Haiti poll marred by ballot fraud protests
February 13 2006 at 12:32PM
By Stevenson Jacobs
Port-au-Prince - Accusations of ballot mishandling and street protests have erupted nearly a week after Haitians voted to restore democratic governance to the impoverished Caribbean nation.
Two members of Haiti's electoral council on Sunday questioned vote counting procedures, while throngs of supporters of leading presidential candidate Rene Preval poured into the streets, chanting angry allegations of fraud.
Preval, a former president widely supported by Haiti's poor masses, was falling short by less than a percentage point of winning February 7 elections outright without a runoff, with 75 percent of votes counted.
'There's a certain level of manipulation'
Electoral council member Pierre Richard Duchemin said he was being denied his rightful access to information about the tabulation process and called for an investigation.
"According to me, there's a certain level of manipulation," Duchemin told The Associated Press, adding that "there is an effort to stop people from asking questions."
Preval supporters blew horns and pounded drums outside electoral council headquarters, denouncing Jacques Bernard, director-general of the nine-member electoral council, as a "thief."
"He doesn't know how to count!" they chanted, as they were blocked from the headquarters by police carrying rifles and shotguns.
Bernard has denied accusations the council voided many votes for Preval.
Blue-helmeted United Nations peacekeepers deployed across the capital and blocked chanting Preval supporters from reaching the Montana Hotel, where the electoral council abruptly cancelled a Sunday evening press conference.
'It seems the electoral commission is playing games with the results'
Patrick Fequiere, another electoral council member, said on local radio that Bernard was releasing results without notifying other council members, who did not know where Bernard was obtaining his information.
The elections will replace an interim government installed after former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in a bloody rebellion two years ago.
The vote was seen as crucial to avoiding a political and economic meltdown in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation where, following Aristide's ouster, gangs went on a kidnapping spree and many factories closed because of a lack of security and foreign investment.
Jean-Henoc Faroul, the president of an electoral district with 400 000 voters northeast of the capital, accused the electoral commission of trying to force a runoff, saying ballot tally sheets from Preval strongholds have vanished.
"The electoral council is trying to do what it can to diminish the percentage of Preval so it goes to a second round," said Faroul, who openly supports Preval's candidacy.
UN spokesperson David Wimhurst said tally sheets with vote results have been found dumped in the garbage, but added that the sheets might have been mishandled by election workers and it was not necessarily evidence of fraud.
He said 136 tally sheets containing the results of possibly thousands of votes were still unaccounted for in Port-au-Prince.
Others were being delivered piecemeal from districts, he said.
Doors were removed from the tabulation centre to prevent electoral council lawyers huddling in private, Wimhurst said.
Meanwhile, demonstrators threatened violence if Preval is not declared the first-round winner.
"If they take the election from Preval, it's not going to go smoothly," said Robert Antoine, a 23-year-old from the Bel-Air slum.
"The people voted massively for Preval, and it seems the electoral commission is playing games with the results."
Preval was leading 33 candidates with 49, 1 percent of the vote, short of the 50 percent plus one vote he needs to avoid a March 19 runoff with the runner-up.
Leslie Manigat, also a former president, was second with 11, 7 percent of the vote.
Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu presided over Sunday church services at Trinity Cathedral in Port-au-Prince and urged Haitians to be patient.
"They've started well, let them finish the race well," said Tutu, the retired Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa.
Of 2, 2 million ballots cast, about 125 000 ballots have been declared invalid because of irregularities, raising suspicion among Preval supporters that polling officials are trying to steal the election.
Another 4 percent of the ballots were blank but were still added into the total, making it harder for Preval to obtain the 50 percent plus one vote needed.
- Sapa-AP
Associated Press Writer Andrew Selsky contributed to this report.
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