to report that early results would not be available until 
late today. Many ballots are being hauled down nearly impassable mountain paths 
by mules, horses and donkeys.

Yesterday's chaos was greatest outside Cité Soleil, a gang-ruled slum so 
volatile that election officials refused to place polling centres there, 
directing voters to instead cast ballots in industrial buildings on the 
periphery.

Hundreds of angry Cité Soleil residents, believing that authorities were 
deliberately making it impossible for them to vote, marched through streets 
jammed with UN tanks and littered with burning garbage, waving their voting 
cards and pounding on empty ballot boxes to protest voting snafus.

Fanning the discontent, gang members roamed the neighbourhood, erroneously 
telling residents and media that police had opened fire on voters.

"The bourgeoisie is trying to stage an electoral coup so the poor people can't 
vote their choice," screamed demonstrator Paul Ery, 45, who is jobless, as are 
most Cité Soleil residents.

Ely warned protestors "will take to the streets" in droves if the winner isn't 
Rene Preval, 63, a former president and the favourite of Haiti's poor.

Pre-election polls show Preval, an agronomist, as the front-runner, although it 
is not clear whether he could take the absolute majority needed to avoid a 
runoff election.

In an interview yesterday, Preval said "people are investing everything in this 
election.

"Among the 33 presidential candidates are a factory owner whose slogan is 
"Order, Discipline, Work," and another former president ousted in a coup.

Haitian authorities urged calm, and extended voting so anyone in line by 6 p.m. 
could cast ballots. In a desperate attempt to beef up centres where ballots 
arrived late or workers failed to show, officials pulled volunteers from voting 
lines and gave them crash courses in helping run polling booths.

Turnout for the vote — called a key step toward steering this bloodied, 
impoverished country away from collapse — all but overwhelmed electoral 
officials. At dawn, when the 800 polling stations were supposed to open, it 
became apparent the day would not go smoothly. In the upscale Petionville 
suburb of the capital, some in a crowd of thousands of voters stormed a polling 
station. Several women fainted.

"The people have voted massively," said UN special envoy Juan Gabriel Valdes.

By early afternoon, all polls in this country of 8.3 million were open, said UN 
spokesman David Wimhurst.

Polls closed late last night, said Stéphane Lacroix, a spokesman for Haiti's 
elections commission.

Local radio reported gunfire killed a policeman and a civilian at Gros Morne in 
northern Haiti, and two elderly men reportedly died while waiting to vote.

The election stakes are huge. Haiti, which has seen only one president complete 
his term in office, could implode if the elections go wrong.

In the aftermath of a February 2004 rebellion that toppled president 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, gang violence has escalated and the country's few 
factories are closing — causing thousands of layoffs — because of security 
problems and a lack of foreign investment.

"If these elections are not fair and if the person whom the population wants 
doesn't win, houses will burn and heads will be cut off," warned Jean Pierre, 
an unemployed 33-year-old.

The words recalled the battle cry of army Gen. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who led 
a bloody rebellion against French troops and colonists in 1802: "Cut off their 
heads and burn their houses."

Canada, which has about 100 civilian police in Haiti as part of the UN 
peacekeeping effort, dispatched 106 observers and $30 million for the election.

Star wire services

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1139368674185






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Daniel Craig
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(718) 720-0202 /cell