27590: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Elections (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By JOSEPH B. FRAZIER

   MARMELADE, Haiti, Feb 8 (AP) -- A former president with strong support
among Haiti's poor has taken an early lead two days after Haitians turned
out in droves to elect a new leader, an aide to the candidate said, citing
preliminary returns.
   But delays in retrieving results from countryside slowed official vote
counting, with ballot counts still being ferried to the capital on
Wednesday by plane, truck and mule. Jacques Bernard, director general of
Haiti's electoral council, said only a small percentage of balloting
results had reached Port-au-Prince.
   Tuesday's elections were the first since former President 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 another former president, 63-year-old
agronomist Rene Preval.
   Preval's political adviser, Bob Manuel, said preliminary calculations
showed the candidate having won 67 percent of the nationwide vote, with 16
percent of votes counted.
   Preval, who is widely supported by Haiti's poor masses, was the
front-runner among 33 presidential candidates. Shy and soft-spoken, Preval
is the only elected leader in Haitian history to finish his term. He's 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.
   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.
   Although the claim of Preval's lead by his team couldn't be verified,
early results posted at polling stations showed the candidate leading his
opponents. 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 city 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 a polling station, according to posted
results.
   Preval, in his rural hometown of Marmelade, emerged from his family home
once on Wednesday, briefly dancing along to a band playing outside and
waving to supporters. He didn't speak to reporters.
   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 the United
Nations has not received any reports of fraud or other major
irregularities.
   Haitians eagerly awaited returns Wednesday as scores of U.N.
peacekeepers patrolled quiet streets in Port-au-Prince. The 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.
   "I think no one can deny the legitimacy of this process, because people
really participated," U.N. special envoy Juan Gabriel Valdes told
Associated Press Television News.
   The elections have been 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 Michael Norton, Andrew Selsky and Stevenson
Jacobs in Port-au-Prince contributed to this report.