Pressure builds to resolve Haiti election impasse

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Brazil has led a push to avert violence in Haiti by urging election officials to discard ballots possibly tainted by fraud and declare former President Rene Preval the winner, diplomats and officials said.

A diplomatic source and an aide to the one-time ally of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide said 85,000 "blank votes," in which no choice was made among the 33 candidates competing in the February 7 election, had become the focus of efforts to resolve the disputed election.

The blanks, amounting to 4.7 per cent of the total, were included in accordance with the law and reduced the final percentage allocated to each candidate, helping to keep Preval below the simply majority he needed for a first-round win.

Preval's share of the vote so far stood at 48.7 per cent, triggering angry protests by his supporters and a claim by Preval of "massive fraud." Preval, opposed by the same wealthy elite that helped drive Aristide into exile two years ago, would have 51 per cent of the vote if the blanks were discarded.

"We are asking the authorities not to consider the blank votes because they are evidence of fraud," said Jacques Edouard Alexis, who served as prime minister for a time when Preval was president between 1996 and 2000.

Blank votes are a common way to register a protest vote in established democracies.

Haitians doubt so many of their countrymen really walked miles to a polling station and then waited for hours simply to cast an unmarked ballot. The United Nations, which helped oversee the election, has also acknowledged that ballot boxes could easily have been stuffed with blanks.

"The focus now is on the blank votes because nobody believes that these blank votes are real," the diplomatic source said, asking not to be identified.

The source said Brazil, which is leading the UN peacekeeping force in Haiti, and Chile were leading efforts to resolve the impasse.

- REUTERS