Haiti vote results contested, spark protests
PORT-AU-PRINCE: Businessman Jovenel Moise’s election as Haiti’s next president was challenged Tuesday by losing rival candidates, signaling more political upheaval in the troubled nation as sporadic protests erupted in the capital.
Violence broke out in some of Port- au- Prince’s poorest neighborhoods, which were carried by Maryse Narcisse’s Fanmi Lavalas party, against Moise, the man former president Michel Martelly chose to represent his party.
Police launched tear gas grenades to disperse a crowd of hundreds of her supporters who called the vote an ‘electoral coup’ and reacted to the advancing officers by throwing stones.
“We didn’t vote in secret. All of the working- class neighborhoods in the country... voted for Maryse, but the results they announced were an electoral coup,” said RoseMarie Rosilus.
Rosilus lives in Bel Air, a neighborhood that has historically been a bastion of former leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who heads the Lavalas party.
“We will stay out in the streets until the electoral council gives us our true results,” added Rosilus, who brought lemons to alleviate the effect of the tear gas.
There were no reports of violence elsewhere in the capital or across the country.
Moise, a 48-year- old political novice and entrepreneur who worked in agriculture mostly growing bananas, earning him the nickname ‘banana man,’ wants to lift the Caribbean country out of poverty by reviving its agricultural sector.
“We will need to mobilise all the resources of the country, as I repeated during my campaign: men, land, sun and rivers to put food on people’s plates and money in their pockets,” Moise said late Monday, shortly after the preliminary results of the first-round election were announced.
But his rivals’ challenges over the vote’s legitimacy could run those plans into the ground.
The preliminary results showed that Moise won the election outright, garnering 55.7 per cent of the vote, thus barring the need for a second round. But he lacks much popularity, with only 21 per cent of eligible voters casting their ballots.
Jude Celestin, who ran as a candidate of the opposition LAPEH and came in second with 19.52 per cent, is refusing to accept the outcome, along with fellow candidates Moise Jean- Charles (11.04 per cent) and Narcisse ( 8.99 per cent). — AFP