29609: Craig (news) Haitians Vote in Long - Delayed Elections (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From:  Dan Craig


December 3, 2006
Haitians Vote in Long - Delayed Elections
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:37 p.m. ET

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Haitians cast ballots Sunday in municipal and 
local elections that were billed as the final step in the troubled country's 
return to democratic rule following a bloody February 2004 revolt that toppled 
former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Some 29,000 candidates were vying for 1,420 local and municipal posts in 
Sunday's vote, which was marked by low voter turnout and isolated reports of 
violence.

The elections took place more than a year late because of street violence and 
logistical delays. Final results were not expected for several days.

On Sunday, assailants burned two polling stations, and shot and wounded a man 
in the northern town of Limonade, local media reported. Police later shot and 
wounded a Fusion party official after they found him with two Molotov 
cocktails.

In the Port-au-Prince slum of Martissant, automatic gunfire rang out after 
polls opened, but there were no immediate reports of injuries. Rival gangs have 
been fighting for weeks and had threatened to disrupt the polling, residents 
said.

United Nations peacekeepers used tear gas to disperse a small crowd that 
shouted anti-U.N. slogans at a polling station in Cite Soleil, a volatile slum 
on the edge of Port-au-Prince.

Voter turnout appeared low in most parts of the capital of Port-au-Prince, with 
many polling stations virtually empty. Officials had predicted turnout at 40 to 
50 percent, well below the massive participation in February's presidential 
vote won by Rene Preval.

Visiting a polling center in the capital, Preval's prime minister, Jacques 
Edouard Alexis, praised the organization of the elections but said he had hoped 
for a higher turnout.

''Citizens must be informed of the importance of local communities,'' Alexis 
told local Radio Metropole.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Haiti-Local-Elections.html?ex=1165899600&en=9e544af306cd69dc&ei=5070&emc=eta1