27813: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Elections (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By ANDREW SELSKY

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 15 (AP) -- U.N. police went to a garbage dump near
the Haitian capital Wednesday to recover election materials, including
numbered bags apparently used to carry results and tally sheets, amid
charges that last week's presidential election was marred by fraud.
   Associated Press reporters saw hundreds of empty ballot boxes, at least
one vote tally sheet and several empty bags -- numbered and signed by the
heads of polling stations -- strewn across the fly-infested dump five miles
north of Port-au-Prince.
   "That's extraordinary," U.N. spokesman David Wimhurst said.
   Leading candidate Rene Preval has alleged that the Feb. 7 vote was
marred by "massive fraud or gross errors" designed to leave him just short
of the majority needed for a first-round victory. Preliminary results from
the first election since Jean-Bertrand Aristide's ouster two years ago
showed Preval, a former Aristide protege, with a sizable lead.
   A wave of chaotic protests by Preval supporters sent foreign diplomats
scrambling for peaceful solutions. Preval, a former president, has urged
the protesters to continue peacefully.
   Ambassadors from countries "directly involved in the crisis" were
discussing a Brazilian plan to persuade other candidates to recognize
Preval's victory and prevent a mass uprising, according to Marco Aurelio
Garcia, foreign affairs adviser to Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da
Silva.
   In New York, the U.N. Security Council urged Haitians to respect
election results and refrain from violence, and it extended the
Brazilian-led U.N. peacekeeping mission for six months through Aug. 15.
   The United Nations provided security for the vote and helped ship
election returns to the capital, but it is not directly involved in
counting ballots.
   A popularly elected government with a clear mandate from the voters is
seen as crucial to avoiding a political and economic meltdown in the
Western Hemisphere's poorest nation. Gangs have gone on kidnapping sprees
and factories have closed for lack of security.
   Haiti's interim government ordered the vote count suspended with 90
percent tallied, pending a review of tally sheets by an investigative
commission representing the president's office, the electoral council and
Preval's party.
   "We are looking closely at specimens of the ballots found at the dump,
to check whether these are real ballots," said Michel Brunache, chief of
staff of interim President Boniface Alexandre.
   The ballots were being examined by the judiciary because the
investigating commission had not been formed, he said.
   But Max Mathurin, the electoral council president, said Wednesday that
election workers were ignoring the government order and continuing to
tabulate results.
   "The government and the established commission can't under any
circumstances ask or order the cancellation of the operations," Mathurin
told Radio Metropole.
   Workers have completed 92 percent of the vote count, he added without
disclosing any more information. Mathurin also denied that the electoral
commission had manipulated the vote count.
   "We're working transparently," he said.
   Of the 2.2 million ballots cast, about 125,000 ballots have been
declared invalid because of irregularities, raising suspicions among Preval
supporters. Another 4 percent were blank but were still added into the
total, making it harder for Preval to obtain a majority.
   The most recent results posted on the electoral council's Web site
Monday showed Preval had 48.76 percent of the vote, with 90 percent of
ballots counted. He would need 50 percent plus one vote to win outright.
   Another former president, Leslie Manigat, was in second place with 11.8
percent of the vote.
   Preval has vowed to challenge the results if officials insist on holding
a March runoff. Haiti's constitution indicates that a challenge would go to
the Supreme Court, but the interim government recently decreed that any
complaints should go to the electoral commission -- the same body accused
of manipulating the results.
   Late Tuesday, the local Telemax TV news broadcast images from the dump
north of the capital showing smashed white ballot boxes with wads of
ballots strewn about. Ballot after ballot was marked for Preval.
   The materials seen by the AP at the dump included one vote tally sheet
from the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Carrefour that recorded 129 votes
for Preval out of 202 cast.
   A man picking through the dump, Jean-Ricot Guerrier, said the material
was dumped by a truck the day after the election, and someone tried to burn
the material before rainfall put out the fire.
   Wimhurst said the ballots could have come from any of nine polling
stations across the country that were ransacked on election day, forcing
officials to throw out as many as 35,000 votes. At least one voting center
was destroyed by people tired of waiting in line, while others were
destroyed by political factions, he said.
   Both Wimhurst and Mathurin raised the possibility that someone dumped
the ransacked ballots to create an appearance of fraud, and Mathurin said
U.N. troops would be responsible for any unprotected ballots.
   ------
   Associated Press reporter Stevenson Jacobs contributed to this report.