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From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Miami Herald

Posted on Thu, Feb. 16, 2006



Préval's victory eases week of tension

BY JOE MOZINGO
jmozingo@MiamiHerald.com

PORT-AU-PRINCE - The tension and burgeoning sense of doom that gripped Haiti this week broke on Thursday with the pre-dawn announcement that René Préval had been elected president. The decision came after Haitian officials met day and night under pressure from foreign diplomats.

Supporters of the quiet 63-year-old agronomist and former President filled the streets soon after the official 3 a.m. announcement, dancing and chanting to the tin warbling of carnaval trumpets.

The news came after a day of closed-door meetings between Préval, foreign diplomats,the U.S.-backed interim Haitian government and the nation's electoral council, according to Haitians and foreigners who participated in the meetings.

Diplomats from the half dozen countries that give heavy financial and military assistance to Haiti -- and largely funded the $60 million election -- were desperate to find a way to resolve an impasse in the vote-counting that left Préval just short of the outright majority he needed to avert a runoff.

Ambassadors from Brazil and Chile led a push to change the way blank votes were tabulated, something first suggested by U.N. electoral advisors, according to persons in the meetings. Canada and France, two countries with long-standing traditional ties to Haiti, initially insisted the council stick to a count that would have forced a runoff, but agreed that significant flaws in the election process would make it impossible to declare the results with precision.

They met with Préval at a U.N. base Monday afternoon, and then flew him to the National Palace, where President Boniface Alexandre promised to work with the electoral council to resolve the crisis.

On Tuesday morning, as he promised, Préval went on Haitian radio to tell his supporters to remain peaceful while the dispute was hashed out. He said he suspected ``massive fraud.''

That evening, diplomats from the U.S., Brazil, Chile, Canada, France and the U.N. met with Préval again. Brazilian Ambassador Paulo Cordeiro de Andrade Pinto offered up the notion of allocating the blank votes to candidates according to the percentage of the votes they had received until then.

'This was the technicians' choice,'' Cordeiro told The Miami Herald.

And the early 2005 electoral decree that laid out the rules of the election was ambiguous, only requiring that the blank votes be included in the total, not explaining how they would be counted.

U.N. advisors, council members and observers agreed that the stunningly high number of blank votes cast -- one out of every 20 votes -- could be a result of poorly trained pollworkers dumping unused ballots into ballot boxes.

In a meeting that began Wednesday morning and lasted well past midnight, the council ultimately decided to allocate those blank votes to candidates in proportion to the share of valid votes they received. While this move pumped up everyone's share of the vote, it put Préval over the 50 percent he needed to avoid a runoff. They declared him the winner after 3 a.m.

The second place candidate, 73-year-old former President Leslie Manigat, vented at his estate in the Port-au-Prince suburb of La Plain on Thursday, calling the decision a ''tragic experience for the Haitian people,'' but did not say he would contest the results.

''We are not duped by this Machiavellian comedy of imposing a winner,'' said Manigat, who had less than 12 percent of the vote before the late night decision. ``This right to a second round was confiscated by a manipulation of statistics ...The ones who did it have a grave responsibility.''

The first round of national elections on Feb. 7 was supposed to be a model of high-tech precision and efficiency for a country accustomed to fraudulent and violent balloting.

Minimizing potential fraud was crucial to calm the highly charged political atmosphere that followed the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Washington and other foreign donors said credible elections were the only way to restore democracy to the troubled and desperately impoverished nation.

But poor preparation led to a range of problems that soon brought the tabulation of results to a virtual halt. Out of some 2 million votes cast, 147,000 either disappeared or were nullified, and 85,290 were blank.

The uncertainty was large enough to muddle whether Préval, who had 48.76 percent with more than 90 percent of polling stations accounted for, had won an outright majority or needed to face a runoff.

Suspicions of fraud deepened when television footage showed hundreds if not thousands of ballots and boxes found at the municipal dump. This set off Préval supporters again, and flaming barricades lit the night.

Haitian interim President Boniface Alexandre implored the nine-member electoral council to resolve the crisis.

''We had to do something,'' said council member Patrick Féquiere. ``We could have just told Préval he got 48.76 percent, but when he contests the results all of this mess is going to come out -- the blank votes, the missing votes.''

On Wednesday, seven members of the council set out to end the crisis. They holed up in a mansion in the hills above Port-au-Prince with Alexandre's chief of staff, the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Justice. They debated various options, from simply throwing the blank votes out to setting a limit to the number of blank votes gathered from any one polling station. By early evening, they had tentatively agreed to distribute the vote pro rata.

The U.N. envoy in Haiti, Juan Gabriel Valdes, and OAS Secretary GeneralJose Insulza informed Préval.

But before the council declared Préval indeed the winner, they had to run numerous simulations to make sure issues with the missing votes would not bring him below 50 percent again. The other two members meanwhile joined the meeting.

Finally, long after midnight, eight of the nine members signed an agreement declaring Préval the winner.

Eric Joseph, 30, celebrated with a Prestige beer in front of the National Palace in the afternoon, after three days on the streets in protest.

''We will never be tired,'' he said. ``For two years we have been suffering. Today is a day of deliverance.''