ARTICLE - SOME CLAIM VICTORY

SOME CLAIM VICTORY IN HAITI EVEN THOUGH EARLY ELECTION RESULTS STILL DAYS AWAY
(Miami Herald) - By Jacqueline Charles and Trenton Daniel

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- As the final vote tally from 11,000-plus polling stations continue to trickle into a vote tabulation center in the quake-battered capital, an official says there are ways to detect fraud.

``We always do,'' Alain Gauthier, a technical advisor to the center, said.

But whether the falsified reports -- a common trick is an extra ``1'' added to the final number, which usually is more than the registered voters for a particular polling station -- would be enough to deem the elections invalid remains an exercise in progress.

As of late Monday, only 50 percent of the final reports from polling stations in the West department, which includes Port-au-Prince, were at the voting tabulation centers. Meanwhile, political camps continued doing their own numbers crunching. The Organization of American states, which led an international electoral observation mission team here along with the Caribbean community, acknowledges there were irregularities but not enough the head of its mission said to ``invalidate'' Sunday's presidential and legislative elections.

Still at least 10 presidential candidates and opposition leaders are calling for the vote to be canceled.

It has called on opposition presidential candidates to work through the electoral commission.

Candidates have said their lawyers have begun sending documentation to the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), and they are gathering information from their monitors who were supposed to be observing the vote inside the 11,181 polling stations.

A common complaint from all candidates, including those running on President René Préval's INITE (UNITY) platform, is that monitors were not allowed into polling stations and therefore could not protect their candidates' interests. Another is that many voters could not find their names on the electoral lists, and unless they had access to the Internet couldn't find out where to go vote because phone numbers provided by the CEP did not work.

``Once you have problems with the electoral lists you have problems throughout the entire system,'' said Jean-Claude Bajeux, an democracy activist who also struggled to find out where he was supposed to vote on Sunday.

But there were also more blatant allegations of voter intimidation in the southeast, burned ballots in the north and places where the vote just couldn't take place.

The CEP has said only 3.56 percent or 56 out of 1,500 voting centers around had problems. They were either set ablaze or shut down in the middle of the vote, armed thugs came in to intimidate voters or ballots were found to be pre-stuffed, or destroyed in the middle of voting.

``I don't call it fraud. Fraud is when you do something and you are trying to hide what you are doing,'' former first lady and presidential contender Mirlande Manigat said in an interview at her home. ``This was blatant. It was an operation.''

Manigat was the first among a dozen candidates asking for the vote to be canceled, accusing Préval and his coalition of trying to steal the election to benefit his pick, Célestin, the former head of the government road-building agency. She is still maintaining her position, she said, though she now wants the votes to be counted. Michel Martelly, a popular singer known as Sweet Micky, is also calling for the votes to be counted -- a switch from Sunday when he supported the call for cancellation.

``We have to wait to see what the results give,'' said Manigat who said there are rumors circulating that not only will she be in a runoff but her competitor may not even be Célestin but Michel Martelly, a popular musician known as Sweet Micky.

``Will they eliminate Jude Célestin, or would he naturally not make it?''

But supporters of Célestin, who has remained quiet throughout the crisis but has asked supporters to not take the streets, believe he will emerge a winner.

On Monday, in the northwest city of Gonaives, a group of INITE supporters showed up at polling sites to jot down election results taped to the precinct walls. They did so under the order of the local INITE coordinator to verify the results against the CEP's, a monitor said.

``That's in case we have a problem,'' Gaudhy Desir, 25, said.

Under electoral rules, a copy of the final election results for each polling station is left at the voting centers, and the top two vote getters in each race also receive a copy of the final report.

As a result the presidential camps have been doing their own numbers crunching.

Gauthier, the advisor at the voting tabulation center in Port-au-Prince, said while about 1,000 vote reports are being treated each hour, the results won't even get an official analysis before Dec. 6. The provisional results, are expected to be released the following day.

For now, the reports are carefully being inspected for tampering and irregularities by both workers and electoral council lawyers.