Haitians select Moise as new president

Preliminary results show political newcomer with 55.6 percent of vote.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A political newcomer backed by Haiti’s previous elected leader easily won a presidential election redo against 26 rivals, according to preliminary results that were quickly questioned Tuesday by several losing factions.

Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council says Jovenel Moise won 55.6 percent of the votes in the Nov. 20 election, apparently avoiding a runoff. Turnout was just 21 percent.

Moise had been the leading vote-getter in the firstround of presidential balloting last year, but the official results were annulled after a Haitian commission called for the election to start over from scratch amid widespread fraud allegations.

This time, Moise, an agricultural entrepreneur and candidate of former President Michel Martelly’s Tet Kale party, led his nearest competitor by over 35 percentage points.

Moise was surrounded by jubilant, cheering supporters at a Petionville hotel after results were announced Monday. With his wife, Martine, at his side, he thanked Haiti’s citizens and all his political competitors in the deeply polarized country.

“It’s together we will change Haiti,” said Moise, whom Martelly tapped in 2015 to be his successor.

Second-place presidential candidate Jude Celestin of the Lapeh political party had 19.5 percent in the preliminary count. He led an opposition alliance and boycotted campaigning for a runoff after coming in second to Moise in last year’s scrapped results.

Celestin and the thirdand fourth-place presidential finishers said they reject the preliminary tally and will file challenges.

“We’re going to fight this. Jovenel Moise won 55.6 percent of the votes in Haiti’s presidential election, according to preliminary results. We’re asking the population to stay mobilized while we conduct the fight through the law,” Celestin said on a local radio station.

Political parties can challenge the results before Haiti’s electoral tribunal before winners are certified on Dec. 29.

The election redo was needed to restore constitutional order in Haiti, which has been led by a provisional government for nearly a year because Martelly’s mandate expired before elections could be completed.

Former Sen. Moise Jean Charles had 11 percent of the Nov. 20 vote, and the leader of the Lavalas Family party, Maryse Narcisse, had 8.9 percent.

Even before the results were announced, flaming street barricades were set up in a section of Port-auPrince, and some car windows were smashed by supporters of the Lavalas Family party, which was founded by twice-elected, twice-ousted ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

For days, Lavalas partisans have insisted that only “massive fraud” would keep Narcisse from the presidency, and they have repeatedly demonstrated in the streets of Port-auPrince despite a decree saying there could be no demonstrations until after the results were issued.

Tuesday was no different as Lavalas partisans again marched through a patchwork of downtown slums where there’s a well-worn street-protest circuit. Celestin backers also burned tire barricades in the Portau-Prince neighborhood of Delmas 60.

After the preliminary results were reported, gunshots rang out in a number of districts either in celebration or warning.

But the capital appeared relatively calm early Tuesday, though there was a heavy police presence in numerous spots and traffic was light.

Seven senators from the Lavalas party and sympathetic factions sent a letter to the electoral commission alleging excessive irregularities during the Nov. 20 vote, including voters unable to cast ballots due to the relocation of some polling centers.

Robert Maguire, a Haiti expert and professor at George Washington University, urged Haitian electoral authorities to respond “quickly, clearly and fairly” to those contesting the result.