Haiti Elections

With the country reeling from the effects of January's earthquake and a devastating cholera epidemic, the general elections slid into chaos Sunday as thousands complained they could not cast ballots and a majority of presidential candidates accused the Haitian government of committing "massive fraud. " Twelve of the 18 presidential candidates issued a declaration saying the hastily prepared elections should be canceled and that the people should "mobilize" to reject the results. They accused President Rene Preval of conspiring with the country's electoral council to ensure that his party, Unity, was in control of Parliament, and its candidate, Jude Celestin, won the presidency.

A day after Haiti's runoff election for president, the candidates kept a low profile Monday while they and the voters were left to wait at least a week and a half for official results. The scene in Port-au-Prince was calm, as it had been Sunday during balloting in the race between popular singer Michel Martelly and university administrator Mirlande Manigat. Preliminary results are due March 31. A final tally is to be announced April 16, almost a month after the balloting, to give the candidates a chance to lodge legal challenges.

The electoral process here came under intense criticism Monday from friends and opponents of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, although few officials seemed ready to call Sunday's vote a fraud or generally invalid. U.S. Rep. Porter J. Goss of Florida, who observed the election on behalf of the Republican Party's International Republican Institute, told reporters that while "the process was seriously wanting," Sunday "was an important day . . . to prove there was an election."

Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide returns home from exile in South Africa to boisterous throngs despite international pressure to keep him away before Sunday's elections. Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whose tortuous life saga is sprinkled with comebacks, returned home Friday to boisterous throngs, defying international pressure to keep him away before Sunday's election. Aristide arrived on a flight from South Africa, where he had lived in exile since soon after being flown out of Haiti on a U.S.-supplied plane amid turmoil in 2004.

Despite technical glitches that forced many of them to wait hours in sweltering polling places, Haitians voted peacefully and in vast numbers Sunday in their first free democratic presidential and congressional election. International election observers, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, said they were pleasantly surprised by the largely orderly voting process after tardiness in delivering ballots and ballot boxes delayed voting for much of the day at some polls.

Bitter quarreling among pro-democracy politicians, coupled with renewed street violence and a surprisingly open flaunting of strength by supporters of the ousted Duvalier dictatorship, have set Haiti back sharply in its stumbling march toward free elections. Provisional President Ertha Pascal Trouillot, already under fire for her sluggish performance since she was elevated from the Supreme Court in March, has refused to give in to demands that she resign.

Braving threats of violence, Haitians lined up by the thousands Sunday for a vote to restore democracy and in the process free half a billion dollars in desperately needed foreign aid. The Haitians' strong determination to vote--not seen since 1990 elections brought Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power in Haiti's first democratic balloting--was frustrated by delays lasting several hours. Hundreds of people were waiting to vote in the legislative and local elections at 5 p.m.

As local election chief Wisner Moise finished counting his town's 19,000 votes, more than a dozen opposition candidates on this isolated island off Haiti's west coast huddled in the Magic Night Club Bar & Restaurant to assess their nation's latest attempt at democracy. "What happened last Sunday was not an election. It was a masquerade," legislative candidate Daniel Bertrand Muebrand said Thursday, as Moise carried out the slow count inside a police station that was off limits to the public.

Haiti will hold its first free elections in 186 years by October and the voting will be supervised by international observers, the electoral council announced. Council President Jean-Robert Sabalat said the exact date will be announced next week. Balloting will be held for local offices, seats in Parliament and for the presidency, he added. Seventeen candidates have already announced for the presidency.

Despite evidence that the military-dominated government of Haiti sabotaged one attempt at free presidential elections and is hoping to fix the next one, the Reagan Administration is prepared to live with the results of the vote scheduled for next weekend, U.S. officials say.

Haiti is locked in a political crisis that threatens to further stall recovery from the devastating earthquake of a year ago and could swiftly turn violent. Seven weeks after a flawed presidential election, President Rene Preval is resisting an international panel's recommendation that his handpicked candidate be removed from a runoff, according to diplomatic sources. Preval also is saying he intends to remain in office beyond his term. Haiti desperately needs to seat a new government to move ahead in the reconstruction of its quake-ravaged capital, where hundreds of thousands of people languish in vast tent cities, and to improve the disbursement of aid money, analysts say. The core of the dispute now is over which candidates qualify for the runoff to the Nov. 28 vote and whether fraud was so extensive that the entire process should be discarded and done over.

With the country reeling from the effects of January's earthquake and a devastating cholera epidemic, the general elections slid into chaos Sunday as thousands complained they could not cast ballots and a majority of presidential candidates accused the Haitian government of committing "massive fraud. " Twelve of the 18 presidential candidates issued a declaration saying the hastily prepared elections should be canceled and that the people should "mobilize" to reject the results. They accused President Rene Preval of conspiring with the country's electoral council to ensure that his party, Unity, was in control of Parliament, and its candidate, Jude Celestin, won the presidency.

She drifted amid throngs of screaming men, looking for her name on list after list. In a land of faint hopes, she clung to one of the faintest: that an election might release the grip of this terrible year. Etianne Petit Frere, a 23-year-old mother, was thin as a stick, emaciated by grief. During the January earthquake, her 7-month-old daughter was crushed by a falling cinderblock as she slept in her crib. Her boyfriend disappeared soon after, leaving her to raise their two boys alone.

In the final hours of a chaotic presidential campaign in a country that needs no more drama this year, candidate Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly sent out a "breaking news" announcement: He had survived an assassination attempt by a member of the nation's leading party. His campaign called a news conference in the capital Saturday, and Martelly's cousin ? the manager of a hotel immortalized by Graham Greene as a place where you expect to be greeted by "a maniac butler, with a bat dangling from the chandelier" ?

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.

When Haiti's interim government was named 20 months ago, rules were established making the transitional leaders ineligible to run in the next election to ensure they wouldn't use their offices to advance personal political agendas. That strategy of creating disinterest may be working too well.

Many of this nation's citizens had expected political violence and a move by loyalists of the Duvalier family dictatorship to cling to power, but when they came last week, even the most hardened Haitians seemed surprised by their brazenness. In daylight, a presidential candidate was shot to death Oct. 13 in front of police headquarters in the presence of reporters, allegedly by a plainclothes officer who escaped.

The government Thursday night revoked an election decree that had triggered nationwide protests in which at least 14 people were reported killed and 82 wounded. An official statement read over national television gave no reasons for rescinding the June 23 decree, which was issued 10 days ago and gave the government virtual control of upcoming local and presidential elections.

President Jean-Bertrand Aristide said Haiti intends to hold runoff elections for eight disputed Senate seats within six months in a bid to end a stalemate arising from last year's parliamentary vote. In a letter read to the Organization of American States' General Assembly meeting in Costa Rica on Sunday, Aristide also said elections for the remaining legislative seats will be held in 2002 and 2003.

Emerging after five years of virtual seclusion and a weekend election that almost certainly will return him to power, former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Monday reached out to an embittered opposition and a doubting international community with an appeal for peace and reconciliation in his isolated and violent land.