27827: (news) Chamberlain: Pressure builds to resolve Haiti election impasse (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva and Jim Loney

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Brazil led a push on
Wednesday to avert violence in Haiti by urging election officials to
discard ballots possibly tainted by fraud and declare former President Rene
Preval the winner, diplomats and officials said.
     A diplomatic source and an aide to the one-time ally of ousted
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide said 85,000 "blank votes," in which no
choice was made among the 33 candidates competing in the Feb. 7 election,
had become the focus of efforts to resolve the disputed election.
     The blanks, amounting to 4.7 percent of the total, were included in
accordance with the law and reduced the final percentage allocated to each
candidate, helping to keep Preval below the simply majority he needed for a
first-round win.
     Preval's share of the vote so far stood at 48.7 percent, triggering
angry protests by his supporters and a claim by Preval of "massive fraud."
Preval, opposed by the same wealthy elite that helped drive Aristide into
exile two years ago, would have 51 percent of the vote if the blanks were
discarded.
     "We are asking the authorities not to consider the blank votes because
they are evidence of fraud," said Jacques Edouard Alexis, who served as
prime minister for a time when Preval was president between 1996 and 2000.
     Blank votes are a common way to register a protest vote in established
democracies.
     Haitians doubt so many of their countrymen really walked miles (km) to
a polling station and then waited for hours simply to cast an unmarked
ballot. The United Nations, which helped oversee the election, has also
acknowledged that ballot boxes could easily have been stuffed with blanks.
     "The focus now is on the blank votes because nobody believes that
these blank votes are real," the diplomatic source said, asking not to be
identified.
     The source said Brazil, which is leading the U.N. peacekeeping force
in Haiti, and Chile were leading efforts to resolve the impasse.
     Brazil urged that Preval be declared the winner.
     "Considering the existing climate in the country, that would be the
best solution," President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's chief foreign
relations adviser, Marco Aurelio Garcia, told reporters in Brasilia.
     Haiti's interim authorities bowed to Preval's demand for a fraud
inquiry as thousands protested after charred and still-smoldering ballots
were found on a garbage dump in Port-au-Prince.
     Waving burned ballot papers and ballot boxes, the protesters chanted,
"Look what they did with our votes," as they marched past the U.S.,
Canadian and French embassies.
     Many came from slums like Cite Soleil and Belair, where Preval has won
the same passionate support among Haiti's poor masses that formed the
backbone of Aristide's political power.
     Michel Brunache, chief of staff for President Boniface Alexandre, said
the interim government had asked the Provisional Electoral Council not to
publish final election results until a commission composed of council
members and aides to Preval had reviewed Preval's allegations.
     "We have people who are angry, who are ready to set the country on
fire," Brunache said.
     Canada, a major aid donor, said it was troubled but optimistic the
fraud allegations would be dealt with.
     The U.N. Security Council repeated a call for calm and called for a
full investigation.
     A distant second in last week's election, with 11.8 percent, was
Leslie Manigat, another ex-president, whose brief tenure in 1988 was
interrupted by a military coup.

   (Additional reporting by Irwin Arieff, United Nations, and David
Ljunggren, Ottawa and Guido Nejamkis, Brasilia)