PORT-AU-PRINCE: Protesters from different popular organisations add obstacles to a burning barricade in the capital city of Port-au-Prince yesterday. Barricades blocked major arteries in the city all day as Fanmi Lavalas partisans demand for elections results to be officially proclaimed by the Electoral Bureau.
PORT-AU-PRINCE,
Haiti (AP):
MILITANT SUPPORTERS of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide blocked downtown Port-au-Prince yesterday, setting up barricades of flaming tires and stoning passing cars to press their demands for immediate publication of last month's local and legislative elections.
"If the electoral council doesn't publish the results by 2 p.m. we'll block the country and we don't know what will happen after," grass-roots spokesman Serge Vilain said in an interview with private Radio Metropole.
The elections are considered critical to restoring democracy and suspended aid to Haiti, which has been without a Parliament since President Rene Preval dismissed legislators in January 1999 to resolve a power struggle.
Downtown stores and schools stayed shut after activists set up barricades before dawn yesterday on the national highway leading from westside Carrefour to Port-au-Prince and on a main north-south artery. Later, barricades flamed on downtown Jean-Jacques Dessalines Boule-vard.
Fire fighters and police occasionally intervened to remove the blocks, but the small mobile groups of activists rebuilt them.
Preliminary results published last month showed Aristide's Lavalas Family party winning 16 of l7 Senate seats contested May 21 and more than 20 seats in the 83-member House of Deputies.
On Tuesday, electoral official Luciano Pharaon told reporters he had sent the final results to the electoral council. Since then, no reason has been given for the delay in their publication.
More than 2 million Haitian voters -- 60 per cent of the electorate -- cast their ballots in elections that the National Council of Election Observers and the Organisation of American States Observation Mission said were acceptable despite numerous irregularities.
Nevertheless, both observer teams have criticised the method used to determine first-round senate winners -- calculating the required 50 per cent plus one vote on the basis of votes won by top contenders instead of all contenders -- as not conforming with electoral law.
That count method gave at least eight of the 17 contested seats to Aristide candidates who otherwise would have to face a second round of balloting of top contenders scheduled June 25.
The United States and United Nations supported the objections, which the provisional electoral council rejected.
Charging the elections were fraudulent and set up to favour Aristide candidates, opposition parties have called for the resignation of the electoral council. On Thursday two members of the nine-person council announced their resignations in response.
Aristide is largely favoured to sweep November presidential elections.
