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[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Miami Herald

Posted on Thu, Feb. 16, 2006



Préval's victory eases week of tension

BY JOE MOZINGO
jmozingo@MiamiHerald.com

PORT-AU-PRINCE - The tension and burgeoning sense of doom that gripped Haiti 
this week broke on Thursday with the pre-dawn announcement that René Préval had 
been elected president. The decision came after Haitian officials met day and 
night under pressure from foreign diplomats.

Supporters of the quiet 63-year-old agronomist and former President filled the 
streets soon after the official 3 a.m. announcement, dancing and chanting to 
the tin warbling of carnaval trumpets.

The news came after a day of closed-door meetings between Préval, foreign 
diplomats,the U.S.-backed interim Haitian government and the nation's electoral 
council, according to Haitians and foreigners who participated in the meetings.

Diplomats from the half dozen countries that give heavy financial and military 
assistance to Haiti -- and largely funded the $60 million election -- were 
desperate to find a way to resolve an impasse in the vote-counting that left 
Préval just short of the outright majority he needed to avert a runoff.

Ambassadors from Brazil and Chile led a push to change the way blank votes were 
tabulated, something first suggested by U.N. electoral advisors, according to 
persons in the meetings. Canada and France, two countries with long-standing 
traditional ties to Haiti, initially insisted the council stick to a count that 
would have forced a runoff, but agreed that significant flaws in the election 
process would make it impossible to declare the results with precision.

They met with Préval at a U.N. base Monday afternoon, and then flew him to the 
National Palace, where President Boniface Alexandre promised to work with the 
electoral council to resolve the crisis.

On Tuesday morning, as he promised, Préval went on Haitian radio to tell his 
supporters to remain peaceful while the dispute was hashed out. He said he 
suspected ``massive fraud.''

That evening, diplomats from the U.S., Brazil, Chile, Canada, France and the 
U.N. met with Préval again. Brazilian Ambassador Paulo Cordeiro de Andrade 
Pinto offered up the notion of allocating the blank votes to candidates 
according to the percentage of the votes they had received until then.

'This was the technicians' choice,'' Cordeiro told The Miami Herald.

And the early 2005 electoral decree that laid out the rules of the election was 
ambiguous, only requiring that the blank votes be included in the total, not 
explaining how they would be counted.

U.N. advisors, council members and observers agreed that the stunningly high 
number of blank votes cast -- one out of every 20 votes -- could be a result of 
poorly trained pollworkers dumping unused ballots into ballot boxes.

In a meeting that began Wednesday morning and lasted well past midnight, the 
council ultimately decided to allocate those blank votes to candidates in 
proportion to the share of valid votes they received. While this move pumped up 
everyone's share of the vote, it put Préval over the 50 percent he needed to 
avoid a runoff. They declared him the winner after 3 a.m.

The second place candidate, 73-year-old former President Leslie Manigat, vented 
at his estate in the Port-au-Prince suburb of La Plain on Thursday, calling the 
decision a ''tragic experience for the Haitian people,'' but did not say he 
would contest the results.

''We are not duped by this Machiavellian comedy of imposing a winner,'' said 
Manigat, who had less than 12 percent of the vote before the late night 
decision. ``This right to a second round was confiscated by a manipulation of 
statistics ...The ones who did it have a grave responsibility.''

The first round of national elections on Feb. 7 was supposed to be a model of 
high-tech precision and efficiency for a country accustomed to fraudulent and 
violent balloting.

Minimizing potential fraud was crucial to calm the highly charged political 
atmosphere that followed the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 
2004. Washington and other foreign donors said credible elections were the only 
way to restore democracy to the troubled and desperately impoverished nation.

But poor preparation led to a range of problems that soon brought the 
tabulation of results to a virtual halt. Out of some 2 million votes cast, 
147,000 either disappeared or were nullified, and 85,290 were blank.

The uncertainty was large enough to muddle whether Préval, who had 48.76 
percent with more than 90 percent of polling stations accounted for, had won an 
outright majority or needed to face a runoff.

Suspicions of fraud deepened when television footage showed hundreds if not 
thousands of ballots and boxes found at the municipal dump. This set off Préval 
supporters again, and flaming barricades lit the night.

Haitian interim President Boniface Alexandre implored the nine-member electoral 
council to resolve the crisis.

''We had to do something,'' said council member Patrick Féquiere. ``We could 
have just told Préval he got 48.76 percent, but when he contests the results 
all of this mess is going to come out -- the blank votes, the missing votes.''

On Wednesday, seven members of the council set out to end the crisis. They 
holed up in a mansion in the hills above Port-au-Prince with Alexandre's chief 
of staff, the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Justice. They 
debated various options, from simply throwing the blank votes out to setting a 
limit to the number of blank votes gathered from any one polling station. By 
early evening, they had tentatively agreed to distribute the vote pro rata.

The U.N. envoy in Haiti, Juan Gabriel Valdes, and OAS Secretary GeneralJose 
Insulza informed Préval.

But before the council declared Préval indeed the winner, they had to run 
numerous simulations to make sure issues with the missing votes would not bring 
him below 50 percent again. The other two members meanwhile joined the meeting.

Finally, long after midnight, eight of the nine members signed an agreement 
declaring Préval the winner.

Eric Joseph, 30, celebrated with a Prestige beer in front of the National 
Palace in the afternoon, after three days on the streets in protest.

''We will never be tired,'' he said. ``For two years we have been suffering. 
Today is a day of deliverance.''