ARTICLE - RECOUNT PLANNED

RECOUNT PLANNED FOR TOP VOTE-GETTERS IN HAITI ELECTION
(Bellingham Herald) - By Jacqueline Charles - McClatchy Newspapers

PORT-AU-PRINCE - Haitian elections officials said Thursday they will review the tallies of the top three vote-getters in last week's presidential elections under the watchful eyes of both Haitian and foreign observers.

The Provisional Electoral Council said after reviewing the tallies assigned to Mirlande Manigat, Jude Celestin and Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly for irregularities, it might ask for a vote recount.

The three leading candidates will be allowed to be present for the review.

While the audit is going, Gaillot Dorsinvil, president of the council, urged the candidates to join electoral institutions in an appeal for calm.

Since preliminary results that placed Manigat and Celestin in a runoff election but left Martelly out despite being a fraction between Celestin in the voting were released Tuesday night, protesters have paralyzed the capital with demonstrations, set fires and barricaded the streets.

Frantz Lerebours, Haitian National Police, spokesman, said Thursday that one person was killed the day before in Les Cayes, a seaside city in the southwest, as a mob tried to burn a local election office. In the north, in Cap-Haitien, gangs clashed but no deaths were reported, Lerebours said.

Clashes and shooting were reported Thursday afternoon on the Champs de Mars in the capital and protesters staged a march from Delmas up to the hills of Petionville, where the day before demonstrators blocked the road leading to Haitian President Rene Preval's private residence.

So far most of the demonstrators have been anti-government or pro-Martelly, but Preval supporters also took to the streets Thursday, especially in Bel-Air, a slum not far from the crumbled presidential palace.

Opposition candidates, meanwhile, continued to call for the elections to be voided, contending "massive fraud."

"Are there really votes? Or stuffed ballots?" said Charles-Henri Baker, a presidential candidate. "These questions still exist."

Baker, an industrialist who finished sixth according to preliminary results, also wanted to know why only three candidates' tallies would be reviewed.

"They should invite everybody to participate," Baker said. "We all have questions."

Sen. Joseph Lambert, the national coordinator for Preval's INITE (UNITY) coalition, said he welcomed the commission's decision but he wants it to go further.

Thousands of votes for Celestin, he said, were cast aside and not included in the final tally when they should have been. "Jude won a massive amount of the popular vote, and I want to see the international community say he didn't," he said.

Lambert said the INITE coalition will officially contest the results Friday.

INITE has been accused of engineering widespread fraud to put Celestin - Preval's hand-picked candidate - in office. A report by a human rights group accused partisans of stuffing ballots and intimidating voters - but it also pointed out that other political parties also sought to steal the vote.

Critics contend INITE ran a lackluster campaign, and question whether Celestin would have been able to garner high votes in the face of Preval's falling popularity since the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake left an estimated 300,000 dead and 1.5 million underneath tents and tarps.

Some had hoped that the elections council announcement would temper the anger and rage of Haitians following the announcement of the preliminary results. Instead, there were reports of shootings in the Champs de Mars, a public plaza turned homeless camp for quake victims in front of the palace. At least one INITE supporter was reportedly killed.

Other held their breath, hoping that the violence wouldn't escalate into an open confrontation between Martelly and INITE supporters.

Although Preval has appealed to his supporters to stay calm, groups were beginning to mobilize to hit the streets.

"We will go out peacefully to give a political response to what has been a musical act," said Rene Momplaisir, a grassroots militant leader from the shantytowns and a Preval supporter. "Micky needs to understand politics is not music."

Momplaisir, who was tapped by Preval early in his administration to bring peace with warring gangs in the slums, said as far as Celestin and INITE supporters are concerned, the former head of the government road building agency won the vote. In addition to Celestin, the coalition ran 103 candidates for 110 legislative seats.

"They have nothing to hate Jude for," Momplaisir said, referring to the burning of Celestin's photos and headquarters during the protests. "He is not a politician. The team picked him because of his intelligence, and work ethic. The country needs someone who can work."

(Staff writer Trenton Daniel contributed to this report.)