Allegations Cloud Haitian Vote Count
    By Manuel Roig-Franzia
    The Washington Post

    Monday 13 February 2006

    Marmelade, Haiti - Hundreds of people marched through the streets of this remote mountain town Sunday, waving leafy bamboo shoots, banging drums and cheering to celebrate Rene Preval's lead in the Haitian presidential election.

    But allegations by a member of Haiti's electoral commission about vote-tampering roiled the capital of Port-au-Prince, where thousands protested outside the hotel where commission members have been releasing partial results since Thursday. Electoral commissioner Pierre Richard Duchemin, whose comments were broadcast widely on radio, accused the commission of manipulating the count and refusing to tell the public that Preval had 52 percent of the vote, enough to avert a runoff and take the presidency.

    "According to me, there's a certain level of manipulation," Duchemin told the Associated Press, adding that "there is an effort to stop people from asking questions" about the tabulation process.

    The slow pace of counting ballots has tipped what was seen as Haiti's most successful election ever - a huge, peaceful turnout of voters despite a chaotic start to balloting - into another volatile crisis. On Sunday, the crowd in the capital blocked streets leading to the Hotel Montana, making it nearly impossible for commission members to attend a news briefing.

    Preval, who lives in a small white stucco house on the town square here, a six-hour drive from the turmoil of the capital, remained confident that he was about to complete a remarkable political comeback after five years of retirement. But he was suspicious of the electoral commission. At one point, he stepped onto his porch, dancing across the tile floor and singing, " Yo vole vot nuo " - in lyric Creole, "They're stealing our votes."

    Marmelade pulsed with a joyous clamor throughout the day. In the town, Preval has conducted experiments in cooperative farming that he hopes to expand throughout this desperately poor nation. On Sunday, small boys blew homemade horns, women dressed in white sang spirituals and processions of gangly children followed a "baron" - a voodoo lord of the dead dressed in a burlap mask and flouncy skirt - through the streets.

    "The spirits told me, 'They're not going to run anymore,' " the baron said. "They've found a place to stay now. They're going to be amazed when they see Preval."

    Steps away, dozens of Marmelade residents, most of them poor farmers whom Preval has promised to help, jumped up and down on the town's cobblestone streets. "Don't touch Preval," they sang over and over. "If you touch Preval, you'll get burned."

    Preval, a reserved 63-year-old with a dry wit, slipped out of his house periodically, chatting reluctantly with journalists on his porch and talking on his cell phone with a finger against one ear to block the din. Accompanied by Jackito, a popular singer of the traditional Haitian music compas , he paused in the square to listen to a children's band perform the Cuban standard "Guantanamera."

    Preval has tried to develop links with Cuba, sending hundreds of young Haitians to Havana to study medicine when he was president. He hopes to expand this program, too. Preval's campaign was aimed primarily at the nation's poor: Eighty percent of Haitians live below the poverty level, making it the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

    Many of his plans - universal education in a nation where tens of thousands of children do not attend school, improved health care and daily school lunches - depend on support from international donors. He said Sunday he would try to attract more foreign investment and strive to improve the dangerous security climate in this nation, where kidnappings and street killings have discouraged tourism and private investment.

    Preval and his supporters had grown increasingly agitated with the slow pace of vote-counting after Tuesday's election. On Sunday morning, the candidate's attention was on a discrepancy on the Haitian electoral commission's Web site that showed him with 49 percent of the vote in a ledger, but 52 percent in a pie graph.

    "Jacques Bernard is lowering my figures," Preval scoffed during an interview, referring to the head of the electoral commission. "There is a problem now."

    Preval's frustration was reflected in Port-au-Prince, where his supporters have held protests over the past two days demanding that the electoral commission declare him president.

    Preval is a protege of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a fiery former Roman Catholic priest who was ousted as president two years ago following a three-week revolt and flown into exile by U.S. officials. But no one was taking about Aristide in the raucous parades that ran through Marmelade on Sunday.

    This was a day when all around Preval's home, the peasants, who adore him, were turning their eyes to the heavens and saying, "Lespwa." It is the name of Preval's political party, and it means hope.