PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – Haiti’s government-backed candidate will withdraw from the presidential race, a party colleague said yesterday, opening the way for a solution to a destabilizing electoral dispute in the Caribbean nation.
The withdrawal of Jude Celestin, candidate for the ruling INITE coalition of outgoing Haitian President Rene Preval, would allow opposition candidate and popular musician Michel Martelly to move into a second-round run-off vote.
This was the recommendation advanced, with emphatic backing and pressure from the United Nations and western donors, by a team of experts from the Organization of American States, who challenged preliminary results from the chaotic Nov. 28 elections that put Celestin, not Martelly, in the run-off.
The OAS team cited vote tallying “irregularities.”
Martelly’s supporters rioted against the initial results last month and there were fears the electoral dispute would plunge Haiti back into political turmoil a year after a devastating earthquake. More unrest would also put at risk donor aid for the Western Hemisphere’s poorest state.
“The candidate for our party INITE, Jude Celestin, will withdraw from the presidential race to facilitate a solution to the electoral crisis,” Senator Franky Exius, a member of the ruling coalition, told Reuters.
Preval, INITE and Haiti’s electoral authorities came under intense international pressure in recent weeks to accept the OAS report, which put Martelly ahead of Celestin by mere fractions of a percentage point.
In its contested Dec. 7 preliminary results from the U.N.-backed elections, Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council put Celestin ahead of Martelly by an equally tiny margin.
With Celestin out, Martelly would square off in a decisive second-round vote against opposition matriarch Mirlande Manigat, whom the OAS experts confirmed as the winner of the first round, although she did not gain enough votes to win outright.
