Void corrupt election, Haiti candidates urge

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Voters in Haiti’s first election since the January earthquake encountered delays, excitement, confusion and shoving Sunday, but even before the polls closed, 12 of the country’s 19 presidential candidates declared that the results could not be trusted.

At a news conference in the ballroom of an upscale hotel, they called on the national election council to void the results because of “massive fraud,” which they described as an effort by the Unity Party of President Rene Preval to stuff ballot boxes and turn away voters who opposed Preval’s chosen candidate, Jude Celestin.

“The election is ruined. It needs to be canceled,”said presidential candidate Jacques-Edouard Alexis, a former prime minister. “Our history has always shown that it’s the people who give the power.”

Alexis was the presumed heir apparent to Preval until he was passed over by Preval for Celestin, a former government road-building chief.

The candidates, in an unusual display of unity before dozens of chanting supporters, urged their partisans to peacefully take to the streets, and many did.

“This is an earthquake of an election,” said a candidate, Leslie Voltaire. “This will divide the country, not unite it.”

The crowd broke out in cheers and chanted “Arrest Preval!” as the rival candidates joined hands and raised their arms in triumph.

Demonstrators were already in the streets, some outside the gates of the hotel, as body-armored U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police moved out in trucks and a U.N. helicopter circled the election headquarters.

Thousands continued protesting peacefully into the night, some throwing rocks at police who fired back tear gas. People danced through the major cities of Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien, carrying posters of their candidates and chanting their names, most celebrating Michel Martelly, a popular musician.

A meeting among the protesting political parties was planned for today in the hope of finding a solution that would steer the country away from this latest political turmoil.

Preliminary results were not expected to be released until Dec. 7.

A round of expected demonstrations began immediately after the news conference, when supporters of Martelly, a popular singer known as Sweet Micky, marched to the national election council offices.

It was difficult Sunday to get a full picture of how the day unfolded nationwide.

In other races, 96 contenders were competing for 11 Senate seats and more than 800 others were seeking to fill the 99-seat lower house.

In an evening news conference, the council praised the day’s voting and denounced the candidates’ protest, saying after repeated questioning from local media that the challenge was not a legal document.

“The CEP [election council] cannot accept things that are not formal and are not legal,” said council official Pierre Louis Opont.

The officials said there had only been irregularities at 56 voting centers and said they would investigate them, but made it clear that the balloting would stand.

Swiping back at the challengers, Opont added: “If they declare that one of these candidates won, are they going to say they don’t want to be elected?”

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy, which spent $14 million in election preparation, said only that it was monitoring the situation. Representatives of the Organization of American States and Caribbean Community, which had sent a team of observers, canceled a news conference and would not comment, nor would representatives of the United Nations, which had given logistical and security help.

Preval’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Several voting centers appeared organized and calm, with Haitians of all ages lining up patiently and placing folded paper ballots - they resembled colorful place mats with pictures of the candidates to aid illiterate voters - in plastic bins.

But at many other polling places anger rose as voters complained of being turned away.

At least three polling sites were ransacked - in the slums of Cite Soleil, and in two suburbs, Carrefour and Tabarre. Witnesses said that crowds tore through voting areas, dumped ballot boxes and left only shreds of ballots littering the floor.

At another voting place in the St. Philomene neighborhood, a woman complained that young men were taking advantage of the chaos to vote multiple times. The allegation could not be confirmed because a crowd of one candidate’s supporters swarmed around two AP journalists and forced them to leave the area, threatening a photographer.

One man was shot to death at a polling place in rural Artibonite, Radio Vision 2000 reported, though no details were available.

In many cases, tension started with delays in opening voting sites at 6 a.m. In some places, election workers were still struggling with voter lists four hours later, and with mollifying so-called monitors hired by political parties to oversee the vote.

Hundreds of these political workers, eager for a day of work that paid about $12, showed up early at polling sites, scuffling for position.

Some international observers expressed concern about poor planning and low turnout. “Badly organized,” was how one U.N. observer characterized a polling site near Cite Soleil where voting materials had not been delivered hours after polls opened.

Celestin, who voted at a high school in Petionville, experienced firsthand the disorganization of the voting process. When a poll worker looked up his photo on the voter list to verify his identify,it didn’t match. He had to vote by provisional ballot.

Haitian radio stations reported on a handful of arrests for fraud, and the police confirmed that a man was found with several national identification cards required for voting, a ballot box and a pile of blank ballots.

Some problems were institutional and expected. Less than half of the more than 400,000 new and replacement national identification cards were thought to have been distributed by Sunday, leaving hundreds of thousands of people frustrated before the day began. But there were also cases that were harder to explain.

Outside a voting center in Petionville, a wealthier suburb now filled with makeshift camps, young men waved their national ID cards at the police as they complained to reporters of being denied a chance to vote.

Information for this article was contributed by Damien Cave and Randal C. Archibold of The New York Times; by Jonathan M. Katz, Ben Fox and Jacob Kushner of The Associated Press; and by Jacqueline Charles and Tranton Daniel of McClatchy Newspapers.