HAITI: Turnout is low for Haiti's second-round parliamentary elections.

Record ID: 867901

  • Title: HAITI: Turnout is low for Haiti's second-round parliamentary elections.
  • Date: 23rd April 2006
  • Summary: PREVAL VOTING
  • Embargoed: 8th May 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Haiti
  • City:
  • Country: Haiti
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAAQTEINRGLDJJYOA7OFN8IVZAJ
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: Haitians went to the polls on Friday (April 21) but fewer voters than hoped turned out to vote in a parliamentary election that will decide if President-elect Rene Preval has enough support to govern the troubled Caribbean nation.
    Turnout, estimated by European Union observers at between 15-20 percent, was lower than in the chaotic first round of voting in February, when Preval won Haiti's first presidential election since former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in an armed revolt two years ago.
    Preval will need supporters in parliament, and an ally in the prime minister that parliament will pick, in order to chart a course, and the one-time ally of Aristide's and champion of Haiti's poor masses had urged his supporters to vote en masse.
    Only two parliamentary races were decided in the first round, leaving 97 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 30 in the Senate to be determined in Friday's runoff.
    Polling stations were nearly empty at first in the capital Port-au-Prince. By midday lines had grown but many people were told they were in the wrong place and could not vote.
    Haiti's last parliamentary elections in 2000 were tangled in a vote-tallying dispute, paralysing the legislative body. Discord over subsequent presidential elections helped to undermine Aristide, once viewed as a hero of Haiti's fragile democracy but later accused of corruption and despotism.
    The new government faces a daunting job of restoring stability to the deeply poor nation, which has been plagued by political violence and corruption for most of its 202 years.
    United Nations (UN) troops in armoured vehicles and police were out in force.
    Police arrested an election worker for electoral fraud in Carrefour near Port-au-Prince. Three people were arrested in the southern town of Port-Salut for threatening poll workers with guns, according to police. And as many as three election-related deaths were reported but not confirmed.
    Under Haiti's constitution, the party holding at least half the seats in parliament will pick the prime minister. Final results are not expected until April 28, but no party has enough candidates in the runoff to win the required majority.
    Preval will be sworn in on May 14. He served as Haiti's president from 1996 to 2001. LATAM/JRC
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