27701: (news) Chamberlain: Crowds demand Preval be named Haiti president (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb 12 (Reuters)  - Shouting "Preval is
president," thousands of protesters marched in the Haitian capital on
Sunday demanding election results five days after the troubled Caribbean
nation's first vote since Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted two years ago.
     The large demonstrations came as concerns grew that the election
results, which showed former president Preval romping ahead of his rivals
in the first round but just short of a majority needed to avoid a runoff,
were being manipulated.
     Preval, a former Aristide ally opposed by the wealthy elite in the
poor Caribbean nation, complained there was a "problem" with the counting,
and two members of a nine-member council that oversees elections decried
"manipulation" of the count.
     The electoral council had said final results would be made public on
Sunday but they had not been released by early evening, as thousands
rallied outside the hilltop hotel where the tally was to be announced.
     Preval supporters filled a 10-block stretch of one of the teeming
capital's main streets from sidewalk to sidewalk, singing and waving tree
branches and chanting, "We voted already, Preval is president, We're not
going to vote again!"
     "I am begging the government, the election council, to make peace,"
Joanne Malebranche, 27, shouted as she knelt in the street and flung her
arms in the air. "Let's make peace. Give us Preval."
     Preval, who was president from 1996 to 2001 between Aristide's two
terms, had 49.1 percent of the votes, according to the latest incomplete
results on the Provisional Electoral Council's (CEP) Web site.
     He needs more than 50 percent to avoid a March 19 run-off against the
second-place candidate, currently ex-president Leslie Manigat, who had 11.7
percent.
     The controversy over the results centered on a discrepancy between a
graphic on the council's Web site and the results issued by the council's
director-general, Jacques Bernard.
     Bernard said that Preval had about 49 percent but the graphic
generated by computer had him at 52 percent. The graphic was later changed
to match the 49 percent figure.
     "I went to school and the CEP has given two figures, 52 percent and 49
percent. Now there is a problem," Preval told reporters while sitting on a
bench in the village square in his mountain hometown of Marmelade.
"Forty-nine percent, I don't pass. Fifty percent, I pass."
     Aristide was ousted by an armed revolt in February 2004 and Washington
has urged Preval, if elected, not to allow the former Roman Catholic priest
to return from exile.
     Observers have said a second-round of voting could change the dynamic
of the election because some of the candidates who oppose Preval, seen as
the champion of Haiti's poor masses, have agreed to rally behind the
second-place candidate.
     Pierre Richard Duchemin and Patrick Fequiere, two of the nine members
of the elections council, said the vote tabulation was being manipulated
and blamed Bernard.
     "The percent which is given by the graphic is done by the computer
according to figures entered by a data operator and the computer can't
lie," said Duchemin, who was in charge of the voting tabulation center. He
said he had been excluded from viewing data.
     "There is an unwholesome manipulation of the data."
     Bernard denied the result was being manipulated. He said someone
forgot to update the graphic.
     "They accuse me of manipulation," he said. "They say I received
several million dollars to manipulate the election. None of it is true."
     Adding to the controversy was the issue of 72,000 blank ballots, on
which no vote was cast. They were being added to totals used to calculate
each candidate's percentage and that helped drop Preval under 50 percent.
     South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the 1984 Nobel Peace Laureate,
said Sunday Mass at St. Trinity Cathedral in downtown Port-au-Prince and
praised Haitians for a peaceful election.