27599: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Elections (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By JOSEPH B. FRAZIER

   MARMELADE, Haiti, Feb 9 (AP) -- Incomplete returns showed that Rene
Preval -- a popular former president and one-time protege of ousted leader
Jean-Bertrand Aristide -- has a commanding lead in Haiti's presidential
election, an official with his party and a rival said Thursday.
   The official at Preval's Lespwa party headquarters said that with almost
25 percent of the ballots counted, Preval was leading with 67.7 percent of
the vote.
   Leslie Manigat, a 75-year-old candidate who was president for five
months in 1988 before being ousted by the army, also said early returns
from his party's representatives monitoring the count showed Preval was
heading toward a big, first-round victory.
   "There is a tiny chance that we will have a second round, but I fear
Preval has made a clean sweep of the votes," Manigat told The Associated
Press earlier Thursday.
   The electoral commission has not released any official results from
Tuesday's presidential and parliamentary elections -- the first since
Aristide's government was ousted in a bloody revolt two years ago.
   But the results also were being tabulated by political parties that have
representatives at the polls and have signed off on tally sheets.
   If none of the 33 candidates wins a majority, a runoff between the top
two vote-getters will be held March 19.
   The official with Preval's party said 359,000 votes had been counted,
which would be almost 25 percent of the votes cast, according to estimates
of voter turnout. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because she
was not authorized to release the data.
   Preval's political adviser, Bob Manuel, also said Wednesday that
preliminary calculations showed the former president having won 67 percent
of the nationwide vote, with 16 percent of the votes counted.
   Manigat said the returns showed himself coming in second, followed by
Charles Henri Baker, 50, a wealthy garment factory owner.
   Partial official results may be released later Thursday, but officials
have said collecting and tabulating the results could take several days.
   Jacques Bernard, director general of Haiti's electoral council, said
Wednesday that only a small percentage of balloting results had reached the
capital. Many of the ballot counts were still being ferried from remote
polling places by plane, truck and mule.
   "By Friday night or Saturday noon, we will have a clear idea of the
results of the election," said Jacques Bernard, the council's director
general.
   Some polling stations posted local results outside showing strong
support for Preval, a 63-year-old agronomist and former president widely
supported by Haiti's poor masses. Shy and soft-spoken, Preval is the only
elected leader in Haitian history to finish his term.
   Preval is also a former ally of Aristide, who remains in exile in South
Africa. That country's foreign minister on Thursday said Aristide can
remain there as long as he wants.
   Unconfirmed results taped to columns at a polling center near the huge
slum of Cite Soleil showed Preval winning about 90 percent of the votes
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, 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 that the
United Nations has not received any reports of fraud or other major
irregularities.
   Haitians eagerly awaited the first returns Thursday as scores of U.N.
peacekeepers patrolled quiet streets in the capital, 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 AP
Television News.
   However, he conceded that polls opened too late and "some people were
not even able 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 Michael Norton, Andrew Selsky and Stevenson
Jacobs in Port-au-Prince contributed to this report.