Haiti Elections

This country's first genuine elections since 1990 appear solidly on track for next month after an unsettled start that brought two delays and even a threat of cancellation. The June 25 elections, with runoffs July 16, are for all offices except the presidency: Parliament, mayors and other local officials. It will also be the first voting since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was returned Oct. 15 from a three-year exile that followed his overthrow at the hands of the Haitian military.

There were no poll watchers. There were no opposition parties. There was no opposition candidate. And no opposition voters could be found. The only audible voices belonged to Haiti's ruling Lavalas Family: local election officials, party workers and other loyalists of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide who proclaimed the onetime Roman Catholic priest's party "a heavenly spirit" and its victories a "message that made God smile."

Accused of vote-rigging in favor of ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's party, Haiti's elections council decided to indefinitely postpone a weekend parliamentary runoff ballot. Most parties had planned to boycott Sunday's second-round vote, contending that first-round results in April were manipulated. Despite U.S. pressure, the council said nothing about correcting alleged first-round irregularities.

Assailants firing machine guns attacked a presidential candidate's home and the headquarters of two political parties Friday in the fourth day of violence preceding Haiti's first elections in 30 years. Radio Metropole and Radio Haiti Inter said a man guarding the home of Gregoire Eugene, a candidate for the centrist Social Christian Party in the Nov. 29 polls, was shot in the knee and taken to a hospital. There were no other reports of casualties in the early morning attacks.

Closing a swift tour of four Latin countries, Vice President Dan Quayle arrived in impoverished Haiti on Thursday with a plea and a blunt warning that unless its military allows free elections in November, it faces more cuts in foreign aid.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Chavannes Jean-Baptiste once called each other brothers. They marched barefoot side by side across miles of razor-edged rock to protest Haiti's military rulers. Together, more than a decade ago, they built the massive, populist Lavalas Family movement that helped drive out Haiti's brutal dictators and bring Aristide to power.

Presidential candidate Yves Volel was shot and killed by police Tuesday as he delivered a speech near police headquarters demanding freedom for an alleged political prisoner, witnesses said. A reporter from TeleHaiti, a local independent television network, said that plainclothes officers walked out of the headquarters of the Criminal Investigations Section, approached Volel, beat him and then shot him.

Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's new party claimed to have won a majority of the vote in weekend elections--a ballot that has been tainted by minuscule turnout and charges of fraud. International observers estimated that about 5% of registered voters took part in Sunday's elections, casting doubt on the official Provisional Electoral Council's report of 50% turnout in some areas.

Former President Jimmy Carter, hoping to build on his success in helping secure the return of Haiti's elected president, said Wednesday that he will visit the country next week to lend his support to oft-postponed parliamentary elections. "We will explore ways in which we might be helpful in reinforcing a free and fair electoral process," Carter said in a statement issued by the Carter Center in Atlanta.

Rene Preval, handpicked by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide as his successor, appears to have won Sunday's election in a limited landslide, receiving an overwhelming majority of votes from the few Haitians who went to the polls. Official results are not expected for more than a week, but returns from selected, representative precincts showed that 80% of the votes were for Preval, according to officials.