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[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


Posted on Sat, Feb. 11, 2006


HAITI
Préval looks ready to take presidency
Despite talk of a runoff and questions about ballot security, former president 
René Préval looked likely to regain Haiti's top post.
By JACQUELINE CHARLES AND JOE MOZINGO
jcharles@MiamiHerald.com

MARMELADE, Haiti - Former president René Préval, with massive support from 
Haiti's urban poor, held an insurmountable lead Friday in elections for a new 
president. But it remained unclear whether he could avoid a runoff.

The slow pace of the vote count added to the uncertainty over the balloting, 
which many Haitians hope will help end the political and economic chaos that 
trailed the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide two years ago.

With 1.1 million votes counted, Préval held 50.26 percent, Haiti's electoral 
council announced late Friday. Turnout has been estimated at 1.75 million, or 
half the country's registered voters.

''The chances to go to a second round are 50-50,'' Jacques Bernard, director 
general of Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council, told The Miami Herald just 
before the announcement.

But one electoral advisor who has been monitoring the vote count closely said 
he expected Préval would wind up with 53 percent -- well above the simple 
majority he needs to avoid a runoff against the second-place finisher.

Bernard said he hoped the council would know today whether Préval will have to 
face off March 19 against one of the two candidates battling for second: former 
President Leslie Manigat or businessman Charles Henri Baker. Runoffs also will 
be held for the 129 legislative seats for which no candidate wins a majority of 
votes.

The Baker campaign Friday sent a letter to the electoral council alleging vote 
fraud and asking it to nullify the votes ``where there were too many 
irregularities.''

''People voted two, three and four times,'' said Hans Tippenhauer, a Baker 
campaign advisor. ``We do say we will accept the results, as long as they 
[council members] are doing their part,''

International election observers said that while they saw some problems, they 
were isolated. They commended the Haitian people for their large turnout, and 
called on electoral officials to correct problems, including late-opening polls 
and ballots thrown out after they were counted, for the second round.

''Our mission deplores some isolated incidents, in particular the destruction 
of ballots,'' said Jean-Pierre Kingsley, chairman of the 127-member 
International Mission for Monitoring Haitian Elections. ''That being said, we 
would like to emphasize the general absence of intimidation and violence at 
polling centers.'' Préval's campaign advisors acknowledged Friday that his lead 
might be shrinking as reports from the provinces trickle in. They had predicted 
an outright victory one day after the vote when the tallies included only the 
Port-au-Prince region.

The former president and one-time Aristide ally won overwhelming support in 
urban slums such as Cité Soleil, where Aristide was considered a hero for his 
defense of the vast majority of Haitians who live on less than $1 a day and 
whose plight makes their nation the poorest in the western hemisphere.

Préval, who has been keeping a low profile in his family's hometown of 
Marmelade, a mountain village 70 miles north of Port-au-Prince, told The Miami 
Herald on Friday that he was not surprised by the high percentage of votes he 
received in Cité Soleil. He received about 90 percent of the vote there.

''During the electoral campaign, I felt the enthusiasm. This is my third 
campaign, my second running for president, and this was the most 
enthusiastic,'' said Préval, who remained in high spirits at the bamboo, coffee 
and citrus cooperative he started in Marmelade years back.

Support for Préval in Marmelade is near-total.

Since moving into his grandparents' home here in 2001, he has devoted himself 
to projects that help peasants grow more profitable crops, particularly coffee, 
while replanting deforested hillsides with bamboo and citrus trees.

''He does good work,'' said Efrain Jesmar, 28, an unemployed man lingering by 
the road a few miles from Marmelade. ``He loves the country. He's not into 
schemes all the time.''

Préval has said that he's not really a politician and decided to run for 
president only after some 1,000 peasants showed up at the cooperative meeting 
area and urged him to run. They told him he would be a traitor if he didn't.

But those close say he would also like to redeem his image. His five years in 
office, from 1996 to 2001, brought some stability and development to Haiti, 
although many believed that Aristide really ran the country. At the end of his 
term Préval became the first president in Haitian history to surrender power to 
an elected successor, Aristide.

These days in Marmelade, few people seem to miss Aristide, living in exile in 
South Africa since in 2004.

Said Jesmar: ``He's not here, so what can he do for me? Préval is giving 
hope.''