ARTICLE - DELAY OF FINAL VOTE RESULTS

FINAL HAITI VOTE RESULTS DELAYED BY TWO DAYS: SOURCES
(AFP)

PORT-AU-PRINCE — Haitian authorities have delayed until Monday definitive election results expected to confirm Michel Martelly's landslide presidential win, a government source and a UN official told AFP.

A government source close to the matter said, without expanding, that the conditions had not been fulfilled to present the results on Saturday as scheduled. The new president is due to take office May 14.

"April 18 has been chosen as the date to publish final results for the presidential and legislative elections," a senior United Nations official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The UN official explained the delay, which was requested by the Provisional Electoral Council, by saying that although the presidential win may have been a landslide, "the legislative elections, however, were very tight."

Former first lady Mirlande Manigat, the loser in the March 20 presidential run-off, has said she will not challenge preliminary results crediting Martelly with 67.57 percent of the vote against her 31.74 percent showing.

This was despite Manigat denouncing an "electoral hold-up" and declaring she was "outraged" for the country she loved.

Martelly, who was until recently a popular singer and carnival entertainer, has already begun taking steps for the transition with the office of outgoing President Rene Preval, a government official told AFP.

"The government is preparing a report on the work and activities of each ministry and these documents will be handed over to the new rulers," the official said.

The margin of Martelly's victory should mean a peaceful transition but observers warn that his hope-filled campaign, laden with big promises, has raised expectations.

The notoriously dysfunctional Caribbean nation was the poorest country in the Americas even before a January 2010 earthquake flattened Port-au-Prince and killed more than 225,000 people.

The pace of reconstruction has been glacial and a desperate populace, including hundreds of thousands of quake survivors crammed into squalid tent cities, is crying out for progress.

The return from exile of former presidents Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier has further heightened the country's instability.