27517: Simidor (FYI): Substantive (early) AP election day report (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: daniel simidor <danielsimidor@yahoo.com>

Huge Turnout in Key Haitian Election

By MICHAEL NORTON, Associated Press 2.7.2006, 10:54 AM

Haitians jammed polling stations Tuesday as U.N.
peacekeepers fanned out to guard the country's first
presidential election in nearly six years, a vote
widely viewed as a key step toward steering this
bloodied, impoverished nation away from collapse.

Polls opened at 6 a.m. EST, but workers were slow to
open the doors at several stations in the capital,
Port-au-Prince, said U.N. spokesman David Wimhurst.
Waits were long, someone stole a batch of ballots and
scuffles broke out, but there were no reports of major
violence.

"So it's going well far," Wimhurst said.

Clutching newly minted voter ID cards, about 1,000
people lined up before dawn at a polling station in
the Port-au-Prince area of Delmas, waiting for
electoral officials to open the doors.

Outside another polling station in the downtown slum
of Bel-Air, hundreds of waiting voters snaked along
rutted, trash-strewn streets, some pushing and shoving
to keep their place in line.

"Haitians are mobilized for change, that's why there's
so many people in the street this morning," said Jean
Joseph, 44, on his way to vote.

U.N. special envoy Juan Gabriel Valdes said he saw
long lines at a polling station near St. Pierre
church.

"It's a victory for democracy, a victory for Haiti,"
Valdes said.

Minutes later, voters shouted, pushed and shoved to
keep their positions in line. Several fainted and were
carried out.

The election front-runner is former president Rene
Preval, a 63-year-old agronomist who led the country
in 1996-2001. The other top contenders among the 33
candidates are businessman Charles Henri Baker and
Leslie Manigat, who was president for five months in
1988 until a coup ousted him.

The field also includes a former rebel in the
insurgency that forced President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide from office in February 2004 and a former
army officer accused in the death of a Haitian
journalist.

If no candidate wins a majority, the top two finishers
would compete in a March 19 runoff. Hundreds of
candidates also are running for 129 parliamentary
seats.

Authorities urged Haitians to vote in large numbers
under the protection of thousands of U.N.
peacekeepers, calling Tuesday's election a key step to
reversing Haiti's cycle of despair. The nation is the
poorest in the Western Hemisphere.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the
9,300-member U.N. peacekeeping force "will do all it
can to support the Haitian authorities in ensuring
that the vote is held in freedom and safety."

Helicopters, trucks and even mules ferried election
supplies into remote corners of the Caribbean nation.
U.N. officials said 92 percent of the 3.5 million
people who registered to vote had collected their
identity cards, a sign that turnout could be high.

"Haiti's future depends on this vote," said Jacques
Bernard, director general of the electoral council.
"Good elections are the only solution to saving our
nation."

In Bel-Air, walls and shops once adorn with images of
Aristide are now plastered in a sea of yellow posters
bearing Preval's face.

Aristide, once backed by the United States and seen as
a beacon of hope in this desperate country, was driven
from power after being accused of corruption and of
using thugs to attack his opponents. He lives in exile
in South Africa, while an interim government has led
the country for the last two years.

However he still enjoys wide support, and many
Haitians believe that if Preval wins, he will bring
Aristide back.

The presence of foreign troops is a reminder of
Haiti's political turmoil and misery.

Bernard did not put voting stations inside the
sprawling, seaside slum of Cite Soleil, a base for
armed gangs loyal to Aristide who are blamed for a
wave of kidnappings in the capital.

More than 5,000 people formed a line at the polling
station nearest there as election workers assembled
the ballot boxes. A wall of people crushed toward the
entrance and shouted in anger.

"We have the right to vote!" chanted several voters.

Gunshots could be heard from within the slum, which is
home to some 200,000 people.

At a polling station in a high school in the upscale
Petionville area of the capital, police tried to keep
an anxious crowd at bay, using batons at one point to
beat back a voter.

The election has been billed as a move to restore
democracy, but it is a daunting task. With decades of
brain drain, capital flight and crippling judicial,
security, health and corruption problems, the nation
needs more than a quick electoral fix, experts say.

Underscoring the difficulty of holding elections in a
country with a ruined infrastructure - including roads
- mules transported some election materials to areas
where U.N. helicopters were unable to land. The vote
has been postponed four times since October because of
security problems and trouble distributing elections
materials.

The 70-mile drive from Port-au-Prince to the northern
town of Gonaives takes four hours, and the roads are
far from Haiti's worst.

Deforestation is widespread, leaving topsoil
vulnerable, and when hurricanes hit, catastrophic
floods often follow. Land plots grow smaller as the
population increases, and poor farming methods exhaust
an already-tired soil.

Haiti has long suffered from oppression and
instability. The country was ruled for nearly 30 years
by dictators Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son
Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who fled to France in
1986 amid allegations of human rights violations, mass
killings and stealing millions from the national
treasury.

Efforts to restore democracy have faltered. Soldiers
aborted Haiti's first attempt at free elections in a
1987 bloodbath.

Aristide, then a priest who preached rebellion to
slum-dwelling Haitians, won elections in 1990 but
served only seven months before the military overthrew
him. Aristide was re-elected in 2000.


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