[Previous entry: ""The Devil Wears Prada:" María Corina Machado and Washington’s Indecent Game Against Venezuela"] [Next entry: "Boos, jeers and threats as Olympic flame kindles protests across Italy"]

02/09/2006:

"Preval Reportedly Leads Haitian Vote"

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - A spokesman for former Haitian President Rene Preval said Wednesday that unconfirmed early results showed him with a wide lead in the country's presidential race — even though many ballots were still being carried in from remote polling places by plane, truck and mule.

The claim from Preval's team could not be verified, and the first official results were not expected to be released until Thursday, said Jacques Bernard, director general of Haiti's electoral council. Final results could come on Friday or Saturday, he said.

Tuesday's elections were the first since the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in a bloody revolt two years ago, and officials said collecting and tabulating the results would take several days.

But some polling stations posted unconfirmed local results outside. These showed strong early support for Preval, a shy and soft-spoken 63-year-old agronomist widely supported by Haiti's poor masses.

At a large polling center near the huge slum of Cite Soleil, unconfirmed results taped to large columns inside showed Preval winning about 90 percent of the votes cast there.

Across the capital in Petionville, home to many of Haiti's wealthiest citizens as well the poor Haitians who serve them, Preval took slightly more than 70 percent of the vote at another polling station, according to posted results.

Preval's political adviser, Bob Manuel, said preliminary calculations show the former president having won 67 percent of the nationwide vote, with 16 percent of votes counted.

Preval himself was in his rural hometown of Marmelade and wasn't speaking to reporters. He emerged from his family home once, briefly dancing along to a band playing outside and waving to supporters.

Bernard said only a small percentage of balloting results had reached the capital, slowing the vote count. "By Friday night or Saturday noon, we will have a clear idea of the results of the election," he told reporters

Haitians eagerly awaited the first returns Wednesday as scores of U.N. peacekeepers patrolled quiet streets in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Tuesday's voting, guarded by a 9,000-strong U.N. force, was fraught with early delays but largely free of the violence that has plagued the capital since Aristide fled.

The leading contender among the 33 presidential candidates was Preval, the only elected leader in Haitian history to finish his term. He is also a former ally of Aristide, who remains in exile in South Africa.
yahoo.com


Going to Great Lengths to Vote in Haiti
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Haitians wearied by spiraling unrest and gang violence turned out in huge numbers Tuesday to choose a new president and parliament and perhaps put their impoverished Caribbean homeland on the path to some prosperity and peace.

Clutching her newly printed voter identification card, Marie Vincent, 20, a resident of Cite Soleil, the Haitian capital's most notorious slum, arrived at her polling station at 3:30 a.m., 2 1/2 hours before it was scheduled to open. Late in the morning, she was still waiting.

"I'm ready to spend the entire day here," Vincent said. "Because we want change in the country."

"We have tens of thousands of people outside some polling stations. Huge numbers," said David Wimhurst, a spokesman for the United Nations, which provided security and technical aid for the election.