Review of Haiti votes ordered
Seeking to stem a political crisis that threatened to dissolve into violence, Haiti's interim government last night ordered a review of Feb. 7 presidential election results, which the front-runner said were marred by "gross errors and probably gigantic fraud." The announcement from Interior Minister Paul Magloire came as boxes of what appeared to be partly burned ballots marked for front-runner Ren� Pr�val were discovered in a dump on the outskirts of this capital city.
Though it was not clear if the ballots were valid, thousands of Pr�val supporters took to the streets shouting, "Pr�val for president! Stop burning the votes!" A day earlier, supporters had paralyzed the country with flaming roadblocks and stormed a posh hotel to accuse the government of vote tampering.
In a news conference here earlier yesterday, Pr�val, 63, warned that he would contest the final results if he didn't win more than the 50 percent plus one vote, the amount needed to avert a runoff with his closest rival. He said followers would continue to demonstrate but urged them to remain peaceful.
Pr�val, considered a champion of the poor, could not be reached for comment last night.
The crisis threatened to melt down a country that has been teetering on the brink of chaos since armed rebels ousted firebrand leftist President Jean-Bertrand Aristide two years ago. Pr�val is a former Aristide protege.
With more than 90 percent of ballots counted, Pr�val's showing has slipped to 48.7 percent, from an early high of nearly two-thirds of the votes. His closest rival, intellectual Leslie Manigat, got 11.8 percent in the 33-way race.
Though he would almost certainly win, Pr�val is rejecting a runoff. But Manigat, 75, who, like Pr�val, is a former president, won't concede defeat.
Officials from a United Nations mission that is overseeing the vote and propping up Haiti with 9,300 peacekeepers cite disorganization but no evidence of fraud.
However, Pr�val's camp is suspicious because up to 15 percent of ballots cast are either missing, have been declared invalid because they were improperly marked or may have been mislabeled or misfiled. Also, the electoral council has included blank ballots representing 4.6 percent of votes in the count, narrowing Pr�val's lead by at least two points.
Many political analysts said a runoff would be healthy for the democratic process in Haiti, a country historically convulsed by political violence.
"Pr�val could emerge from a second round with even greater legitimacy," said Dan Erikson, a Caribbean expert at the Inter-American Dialogue think thank in Washington, D.C. "But if Pr�val is seen as being unfairly pushed into a second round, Haiti could explode." Visiting former South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel laureate, told Newsday he thought Manigat should concede defeat to "avoid a Pyrrhic victory."
The ballot review will be conducted by the president's office, the electoral council and Pr�val's party. Some election experts suggested international monitors may also need to review the balloting. Otherwise, said one international electoral observer here who spoke on condition of anonymity, "the election may be decided through the threat of force from people on the street." At Pr�val's urging, protesters removed flaming barricades yesterday that had prevented vote-tabulation workers and others from getting to work. No further tallies will be released pending the review.
Several international electoral observers told Newsday that the 4.6 percent of votes listed as blank appeared unusually high. In addition, even factoring in Haiti's 50 percent illiteracy rate, some observers wondered how 7.4 percent of ballots were voided, given that even an X across a candidate's face was to have been accepted as a vote.
