27783: (news) Chamberlain: Burned ballots inflame Haitian election tensions (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Haiti's electoral council
said on Tuesday it would launch an investigation after burned ballots, many
cast a week ago for former president Rene Preval, were found still
smoldering in a state dump.
     Preval, a one-time ally of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide
opposed by the same wealthy elite who helped drive Aristide from power two
years ago, said on Tuesday that only "massive fraud" had prevented him from
winning a first-round victory in the Feb. 7 election.
     A few hours later, reports that hundreds and maybe thousands of
ballots had been found discarded in a massive garbage dump in
Port-au-Prince rippled through the ranks of Preval supporters, triggering
anger and demonstrations after nightfall.
     "That's absolutely unacceptable," said Rosemond Pradel,
secretary-general of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) charged with
organizing the impoverished Caribbean country's presidential election --
the first vote since Aristide was ousted by an armed revolt and
international pressure to quit.
     "The CEP was not handling the ballots," Pradel said. He said securing
the ballots after they had been cast was the responsibility of the
9,000-strong U.N. force trying to keep the peace in Haiti, known by its
acronym MINUSTAH.
     "I cannot answer to those problems but we are going to set up a
commission to investigate the problem," Pradel said.
     U.N. spokesman David Wimhurst said ballots were supposed to have been
sealed in bags and placed in a container, protected by U.N. troops. "It's
not normal to have these ballots there."
     Wimhurst suggested the discarded ballots could have come from nine
polling stations outside Port-au-Prince ransacked during the election, with
the loss of around 35,000 votes. He also acknowledged that polling station
workers, who were often of the same political group, could have engaged in
fraud.
     In the district of Truitier, where the burned ballots were found,
angry Preval supporters and local residents denounced what they saw as an
attempt to deny them a voice in Haiti's fractious and fragile democracy.
     "The people are not going to accept losing their Feb. 7 vote," said a
community leader who did not give his name.
     He said residents had seen unfamiliar garbage trucks pulling up to the
dump since last Thursday but hadn't thought anything of it.
      "They took all Preval's ballots. They threw them away in order to
prevent the vote of the people from passing. That is a crime," said Rene
Monplaisir, an official in the Preval campaign.