

Haiti Electoral Council Calls for Calm, Promises Poll Results on Monday



PORT-AU-PRINCE Ė Haitiís Provisional Election Council has announced that the results of the countryís general elections last Sunday will be declared on Monday next week.



The council also called for calm as the polling data is counted, requesting both the public and political parties to wait for the final data and refrain from any actions that could exacerbate rising tensions.



Speaking at a press conference Friday, the councilís head Leopold Berlanger stressed that the council is working hard to deliver the results by Monday and is aware that people are waiting but wants to do a good job to prevent another crisis.



The political parties and candidates will have the obligation to respect the electoral decree so as not to create a fresh post electoral crisis, Berlanger added.



The statements came hours after the two presidential candidates, in letters to the council, denounced the existence of alleged irregularities inside the computing centers.



Jude Celestin of the Lapeh party urged the council to be careful in the process of scrutinizing the votes to prevent another post electoral crisis after the one witnessed in 2015.



Maryse Narcisse of the Fanmi Lavalas party alleged that many votes from the polling stations in the capitalís Cite Soleil, where she claims to be strong, have not been taken for counting.



Since Feb. 15, 2016, a provisional government led by Jocelerme Privert has been running the country following the conclusion of the term of former President Michel Martelly without the election of a successor, leading to a political crisis.



</s>PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – Haitians have chosen banana exporter Jovenel Moise as their next president, provisional results released by the election council on Monday showed, with the political novice winning a majority and avoiding a second round runoff.

Moise won 55.67 percent of the vote in the Nov. 20 election, the electoral council said, a majority that means the impoverished Caribbean nation will avoid a runoff and a political void, so long as the losing candidates do not contest the result.

“We want to salute the maturity of the Haitian people,” said Leopold Berlanger, president of the election council, which organized the vote weeks after a devastating hurricane hit the country.

The results follow a week of protests and unrest led by supporters of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas Party, which claimed victory for its candidate, Maryse Narcisse, soon after the election.

After the results, supporters of Moise danced to a band in a middle-class neighbourhood in the capital.

Earlier, Fanmi Lavalas protesters marched through various neighbourhoods, and police blocked attempts to burn tires. The result appears unlikely to quell the unrest.

The election was a repeat of a vote originally held in October 2015 that was overturned after allegations of fraud.

It was scheduled for Oct. 9, but was postponed again after the Category-4 Hurricane Matthew tore through the Caribbean nation, killing up to 1,000 people and leaving 1.4 million in need of humanitarian assistance.

Election results are slow to be released in Haiti because votes are hand counted and transported across unreliable country roads, a situation made worse by Matthew, which tore up much of the south.

Moise was the chosen successor to former President Michel Martelly, a singer. A political unknown before last year, Moise also came first in the October 2015 vote, a result that triggered protests and the claims of fraud from opponents.

Moise, 48, is a successful businessman, running a banana export company that he sees as a model for rural development. As president he will face the daunting task of reviving Haiti’s economy and rebuilding a country that was still recovering from a 2010 earthquake when the hurricane hit.

The election took place without any major security incidents. Although turnout was very low and critics charged there had been instances of fraud, electoral observers said the vote had been acceptable.

Interim president Jocelerme Privert, who took power after Martelly left without an elected successor in February, called for calm in an address before the results were released.

He also said the political uncertainty of the past year had compromised economic and political development, referring to the $55 million that Haiti spent without assistance from the international community.

“When we spend $55 million to have elections, that is 55 kilometers of roads that we cannot construct,” Privert told journalists. “That is 55 high schools that we cannot construct. That is 110 lower-grade schools that we cannot construct.”

The electoral council said 12 percent of the tally sheets were set aside because of irregularities and were not included in the count.</s>Moise, who ran for former President Michel Martelly's Bald Heads Party, won with 55.67 percent of votes cast in the Nov. 20 election, the electoral council said on Monday. The result avoids a second round run-off next year.

Police used tear gas on protesters in the La Saline neighborhood, a stronghold of Fanmi Lavalas, the leftist party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It called the results an "electoral coup."

The United States Embassy also issued reports of demonstrations, gunshots and burning tires in downtown Port-au-Prince and Malpasse, a town close to the border with the Dominican Republic.

A spokesman for the Haitian national police said it was responding to protests in La Saline but could not confirm whether protests in Malpasse had taken place.

Moise, the front-runner in a scrapped election last year, received a majority of votes, meaning there is no need for a second round.

"We salute those who voted for me and those who did not vote for me," Moise said. "We are going to use the people, the sun, the land and water to develop the country."

In the upscale suburb of Petionville, residents danced and cheered the result.

Jude Celestin, a mechanical engineer who had led a government construction firm, came in second. He received just under a fifth of the vote.

Moise Jean-Charles, a leftist senator, netted 11 percent, while Narcisse, running for Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party, won around 9 percent, the preliminary results showed.

However, turnout was low and 10 percent of sheets tallying votes were thrown out because of irregularities. In a country of 10 million people, Jovenel Moise received just 600,000 votes.

Three people on the nine-member electoral council did not sign the report declaring Moise the winner, although the council's president did not say who had abstained.

Those elements fueled a universal condemnation of the results from the losing candidates, who have 72 hours to contest before the final results are released on Dec. 29.

"We reject the results because they are invalid votes that have been counted," said Michel Andre, a lawyer for second-place finisher Celestin. "Jude Celestin will challenge the results."

Moise Jean-Charles also said on Tuesday that he would fight the results. "The outcome of the election is the result of a conspiracy by the economic oligarchy and sectors of the international community," he said.
The Haitian national electoral commission promises to release results of the highly contested elections between the candidates Jovenel Moise of the Haitian Tèt Kale Party, Maryse Narcisse of the Fanmi Lavalas and Jude Célestin of the Alternative League for Haitian Progress and Emancipation.