NEW YORK - Celebrations of Rene Preval's election as Haiti's new president could prove short-lived in the face of political restlessness and doubts about whether the international community will help heal poverty's open sores in the western hemisphere's poorest and most unequal society, analysts have warned.

Haitian president-elect Rene Preval smiles during a photo oportunity at his residence in Port-au-Prince on 17 February. Preval has launched political consultations to build a parliamentary coalition as he faces daunting challenges in the hemisphere's poorest country.(AFP/File/Roberto Schmidt)

Preval was declared the winner last Thursday after his supporters--mainly, Haiti's dispossessed--took to the streets amid allegations the interim administration had rigged the count to hold the populist former president to 48.7 percent of the vote with 90 percent of all ballots tallied--just short of the 50 percent minimum required to attain the presidency.

In the week ahead, Haiti's electoral council is expected to announce the results of a court-delayed count of votes in parliamentary elections held two weeks ago alongside the presidential contest.

Most of those races likely will not be settled without a second round of voting, analysts said. They cautioned against hopes for much-awaited democratic rule and political stability.

''Haiti's politics are not popular games,'' said Brian Concannon, director of U.S.-based rights advocates the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti.

''Those who have lost the election are already crying foul.'' he added, referring to the negotiations that led to Preval's declared victory in the Feb. 7 election.

Preval's nearest rival, Leslie Manigat, won 12 percent of the vote.

The deal struck by Preval's Lespwa (Hope) Party and the interim authorities allowed the electoral council to distribute blank ballots to all the candidates according to the proportion of their counted votes. That took Preval beyond 50 percent.

Since the agreement was not based on election rules, however, it has the potential to cast doubts upon the president-elect's legitimacy, analysts said. Preval is due to be sworn in next month.

''The deal that ended the election crisis in Haiti provides leverage for those seeking to de-legitimize Preval's presidency,'' said Concannon, a veteran Haiti-watcher and former prosecutor of crimes committed during the 1991-94 military regime, which had forced democratically-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to flee the country.

Aristide returned in 1996, completed his term, and stepped down because the constitution did not permit consecutive terms. Preval, an ally who had served as prime minister, succeeded Aristide, who subsequently won re-election in 2000 in a vote that most other parties had boycotted.

The political situation deteriorated, eventually leading to the deployment in Haiti of thousands of United Nations peacekeepers who have been dogged by allegations of partiality and whose continued presence has led some observers to wonder if the world body is more likely to help or hinder Haiti's long-term prospects.

Aristide, whom former colonial powers France and the United States had condemned as a despot, fled Haiti a second time on the morning of Feb. 29, 2004 on board a U.S.-dispatched airplane to the Central African Republic, whence he eventually went into exile in South Africa.

Aristide filed suit against the U.S. and French governments in April 2004 and has said that U.S. soldiers kidnapped him at gunpoint. The administration of President George W. Bush has denied the charge.

Soon after Aristide's ouster, a U.S.-backed interim administration was installed and the UN peacekeepers were brought in.

Human rights groups often have accused the UN troops of taking sides with the interim administration and have held them responsible for the killings of innocent civilians during shootouts in the slums of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, with militant youths believed to support Aristide.

The UN has indirectly acknowledged civilian deaths but is said to have turned a deaf ear to rights watchdogs' calls for a thorough investigation of shooting incidents involving peacekeepers and the Haitian police.

Last week, the UN Security Council authorized the 9,000-strong peacekeeping force to remain in Haiti until Aug. 15.

Some analysts suggest that while the troops might be necessary to maintain law and order, hopes for peace will remain illusive unless the international community takes steps to ensure some improvement in Haitians' standard of living.

''The UN is going to stay in Haiti for a long time,'' said Dan Erikson, a Caribbean expert at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue. ''It should be much more involved in improving healthcare and education than peacekeeping.''

Concannon, a former UN human rights expert, took a similar view but also seemed doubtful of whether the United Nations was ready to demonstrate its neutrality in a country where it is perceived as having killed political dissidents and having permitted local police to make illegal arrests.

The situation may improve somewhat with the change of administration in Port-au-Prince, he said, but the deal that resulted in Preval's victory also may have hemmed him in.

In Concannon's view, the voting crisis has succeeded in forcing Preval's energies and attention away from the economic and social development policies that he was elected to implement.

Additionally, Manigat, who placed a distant second in the presidential race, has denounced the deal by saying that the interim government and election monitors caved in to threats of violence from Preval's supporters.

Describing this as an opening for a ''manufactured political crisis,'' Concannon said he thinks that sooner or later, a growing chorus from Haiti's elite and the international community will join Manigat.

Copyright © 2006 OneWorld.net.

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