South Florida Haitians Await Word On Sunday's Election
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CBS4) - South Florida's Haitian community is anxiously awaiting word as their countrymen head to the polls Sunday to wade through a crowded ballot for President and more than a hundred Senate and lower house seats.
The polling stations opened just after 6 a.m.
In the presidential race there are nineteen candidates on the ballot. Former President Rene Preval, who has already served two terms, is barred by law from running again. After winning the office twice in a landslide, thanks to supporters of his former ally, ousted former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in Preval's second term those voters branded him a traitor for not returning Aristide from exile. When the earthquake struck last January and a stunned Preval hid from sight and impatience turned to anger that has fueled anti-government protests.
The candidate of Preval's recently formed Unity party is Jude Celestin, the little-known head of the state-run construction company whose dump trucks carted many of the quake's estimated 300 thousand dead to mass graves. Some opinion polls put Mirlande Manigat, 70-year-old former first lady whose husband was helped to power and then deposed by a military junta, as a more popular contender than Celestin.
Some Aristide supporters are expected to back lawyer Jean-Henry Ceant, running on the "Love Haiti" ticket. Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party was disqualified on an unexplained technicality, sparking threats of a boycott by supporters.
The victor gets a five-year term at the helm of a disastrous economy and leadership of an increasingly angry and suffering population worn down by decades of poverty, the earthquake, a recent hurricane and now a cholera epidemic that has killed more than 1,600 people.
Also on the ballot are 96 contenders for 11 Senate seats and more than 800 more are seeking to fill the 99-seat lower house. There are local and municipal races as well.
Wyclef Jean, whose own bid for president ended with an August disqualification, was in Haiti on Sunday. Jean supporters said on Twitter that the Haitian-American singer would not be publicly endorsing anyone — a blow to any candidate hoping for a last-minute boost from his legions of young fans.
More than 4.7 million voters are registered on electoral lists. Overseeers with the United Nations and Organization of American States acknowledge that hundreds of thousands are people who died in the earthquake, while many living voters who want to participate did not receive their voter cards or were unsure where their polling places were located.
"We're looking at the best elections possible under the circumstances," OAS Assistant Secretary-General Albert Ramdin, who is in Haiti to monitor the elections, told The Associated Press. "We know that the (voter) list is not complete. We know that the list is inflated. We know that much more needed to be done to be on time in terms of training of polling station workers."
Ramdin said the OAS helped deliver 800,000 voter cards in recent days. Its 120 observers planned to visit about 40 percent of the 1,500 voting centers Sunday. Other observers include a small European Union team, a much larger group of national observers and visitors including a delegation of 12 U.S. Congress members
Preliminary results are not expected until Dec. 7, and all but the most confident supporters of individual candidates expect to see a run-off for races at all levels.
