Haiti Election Results Could Come By Tuesday
NEW YORK - The official results from the controversial Haiti election of Sunday, November 28th could come by next Tuesday.
That`s the word from the United Nations. United Nations officials yesterdays called on Haitians to ignore unofficial results of Sunday`s presidential and legislative elections and to wait for the official results to be announced next Tuesday, Dec. 7th by the country`s electoral council. `The Provisional Electoral Council should be granted the time and political stability needed to complete its work, the results of which will then be subject to any eventual dispute from candidates, political parties and the Haitian people through legal procedures for settling the issue,` the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) said in a news release. The statement added: `Quick counts or opinion polls are not an exact science. The population and media should not be guided by unofficial results, speculation or purported partial counts which are circulating at the moment.` The statement comes as Haiti`s ruling INITE (UNITY) party acknowledged possible defeat on Tuesday in pivotal general elections, raising hopes of a peaceful power transfer in the quake-hit and cholera-gripped nation. The two leading opposition candidates are Mirlande Manigat, a 70-year-old former first lady vying to become Haiti`s first female leader, and Michel Martelly, a 49-year-old popular singer known to the masses as `Sweet Micky.` The Haiti election has been marred by protests and some violence with several of the candidates contesting the election and their supporters charging fraud in the process and urging an annulment. On Monday Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for a speedy solution to the political crisis. He warned that worsening security would hamper efforts to fight the cholera epidemic in a country already devastated by January`s earthquake. The epidemic has killed some 1,650 people and infected over 72,000 others since it first erupted in October as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere struggles to recover from the quake, which killed 200,000 people and displaced some 1.3 million others. MINUSTAH, with nearly 12,000 military and police personnel currently deployed around the country, has been on the ground since mid-2004 after then president Jean-Bertrand Aristide went into exile amid violent unrest. The U.N. this week said it wants another $864.1 million from donors to cover the cost of the peacekeeping stabilization force in Haiti through the end of June, 2011.
However, the OAS-CARICOM electoral observation mission claims there were a few flaws in the process but not enough to urge a squashing of the election.
