27853: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Elections (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By STEVENSON JACOBS

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 16 (AP) -- Singing, dancing and waving branches
ripped from roadside trees, jubilant Haitians poured into the streets
Thursday after a vote marred by fraud charges and massive protests ended in
victory for the favored presidential candidate of the impoverished
majority.
   "Now we have hope," said Dabual Jean, a 24-year-old who earns about $2 a
day selling fruit on the street in the capital, Port-au-Prince. "The
country is upside down. With Preval, hopefully we'll get on the right path.
   Rene Preval, an agronomist and former president, made no public
appearances Thursday, in keeping with his virtual silence as a days-long,
roller-coaster vote count roiled the poorest country in the Western
Hemisphere.
   "We have won. We thank God and the population," Preval told the Haitian
Press Agency in his only public statement. "We will now fight for
Parliament."
   He remained shuttered inside his sister's house in the capital hours
after electoral and government officials announced his victory, which was
cemented early Thursday after election officials divided ballots that were
left blank among all candidates in proportion to the votes they'd received.
   Preval has tried to dampen expectations in his few public statements,
saying his government would not be able to immediately fix Haiti's
problems, which range from massive unemployment to near-total rural
deforestation.
   Thousands of U.N. soldiers and police officers have been unable to quell
rampant urban violence, including fatal attacks on peacekeepers and
hundreds of kidnappings.
   Many here still resent the overthrow of former president Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, Preval's former ally, and wonder whether Preval will be able to
end the violence and overcome the suspicion and hatred dividing Haiti's
tiny elite from its vast poor population.
   Still, Preval's victory sent hopes soaring among the millions of
Haitians struggling amid grinding poverty in violent slums and isolated
rural villages.
   "I'm so happy, because we have what we were looking for," said Elvia
Pressoir, 36, who clutched Preval campaign leaflets as she waited for him
to appear outside the gate of his sister's house. "With Preval, we'll have
security, jobs and life will get back to normal."
   Many Haitian expatriates were similarly jubilant.
   "I am so happy. Maybe now there will be some peace," said Fritz Antoine
Fils, a fast-food restaurant worker in Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood.
   Preval has been vague on whether he would welcome back Aristide, who is
in exile in South Africa. The former slum priest fled Haiti as the United
States withdrew support for his government amid an armed rebellion and
accusations that he was corrupt and had encouraged his supporters to attack
his opponents.
   The Bush administration considers a possible return of Aristide -- the
only Haitian leader, other than Preval, to be popularly elected -- to be a
destabilizing factor, and has hinted that he should remain in exile.
   The two former presidents have drifted apart in recent years.
   "We think the Haitian government should be looking forward to their
future, not to its past," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said
Friday.
   Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday the United States
wants a stable Haiti and will offer help to its people. The United States,
Rice said in remarks to Congress, "has a good record in trying to get Haiti
out of the desperate circumstances in which they live."
   After decades of brain drain, capital flight, and corruption, virtually
every aspect of life in Haiti is in disarray, from rural hillsides stripped
of trees to cinderblock slums controlled by gangs armed with semi-automatic
weapons.
   Preval must attempt to meet the expectations of Haitians who began
celebrating Thursday as word spread that elections officials decided, eight
days after the Feb. 7 vote, to redistribute blank ballots among the
candidates, giving Preval just enough votes to avoid a runoff with
second-place finisher Leslie Manigat.
   Preval had been a hair short of an outright majority after 96 percent of
the vote was tabulated, sending masses of poor Haitians into the streets to
protest what they called electoral fraud. The allegations gained weight
with the discovery of thousands of ballots and other election material in a
garbage dump.
   Haitian officials then decided to divide the 85,000 blank ballots cast
among the candidates in proportion to the percentage they had already
achieved -- giving Preval just over 51 percent, said Michel Brunache, chief
of Cabinet for interim President Boniface Alexandre.
   The decision appears to have averted chaos.
   Preval had vowed to challenge the results if officials insisted on a
runoff, but meanwhile urged his supporters to demonstrate peacefully. The
death toll was low in Haitian terms; at least one Preval supporter was
killed in the protests.
   "Since last Tuesday, the government was looking for a solution out of
the crisis," Brunache told the AP. "It was obvious that the people had
massively made a choice, and that we needed to make sure that choice was
respected."
   Brunache said redistributing the blank ballots was justified because the
interim Haitian government also suspected fraud.
   Manigat, the second-place candidate, accused election officials of
breaking the rules to give Preval a first-round victory.
   "We are not going to be sore losers but we are human beings," Manigat
told reporters. He would not say if he would register a formal complaint.
   ------
   Associated Press writer Alfred de Montesquiou in San Juan, Puerto Rico
and Laura Wides-Munoz in Miami contributed to this report.