PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A popular singer vowed to legally challenge election results that narrowly ousted him from Haiti's presidential race after his supporters barricaded streets and set fires in violence that threatened the fragile stability that followed a devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.
Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly urged his
backers on Wednesday to nonviolently protest results from Nov. 28 presidential
elections that demonstrators say were rigged. His campaign manager later said
they would formally challenge the tallies released late Tuesday to Haiti's
Provisional Electoral Council.
His supporters carried pink signs with the smiling
face and bald head of Martelly, built street barricades, challenged heavily
armored foreign soldiers and used government campaign posters to start fires.
"We want Martelly. The whole world wants
Martelly," said James Becimus, a 32-year-old protester near the U.S.
Embassy. "Today we set fires, tomorrow we bring weapons."
Other protesters said they would continue to
mobilize but do so nonviolently.
"Demonstrating without violence is the right
of the people," Martelly said. "I will be with you until the
bald-head victory."
A light rain that fell through the night and
continued through the morning Thursday extinguished burning piles of tires and
dampened the protests: Barricades still blocked intersections throughout the
capital but Associated Press journalists saw fewer protesters and the city was
much quieter. The crowd outside the electoral council headquarters in the
suburb of Petionville had also diminished.
A day earlier, crowds of young men wearing their
shirts as masks threw rocks at U.N. troops at the electoral council building.
The soldiers — Indians and Pakistanis working as a single unit — responded with
exploding canisters of tear gas that washed over a nearby earthquake-refugee
camp, sending mothers running from their tarps with their crying, coughing
children in tow.
Protesters set fire to the headquarters of outgoing
President Rene Preval's Unity party, traded blows with U.N. peacekeepers and
shut down the country's lone international airport.
Preval had earlier urged the candidates to call off
the protests. He acknowledged there had been fraud in the election, but said it
was typical of elections around the world.
"This is not how the country is supposed to
work," he told demonstrators in a live radio speech. "People are
suffering because of all this damage."
The fallout from the fraud-riddled shut down cities
across impoverished Haiti at a moment when medical aid workers need to tackle a
surging cholera epidemic that has claimed more than 2,000 lives.
Haiti's Radio Kiskeya said in an unconfirmed report
that at least four demonstrators were killed — three in Les Cayes, about 120
miles (193 kilometers) west of Port-au-Prince in the country's southern
peninsula, and one in the northern city of Cap-Haitien.
Martelly, a popular carnival singer, narrowly lost
a spot in a runoff election to Jude Celestin, a political unknown viewed by
supporters and detractors alike as a continuation of Preval's administration.
The U.S. Embassy criticized the preliminary results Tuesday, saying Haitian,
U.S. and other international monitors had predicted that Celestin was likely to
be eliminated in the first round.
Preval shot back at the U.S. Embassy's reproach,
saying, "The American embassy is not the (electoral council)."
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the
U.S. is not fomenting the unrest.
"The United States is in no way responsible
for the actions of any individual. What we are determined to help Haiti achieve
is a credible election and a result — not one that the United States will
impose — but one that the people of Haiti can participate in fully," he
told reporters in Washington.
Preval's administration has been condemned by many
Haitians for failing to spearhead reconstruction of the country after the
earthquake. More than an estimated 1 million people still live under tarps and
tents and little of the promised international aid from the United States and
other countries has arrived.
Preliminary election results put Celestin ahead of
Martelly by just 6,845 votes for second place. Former first lady and law
professor Mirlande Manigat took first place with 31.4 percent of the vote,
while Celestin had 22.5 percent and Martelly 21.8 percent.
The top two candidates advance to the Jan. 16
second round.
Manigat also told Haitian radio that she felt her
reported vote tally was low. Celestin's managers said before the election that
they had expected both a first-round victory and to be accused of fraud.
Thousands were disenfranchised by confusion on the
rolls, which were overstuffed with earthquake dead but lacked many living
voters. There were reported incidents of ballot-stuffing, violence and
intimidation confirmed by international observers, but U.N. peacekeepers and
the joint Organization of American States-Caribbean Community observer mission
said the problems did not invalidate the vote.
Turnout was low. Just over 1 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.
Martelly had joined with 11 other candidates,
including Manigat, to accuse Preval of trying to steal the election while polls
were still open.
An appeals period is open for the next three days,
and election observers said a third candidate might be included in the runoff
if the electoral council decides the first-round vote was close enough — though
the constitutionality of such a move would be debatable.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed
concern "about allegations of fraud" and "the acts of violence
that have taken place in the aftermath of the announcement," U.N.
spokesman Martin Nesirky said at U.N. headquarters in New York.
He said all candidates have a responsibility to
encourage their supporters to refrain from violence.
American Airlines canceled all 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. Flights
will also be canceled on Thursday.
Associated Press writers Jacob Kushner in
Port-au-Prince, Ben Fox in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Bob Burns in Washington and
Edith Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Copyright
2010 The Associated Press.
(AP
Photo/Arturo Rodriguez)
