Haitian’s Words Quell Unrest

Haiti’s interim government agreed Tuesday to review vote counts from the Feb. 7 election, after presidential front-runner Rene Preval claimed that “massive fraud or gross errors” had deprived him of victory.

The agreement came after Preval urged his supporters to continue protesting the vote count, but to do so peacefully. Blazing roadblocks that had paralyzed Port-au-Prince, the capital, for two days disappeared almost immediately after Preval’s nationally broadcast radio address, demonstrating his power to control the streets, and sending a signal to political opponents to concede the election to him. None complied.

Although sporadic gunfire crackled across the capital, the mood of demonstrators switched from menacing to merry.

“The people are frustrated and they have the right to demonstrate, but they should respect the rights of others,” Preval said from his campaign headquarters at his sister’s hilltop villa.

“No one should go into private houses or destroy cars or block roads. The simple people are the ones who suffer, the small vendors and drivers and workers.”

The scenes of shouting, stick-wielding youths torching cars, tires and debris were harmful to his campaign’s effort to “retain international sympathy,” Preval said.

Long a close ally of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Preval inherited his mentor’s impoverished followers but also their penchant for violent outbursts at perceived injustice.

While urging his supporters to keep up the pressure for review of what he contends are manipulated vote tabulations, Preval warned them to be wary of radical infiltrators bent on painting his Lespwa movement, which means “hope” in Creole, as violent and undemocratic.

One pro-Aristide activist in the capital’s Cite Soleil slum, Jean Joseph, called on Aristide loyalists Monday night to converge on the National Palace to clamor for a declaration that Preval had won. Thousands swarmed the scene of tense talks between Preval and Haiti’s distrusted interim leaders, chanting and setting parked cars and vendors’ kiosks ablaze.

Many of Haiti’s poor probably voted for Preval because they believed he would allow Aristide to return from South Africa, where he has spent most of the last two years, after fleeing an armed rebellion under U.S. escort. Preval, who served as president between Aristide’s two terms, has said nothing stands in the way of Aristide’s repatriation but has been vague about whether he would welcome the fiery former priest’s presence.

Official balloting results are not expected to be published for several days. Counting stopped Sunday when protesters converged on the media center at the Hotel Montana, where nightly press conferences had been used to announce a running tally. When Preval’s margin began to slip below 50%, the protests began. Thousands returned to the hotel Monday to confront election officials, overrunning security guards and trampling the grounds after discovering the officials were not there.

Preval has sought to persuade U.N. officials, foreign diplomats and Haiti’s interim authorities to review his claims of counting irregularities before announcing final figures. Preval hinted that any determination by the electoral council that a March 19 runoff would be needed could ignite uncontrolled protests by supporters.

“If they publish these figures as they are, we will contest them -- and if Lespwa contests them, the Haitian people will contest them,” Preval warned.

The latest figures from the Provisional Electoral Council, posted midday Monday, showed Preval just short of an outright majority among the 33 presidential contenders, with 48.76%.

The nearest challenger was Leslie Manigat, 75, who polled 11.8% and has so far spurned suggestions that he concede victory to spare the country a costly and potentially chaotic runoff.

The third-place candidate, garment factory owner Charles Henri Baker, whose share stands at less than 8%, also opposes any concession that would hasten Preval’s ascent to the National Palace.

Baker, 50, a member of the tiny, light-skinned elite that controls Haiti’s economy, was one of Aristide’s most passionate adversaries.

Some distant finishers have offered to cede their votes to Preval, including former Aristide police chief Dany Toussaint and former Port-au-Prince mayor Evans Paul. But others argue that Preval needs a clear victory to prevent a cloud of illegitimacy over his presidency.

Voting irregularities in the May 2000 parliamentary election prompted a boycott of the presidential vote six months later that returned Aristide to power for a second term, and set Haiti on its descent into institutional chaos.

Preval, a 63-year-old gentleman farmer and entrepreneur, declined to discuss his reluctance for a second round of voting that nearly all analysts calculate he would win easily. He insisted that his campaign staff had evidence that he had polled well over 50% in the initial vote. Neither he nor his aides would be specific, though, about the discrepancies they claimed to have uncovered.

“I don’t want to say it’s 60% if it turns out to be 55%. We have to check all the results again,” said Liszt Quitel, an advisor who served in Preval’s Cabinet during his presidency from 1996 to 2001.

Preval and his advisors pointed to voter sampling by the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute that suggested he had 54% of the vote.

“The international press and NDI clearly said that Lespwa had won in the first round,” Preval said. “We are convinced that either massive fraud or gross errors are staining the electoral process.”

Campaign officials also intimated that vote tabulators hired by the electoral council, whose nine-member board is composed mostly of figures who opposed Aristide, had inexplicably put aside counting votes from the massively pro-Preval capital.

Quitel said that at least 25,000 Port-au-Prince ballots had yet to be tabulated. Because Preval polled above 80% in other areas of the capital, his campaign believed the remaining ballots could push his total over the threshold for outright victory.

Other aides complained that more than 80,000 blank ballots -- more than 4% of the votes cast -- were being included in the total of valid votes, making it harder for Preval’s share to constitute a majority. An additional 125,000 votes, about 5.6% of the 2.2 million cast, were invalidated for multiple or indiscernible markings.

“There’s 10% of the vote still missing. That’s not a margin of error. That’s fraud,” said one Preval aide, who said he had visited the tabulation center early Tuesday to find it locked and abandoned.

Those hired by the electoral council to count the vote failed to show up Monday or Tuesday because of “security concerns,” said David Wimhurst, spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping mission deployed in Haiti.

Despite having more than 9,000 foreign troops and police in the country, the peacekeepers were in little evidence during the two days of angry and disruptive protests. A few armored vehicles were seen nudging charred auto chasses and scrap metal to the roadsides after the protesters abandoned their barricades to march and sing their support for the man they believed to be the victor.