Vote fraud deal makes Preval Haiti president

By Joseph Guyler Delva and Jim Loney

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) – Haiti declared Rene
Preval, a one-time ally of ousted leader Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, the country’s next president on Thursday after a deal
on vote fraud claims averted a feared outbreak of violence.

Preval, a former president passionately supported by the
Caribbean country’s poor but opposed by the same wealthy elite
who helped drive Aristide from power two years ago, claimed
“massive fraud” in the February 7 election had deprived him of
a first-round victory in one of the world’s poorest countries.

“We have won. Now we are going to fight for parliament,”
Preval told the Haitian Press Agency. After that, he secluded
himself in his sister’s hilltop house outside Port-au-Prince
and made no further comment.

Jubilant supporters poured into the streets, dancing and
chanting “victory, victory,” after the embattled Provisional
Electoral Council issued a statement on Haitian radio in the
middle of the night announcing the deal.

Eight of the council’s nine members signed the agreement.

“Rene Preval has been declared the winner with 51 percent,”
council President Max Mathurin said, setting the country of 8.5
million off on the next chapter in a turbulent political
history marked by instability, dictatorships and bloodshed.

The United States — the key foreign player in Haiti and
accused of undermining Aristide — welcomed Preval’s victory.

“We want this government to succeed,” said U.S. Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice. “This is a chance for a country that
has had too few chances.”

However, Preval’s leading rival in the election with 11.8
percent of the vote, former President Leslie Manigat, angrily
denounced what he called a “coup d’etat through the ballots.”

FIRST SINCE REVOLT

Last week’s election was the first since Aristide fled into
exile in 2004, driven out by an armed revolt and international
pressure after his image as a hero of Haitian democracy was
stained by accusations of despotism and corruption.

Preval’s supporters warned they would not allow him to
suffer the same fate as Aristide, who was twice elected and
twice ousted, first by a military coup and then by the revolt.

Preval, 63, was president from 1996 to 2001, between
Aristide’s two terms, and is the only leader in Haiti’s
202-year history to win a democratic election, serve a full
term and peacefully hand power to a successor.

“For us, Preval means hope, respect and progress,” said
Jonas Lundi, 28, as he celebrated in the Canape Vert district.

Smiling Preval supporters clogged streets in the chaotic
capital, waved posters of their candidate, drove in ecstatic,
honking convoys and congregated near the National Palace, where
Preval will take office on March 29.

Under the deal, the electoral council distributed 85,000
ballots that were left blank proportionately among the 33
candidates, Mathurin said.

The blanks, amounting to 4.7 percent of the total, had been
included in the total number of votes, in accordance with the
law, reducing the final percentage allocated to each candidate.
That helped keep Preval’s share at 48.7 percent — below the
majority he needed to avoid a March 19 runoff.

But many Haitians suspected the blank votes had been
stuffed into ballot boxes to force Preval into a second round
and outraged supporters on Monday brought Port-au-Prince to a
standstill, erecting roadblocks and storming a luxury hotel.

The agreement on blank ballots gave Preval 51.15 percent,
with 96 percent of ballots counted, the council said.

“Given the circumstances and the situation, it was a
reasonable way to attempt to resolve a conflict and an impasse
that could have led to serious conflict and violence in the
society,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in New York.

Industrialist Charles Baker, considered the main candidate
of the wealthy elite and a distant third with 7.9 percent of
the vote, disagreed. “We thought we were in a democratic
process and everybody would observe the rules,” he said.

Poor Haitians warned foes not to undermine Preval.

“We have elected Preval for five years,” said Jean-Marie
Theodore, 25, a student. “We won’t accept that he misses one
minute of his five-year mandate.”

(Additional reporting by Michael Christie in
Port-au-Prince, Saul Hudson in Washington, Fiona Ortiz in
Santiago and Irwin Arieff at the United Nations)