27849: Craig (news) NYT: A Deal Is Reached to Name a Victor in Haiti's Election (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dan Craig


February 16, 2006
A Deal Is Reached to Name a Victor in Haiti's Election
By GINGER THOMPSON

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb. 16 — The front-runner in last week's presidential 
election, René Préval, was declared the winner today as part of an agreement by 
leaders of Haiti's interim government to retabulate the votes.

The Provisional Electoral Council announced the victory, which was followed by 
celebrations and demonstrations in front of the national palace, this morning. 
The agreement is a result of negotiations by Mr. Préval, government officials, 
foreign diplomats and international observers, including the Organization of 
American States.

A high-ranking official from the Organization of American States, who insisted 
on anonymity because of the fragile nature of the agreement, said on Wednesday 
night that loopholes in Haitian electoral law allow the government to discard 
an estimated 85,000 blank ballots included in the original tally. By excluding 
them, Mr. Préval's lead would increase from 48.7 percent of the votes to 
slightly more than 51 percent.

Under election rules, the winner needs 50 percent plus one vote to avoid a 
run-off.

An adviser to Mr. Préval, who confirmed the agreement, said on Wednesday that 
electoral authorities had indicated they began recovering a large number of 
missing ballots that were believed destroyed or stolen, and that those ballots, 
estimated at 8 percent of all ballots cast, were overwhelmingly in Mr. Préval's 
favor.

Mr. Préval, 63, an agronomist, previously served as president from 1996 to 
2001.

"Considering the fact that the remaining tally sheets will not influence the 
outcome of the result, René Préval has been declared president of the 
republic," said the president of the electoral council, Max Mathurin.

A former senator, Prince Pierre Sonson, said in response: "The entire political 
class should give their support to René Préval. We must work for a society 
without exclusions."

The agreement was forged after marathon negotiations among leaders of Mr. 
Préval's Lespwa Party, the interim government, the Provisional Electoral 
Council, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, the O.A.S. and 
ambassadors from the United States, France, Canada, Brazil and Chile. The talks 
started Monday, after early tallies indicated Mr. Préval would not win enough 
votes to avoid a runoff and his supporters paralyzed cities across the country 
with protests and flaming barricades.

Mr. Préval, who had been waiting for election results in his hometown, 
Marmelade, was rushed back to the capital on a United Nations helicopter Monday 
afternoon. On Tuesday morning, he delivered an address to the nation, charging 
that the tabulation had been rigged against him and demanding that final 
results be withheld pending a review.

"This is a political solution to a political problem that was necessary because 
of the widespread fraud that threatened to undermine the election and the will 
of the people."

Fritz Jean, a supporter of Mr. Préval's and former president of the Central 
Bank, said, "This is a political solution to a political problem that was 
necessary because of the widespread fraud that threatened to undermine the 
election and the will of the people."

"Those blank votes go beyond logical explanation," he said. "To believe that 
people walked hours to vote, and then waited in line for hours to cast blank 
ballots, it defies logic."

Voicing the sentiments of many people worries about the precarious state of 
Haiti's government, he added: "The country could not have withstood the 
pressure of waiting for a second round. We need to move as quickly as possible 
to reconciliation."

Others, speaking before the agreement, saw it differently.

"All the efforts we made for a democratic transition could be lost," said a 
human rights advocate, Jean-Claude Bajeux. "We are going right back to where we 
have always been where the crowds on the street, not elections, have the last 
say. We are close to losing an historic opportunity."

The deal was worked out as allegations of irregularities grew.

On Tuesday night, dozens of boxes containing thousands of ballots were found in 
a dump a few miles north of the capital.

Many of the ballots had not been marked. Some, though, had been marked for Mr. 
Préval, leading organizers of his campaign to suggest they were proof of an 
effort to steal victory from their candidate.

Opponents of Mr. Préval, along with several international election observers, 
wondered though whether his campaign workers had planted the boxes of ballots. 
They said it might be part of an effort to incite the crowds of Préval 
supporters whose protests in recent days have paralyzed cities across Haiti, 
using bullying to put him in power.

Whether the ballots were dumped or planted, the discovery added to questions 
here and abroad about the credibility of elections considered crucial to 
setting Haiti back on the road to democracy.

"Unimaginable! Unbelievable!" said Charles-Poisset Romain, a sociology 
professor and university rector who was one of the 33 candidates in last week's 
presidential race, referring to the discovery at the dump in an address on 
national radio. "A speedy investigation must be conducted."

But Mr. Préval's accusations of fraud halted the tabulation of votes before it 
was finished.

Furthermore, though the Provisional Electoral Council vowed there had been no 
manipulation or serious irregularities, the discovery at Trutier struck a blow 
to the confidence in the election and to the peace it had brought to this 
troubled nation. International electoral officials said an estimated 8 percent 
of the ballots cast were missing, at least half of them believed to be stolen 
or destroyed. Another 7 percent were voided because they were illegible.

But most of the challenges to the vote tally have focused on the estimated 
85,000 blank ballots, about 4 percent of the 2.2 million votes cast.

According to Haitian electoral law, blank ballots are counted as part of the 
total number of votes. If they were not counted, electoral officials report, 
Mr. Préval would probably win more than 51 percent of the completed votes.

International electoral officials acknowledged that poll workers could have 
improperly recorded unused ballots as blank ballots. In at least two polling 
places, said one such official, nearly 100 percent of the ballots were recorded 
as blank.

But the international officials also said they suspected some cases of fraud, 
saying they found it had hard to believe that peasant farmers in rural areas 
would walk for hours, then stand in line for hours, to cast blank ballots.

Brazil led a push by Latin American diplomats on Wednesday to discard the blank 
ballots and declare Mr. Préval president, diplomats said.

The former president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who went into exile in 
February 2004 and has lived in South Africa since May of that year, may make a 
statement on the Haiti elections on Friday, a spokesman for the South African 
Foreign Ministry said today.

Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said last week that the South African 
government would monitor the political climate in Haiti to gauge whether it 
would be safe for Mr. Aristide to return, but left no doubt that it would 
support such a move.

"When he arrived in South Africa we said he will be a guest as long as it is 
necessary," the minister said at a Feb. 9 briefing, "but as far as we are 
concerned he is not here for life, and as far as he is concerned he is not here 
for life."

Mr. Aristide has spent his exile in Pretoria, the capital, where he has been a 
research fellow and lecturer at the University of South Africa.

Amy Bracken contributed reporting from Port-au-Prince for this article, and 
Michael Wines from Johannesburg.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/16/international/americas/16cnd-haiti.html?hp&ex=1140152400&en=fc29068844f31494&ei=5094&partner=homepage