27597: (news) Chamberlain: Rivals concede ex-president leads 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) - A number of Haitian
presidential candidates conceded on Thursday that former President Rene
Preval appeared to be heading for an easy victory in the first election
since Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted two years ago.
     Haiti's electoral council had not released any results from Tuesday's
vote but tallies from some polling stations showed Preval with a large lead
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.
     Leslie Manigat, 75, whose short tenure as president in 1988 was ended
by a military putsch, said his polling station representatives had told him
he was in second place.
     "We are cautious, we are waiting for results, but it is clear
according to reports coming from a lot of places that Preval has a
comfortable gap," Manigat told Reuters.
     Manigat, however, added that he believed he had done well and "so we
don't exclude the possibility of a run-off."
     Turneb Delpe, another of the 33 presidential candidates, said his
party's poll watchers were also reporting that Preval was ahead. "If Preval
won, he won," he said.
     Preval needs more than 50 percent 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 hometown of Marmelade far from
Port-au-Prince, danced briefly in the village square on Wednesday but has
said little about what results are known.
     "It makes me happy," Preval said, but he declined to go further until
official results were announced.
     Preval, 63, was president from 1996 to 2001, between the two terms of
the former Roman Catholic priest Aristide, accused of despotism and
corruption before he was pushed from office.
     Preval has distanced himself since from Aristide but not ruled out
allowing him to return from exile in South Africa. South Africa's
government said on Thursday it would evaluate conditions after the election
to see whether it was safe for Aristide to return.
     At least four people died in election-day incidents but a feared burst
of violence did not materialize. A 9,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force is
patrolling Haiti.
     Johan Van Hecke, head of a European Union observer group, said the
election suffered from considerable shortcomings, but the enthusiastic
turnout should be praised.
     "Overall, the administration of the process could have been of a
higher standard," he told reporters, and urged authorities to improve their
performance. Some polling stations had opened hours late and some people
had difficulty voting.
     Industrialist Charles Baker, the main candidate for the wealthy elite
who opposed Aristide and distrust Preval, and who appears to have won third
place, said on Wednesday he believed 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.
     "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."