27585: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Elections (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By STEVENSON JACOBS

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 8 (AP) -- For voters who couldn't read, ballots
featured images to represent candidates instead of names. At polling
stations without electricity, there were candles to tally results. And on
mountain roads, there were mules to carry balloting results from the
countryside.
   Reminders of Haiti's status as the poorest and most troubled nation in
the Western Hemisphere were everywhere Wednesday as the country waited
anxiously for the results of elections that many hope will set the
Caribbean nation back on the path of democracy.
   The country's voters, who waited Tuesday in mammoth lines to vote, could
only wait and listen to claims as the country struggled to collect the
balloting results from far-flung villages and towns.
   A prediction came late Wednesday from a spokesman for former Haitian
President Rene Preval who said unconfirmed early results showed him with a
wide lead.
   The claim from Preval's team could not be verified, and the first
official results were not expected to be released until Thursday, said
Jacques Bernard, director general of Haiti's electoral council. Final
results could come on Friday or Saturday, he said.
   Tuesday's elections were the first since the government of Jean-Bertrand
Aristide was ousted in a bloody revolt two years ago, and officials said
collecting and tabulating the results would take several days.
   But some polling stations posted unconfirmed local results outside.
These showed strong early support for Preval, a shy and soft-spoken
63-year-old agronomist widely supported by Haiti's poor masses.
   At a large polling center near the huge slum of Cite Soleil, unconfirmed
results taped to large columns inside showed Preval winning about 90
percent of the votes cast there.
   Across the capital in Petionville, home to many of Haiti's wealthiest
citizens as well the poor Haitians who serve them, Preval took slightly
more than 70 percent of the vote at another polling station, according to
posted results.
   Preval's political adviser, Bob Manuel, said preliminary calculations
show the former president having won 67 percent of the nationwide vote,
with 16 percent of votes counted.
   Preval himself was in his rural hometown of Marmelade and wasn't
speaking to reporters. He emerged from his family home once, briefly
dancing along to a band playing outside and waving to supporters.
   Bernard said only a small percentage of balloting results had reached
the capital, slowing the vote count. "By Friday night or Saturday noon, we
will have a clear idea of the results of the election," he told reporters.
   As Haitians eagerly awaited, scores of U.N. peacekeepers patrolled quiet
streets in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Tuesday's voting, guarded by a
9,000-strong U.N. force, was fraught with early delays but largely free of
the violence that has plagued the capital since Aristide fled.
   The leading contender among the 33 presidential candidates was Preval,
the only elected leader in Haitian history to finish his term. He is also a
former ally of Aristide, who remains in exile in South Africa.
   Preval's closest rivals include Charles Henri Baker, 50, a wealthy
garment factory owner, and Leslie Manigat, 75, who was president for five
months in 1988 until the army ousted him.
   More than 50 percent of Haiti's 3.5 million registered voters were
believed to have cast ballots, said David Wimhurst, a U.N. spokesman,
adding that a precise figure wasn't yet available. He also said that the
United Nations has not received any reports of fraud or other major
irregularities in the voting.
   "I think no one can deny the legitimacy of this process because people
really participated," the special U.N. envoy to Haiti, Juan Gabriel Valdes,
told Associated Press Television News.
   However, he conceded that polls opened too late and "some people were
not even able to vote."
   Manigat's wife, Senate candidate Myrlande Manigat, said initial reports
from their own party's representatives monitoring the vote count showed
Preval with a big lead in her district, which includes much of metropolitan
Port-au-Prince and outlying areas.
   "We are very worried that Preval has won on the first round," Manigat
told The Associated Press.
   If no candidate wins a majority, a runoff between the top two
vote-getters will be held March 19.
   The vote count was going "very slowly" because of delays retrieving
ballots from rural areas, Wimhurst said.
   "The hardest part is getting ballots back to the capital," where the
vote tabulation center is located, he said. "In some cases, it will take
two days to get ballots from outlying areas."
   U.N. officials were relying in part on 280 mules, loaded with bulging
sacks of ballots and other material. A U.N. plane also arrived in the
capitol, carrying balloting results from the countryside.
   The huge turnout all but overwhelmed electoral officials, who conceded
they were ill-prepared for the crush of voters. Many stations opened late,
lacking the necessary workers, security and ballots to handle so many
voters who turned out by foot, car and brightly colored buses. Many
Haitians cast ballots after spending hours in lines stretching up to a
mile.
   "It could have been better," said Jose Miguel Insulza, head of the
Organization of American States, but he said the voters' enthusiasm made
the elections successful. "In many places, people would not have stood in
line for so long waiting to vote."
   The elections were deemed vital to avoiding a political and economic
meltdown in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation. In the aftermath of
Aristide's ouster, gangs went on a kidnapping spree and many factories
closed because of security problems and a shortage of foreign investment.
   ------
   Associated Press writers Joseph B. Frazier in Marmelade and Michael
Norton in Port-au-Prince contributed to this report.