27601: (news) Chamberlain: Early signs show Preval leading in Haiti election (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva and Jim Loney

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Early indications on Thursday
showed former Haitian President Rene Preval heading for an easy victory in
the first presidential election since Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted two
years ago.
     Haiti's electoral council had not released any results from Tuesday's
election but tallies from some polling stations showed Preval with large
leads in a ballot that could set a new test for U.S. foreign policy.
     Many of the poorest Haitians, from the slums where the one-time
Aristide protege Preval had his strongest support, said they were sure
their candidate had won.
     Turneb Delpe, one of the 33 presidential candidates, said his party's
poll watchers across the country were seeing results that put Preval ahead,
and he would accept the result.
     "If Preval won, he won," he said.
     Preval needs to win more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a March
19 run-off. Election authorities said they might publish a few results on
Thursday but more substantial returns were not likely until Friday night or
Saturday.
     Results posted at a voting center near Cite Soleil, a sprawling slum
where Aristide was adored and Preval found strong support, showed that
Preval won 75 percent.
     Even at a couple of polling stations in Petionville, a suburb in the
hills above Port-au-Prince where many of Haiti's wealthy live, Preval won
well over half the vote.
     Washington had pressured Aristide to leave after an armed revolt in
2004, accusing him of using thugs to enforce his rule, and now, after a
chaotic but mostly peaceful vote in the destitute and unstable Caribbean
nation, may have to deal with his one-time ally, and another potential
champion of the poor.
     "We the Haitian people know who we voted for. I can tell you now our
president is Rene Preval," said Port-au-Prince resident Marc-Joel
Saint-Fleur, 36. "We are just asking the authorities to admit he is the one
we elected."
     Preval, keeping a low profile in his mountain hometown of Marmelade
far from the bustle of Port-au-Prince, danced briefly to a bolero in the
village square on Wednesday but has said little about what few results are
known.
     "It makes me happy," Preval said when asked about speculation that he
had won, "but I'm not going to answer that until I have an official
source."
     Preval, 63, was president from 1996 to 2001, between the two terms of
Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest accused of despotism and
corruption before he was pushed from office by a motley crew of street
gangs and former soldiers.
     Preval has distanced himself since from Aristide but not ruled out
allowing him to return from exile in South Africa.
     Soldiers from a 9,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti were
gathering votes from remote locations, having used around 200 mules to get
ballots to and from far-off villages.
     "All the mules have trotted down the mountains with their heavy
loads," U.N. spokesman David Wimhurst said. "We're sending out helicopters
to pick them up. We'll have a lot of material coming in today."
     At least four people died in election-day incidents but a feared burst
of violence did not materialize. Officials with the United Nations,
Organization of American States and international observer groups have
praised Haitians, who turned out in huge numbers, for a relatively clean
and peaceful vote.
     Industrialist Charles Baker, the main candidate for the wealthy elite
who opposed Aristide and distrust Preval, said on Wednesday that there were
problems with the election, citing reports that some voters cast more than
one ballot.
     While a Preval victory was unlikely to please Washington, Harvard
University Haiti analyst Robert Rotberg said the United States had
essentially washed its hands of Haiti and was unlikely to try to
destabilize a Preval government.
     "The U.S. is a very distracted key player," he said. "If Iraq and
Afghanistan weren't the big things on the block maybe the U.S. would focus
on Haiti a bit more but it's not going to do so if there's no mass boat
migration out of Haiti."