Candidate's warning strains Haiti vote results

HAITI: A frontrunner in Haiti's presidential election race warned outgoing President Rene Preval's government and electoral authorities on Monday to expect protests if Preval's candidate emerged among the top two vote winners in results expected .

In an atmosphere of expectation and tension, Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council is due to announce preliminary results from the troubled presidential and legislative elections held on November. 28 in the Caribbean nation.

The United Nations-supported polls were marked by voting problems, fraud allegations and sporadic violence. They went ahead as the poorest state in the Western Hemisphere was battling a raging cholera epidemic and still struggling to recover from a devastating January earthquake.

The presidential contest, involving several frontrunners out of a field of 18 candidates, is widely expected to go to a deciding second round run-off between the top two vote winners, provisionally set for Jan. 16. To win in the first round, a candidate must have more than 50 percent of the votes.

Protests surrounding last month's vote, including several in the capital Port-au-Prince led by some candidates who want the elections canceled due to alleged massive fraud, have raised doubts over whether the internationally backed elections can produce a stable new leadership in Haiti.

One of the presidential frontrunners identified by opinion polls, musician Michel Martelly, added to the strained atmosphere on Monday by warning he would not accept a result that put Preval protege Jude Celestin, a government technocrat, among the top vote winners.

"If the second round is between myself and Mr. Celestin, we will protest that, we will contest that," Martelly, a popular star of Haiti's Kompa dance music who is known as "Sweet Micky," told a news conference in Port-au-Prince.

Martelly has repeatedly accused outgoing President Preval and Celestin of trying to steal the election through fraud, hence his refusal to accept a result that puts Celestin, who is tipped to be among the frontrunners, into the run-off.

Caribbean media reports citing unofficial results have predicted a run-off between Martelly and another frontrunner, opposition matriarch and former first lady Mirlande Manigat. Port-Au-Prince, Reuters