PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Furious supporters of an apparently eliminated candidate set fires and manned barricades in the streets of Haiti's capital Wednesday after officials announced that government protege Jude Celestin and former first lady Mirlande Manigat would advance to a runoff in presidential elections.
The results announced late Tuesday
were immediately questioned at home and abroad, threatening more unrest for a
country wracked by a cholera epidemic and still recovering from a devastating
Jan. 12 earthquake.
Popular carnival singer Michel
"Sweet Micky" Martelly trailed Celestin by about 6,800 votes — less
than 1 percent, according to the results released by Haiti's Provisional
Electoral Council.
His supporters immediately protested,
though official election observers said a third candidate might be included in
a Jan. 16 runoff if the electoral council decides the first-round vote was
close enough, even if the constitutionality of such a move would be debatable.
An appeals period runs through Dec.
10, with final results expected to be announced around Dec. 20.
Martelly supporters set up flaming
barricades near the Petionville restaurant where the tallies were announced and
threw rocks at people passing nearby. Gunshots rang out and an Associated Press
journalist was robbed.
"If they don't give us Martelly
and Manigat (in the second round), Haiti will be on fire," said a
protester, Erick Jean. "We're still living under tents and Celestin wastes
money on election posters."
Protests surged again as the sun rose
over Port-au-Prince. The black smoke of burning barricades filled the air in areas where
Martelly's support is strongest, including Petionville and Delmas. Thousands
were on the streets, singing political songs and chanting for
"Micky."
Vehicles were damaged by rocks and
items were reportedly stolen from stores. Foreign aid workers complained that
Haitian national police were slow to respond and that many officers refused to
report to duty following the election results.
American Airlines halted flights in
and out of the Haitian capital because airport employees were unable to get to
work Wednesday because of demonstrations, spokeswoman Martha Pantin said.
Violent disturbances were also
reported in Cap-Haitien as well as the southern city of Les Cayes, where
residents said government buildings had been attacked and set on fire.
Martelly had said before results were
released that he believed he would win, and would not accept a spot in a runoff
in which Celestin is present. Some of his staffers had praised the protests on
Twitter late Tuesday.
The Nov. 28 election was plagued by
allegations of fraud. Thousands of voters were disenfranchised by confusion on
the rolls and there were many reported incidents of ballot-stuffing, violence
and intimidation confirmed by international observers.
Turnout was low according to the
preliminary results, as just over a million people cast accepted ballots out of
some 4.7 million registered voters. It is not known how many ballots were
thrown out for fraud.
Officials acknowledged the rolls were
both bloated and incomplete, with hundreds of thousands of earthquake dead
still registered and many living voters waiting for ID cards. In the last days
of counting, tabulators had to sort out clearly fraudulent tally sheets.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
said the problems were worse than originally reported. But the U.N.
peacekeepers and the joint Organization of American States-Caribbean Community
observer mission said the problems did not invalidate the vote.
Much of the concern centered around
conflicts between the announced results and those reported recently by a local
election monitoring group financed by the European Union — the National
Observation Council — which said that Celestin, who is backed by outgoing
President Rene Preval, would be eliminated.
"The Government of the United
States is concerned by the Provisional Electoral Council's announcement of
preliminary results ... that are inconsistent with the published results of the
National Election Observation Council" as well as U.S. observers and vote
counts monitored by domestic and international observers, the U.S. Embassy said
in an e-mailed statement.
There was no immediate statement from
U.N. peacekeepers Tuesday night or Wednesday.
The chief observer with the
OAS-Caricom mission, Colin Granderson, appealed for patience.
"Remember that the results are
only preliminary results," Granderson told AP. "For all candidates
who believe there were irregularities or fraud, there are recourses provided by
the electoral law."
Granderson said before the results
were announced that officials could consider putting a third candidate in the
runoff if the vote is nearly tied.
Merchants and residents had braced
for rioting by supporters of the losing candidates before the results were
announced on Tuesday evening, covering market stalls and jamming streets to
rush home.
The protests began as soon as news of
the results hit the streets. Orange fires burned on the hills above the
capital, white smoke rising into the dim electric light. Rocks were thrown at
the few passing cars and guns were fired in the air. The shouts of people —
drunken, reveling, angry and scared — rang across barricaded streets.
Manigat, a 70-year-old law professor,
is the wife of former Haitian president Leslie Manigat who served briefly in
the late 1980s after a much-criticized election before being deposed by a coup.
Her supporters include a powerful senator who organized violent protests in his
home department ahead of the first round of voting.
Celestin, a virtual unknown before
the election, is the candidate of Preval's Unity party. He is the head of the
state-run construction company whose trucks carted bodies and limited amounts
of rubble out of the city after the Jan. 12 quake.
His campaign was the best-funded of
the group but Preval's inability to jump-start a moribund economy or push
forward reconstruction after the massive earthquake drained his support. Many
voters said they would accept "anyone but Celestin," whom they equate
with the unpopular Preval.
Twelve of the 19 candidates on the
ballot joined on Nov. 28 to allege that fraud was used to ensure a Celestin
victory and call for the cancellation of the vote. Manigat and Martelly were
among them but later reversed position when officials remarked they had a
chance to win.
The clear winner in the bid for
Senate seats was Preval's Inite, or Unity party, which advanced to a run-off in
eight of the 10 races in which it competed and won a ninth outright.
Independent candidate, Steven Benoit,
a former member of Preval's abandoned Lespwa movement who championed an
increase in the minimum wage, won the Senate seat for the area including
Port-au-Prince.
Associated Press writers Jacob
Kushner in Petionville and Ben Fox in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to
this report
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.
(AP Photo/Guillermo Arias)
