26333: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Elections (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By BEN FOX

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Sept 26 (AP) -- Disgruntled presidential hopefuls who
were ruled ineligible to run in the Nov. 20 election should appeal to
Haiti's Supreme Court, an election official said Monday.
   Several would-be candidates visited the office of Haiti's Provisional
Electoral Council, demanding to know why they weren't on the list published
Friday of the 32 people eligible to run.
   "If the court rules in their favor, they will be back on the list," said
Stephan Lacroix, a spokesman for the council. "It is possible, but it also
depends on the law."
   Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to visit Haiti on Tuesday to
show support for the elections. During her daylong visit, she will meet
with members of the interim government and representatives of a U.N.
peacekeeping force.
   The electoral council has rejected 22 candidates, including wealthy U.S.
businessman Dumarsais Simeus, who is the son of Haitian peasants and owner
of one of the largest black-owned businesses in the United States.
   Simeus plans to appeal within the next few days, his campaign said.
   Lacroix said the candidates must get a court decision in their favor
before Oct. 8, which is the official start of the race -- the first since
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted following a violent February
2004 rebellion.
   Simeus was barred because his U.S. citizenship makes him ineligible
under the constitution, while other candidates were rejected mostly because
they submitted incomplete paperwork, officials said.
   Jacques Ronald Belot of the Independent Force of Haiti said he was
rejected after being told the night before the Sept. 15 registration
deadline that he had to put the names of all 70,000 people who signed his
candidacy petition on a computer disk.
   "When I told them it's impossible, the election will be over by the time
I finish putting it on the disk, they said that's my problem," Belot said.
He is appealing the decision.
   The 32 approved candidates include two presumed front-runners: former
President Rene Preval, a one-time close ally of Aristide, and Marc Bazin, a
former prime minister.
   Other candidates include Leslie Manigat, a former president who was
forced from his post by the army in 1988, and Guy Philippe, who led the
rebellion that forced Aristide, the country's first freely elected
president, out of office and into exile in South Africa.