Port-au-Prince, Haiti – A spokesman for former Haitian President Rene Preval said Wednesday that unconfirmed early results showed him with a wide lead in the country’s presidential race – even though many ballots were still being carried in from remote polling places by plane, truck and mule.
The claim from Preval’s team could not be verified, and the first official results were not expected to be released until today, said Jacques Bernard, director general of Haiti’s electoral council. Final results could come Friday or Saturday, he said.
Tuesday’s elections were the first since the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in a bloody revolt two years ago, and officials said collecting and tabulating the results would take several days.
But some polling stations posted unconfirmed local results outside. These showed strong early support for Preval, a shy and soft-spoken 63-year-old agronomist widely supported by Haiti’s poor masses.
At a large polling center near the huge slum of Cite Soleil, unconfirmed results taped to large columns inside showed Preval winning about 90 percent of the votes cast there.
Across the capital in Petionville, home to many of Haiti’s wealthiest citizens as well as the poor Haitians who serve them, Preval took slightly more than 70 percent of the vote at another polling station, according to posted results.
Preval’s political adviser, Bob Manuel, said preliminary calculations show the former president having won 67 percent of the nationwide vote, with 16 percent of votes counted.
