The former kompa musician Michel Martelly has decisively won the Haitian presidential election in a runoff that was delayed after his supporters took to the streets alleging extensive fraud and intimidation in the December 2010 first round. Mr. Martelly apparently came third, but the Organization of American States (OAS) confirmed the allegations, and the purported front-runner, Jude Célestin of the ruling Unity party, was eliminated from the race. In the runoff, preliminary results show that Mr. Martelly has taken close to 68 per cent of the vote to trounce his rival Mirlande Manigat, a law professor. Distancing himself from his provocative stage persona, the new President has started off with a restrained statement of the tasks facing his country, one of the poorest in the world. He has called for political parties to work in harmony. He can expect strong support from the poor, who voted overwhelmingly for him. Haiti's problems are enormous. Nearly 700,000 people displaced by the colossal earthquake in January 2009 still live in camps; large amounts of rubble are yet to be cleared; and people living in rural areas are at risk of contracting cholera, a powerful strain of which has been brought in by U.N. Stabilisation Mission troops.
President Martelly also faces big political challenges. He may have to work with a Unity Prime Minister, as that party is likely to win both the 99-seat Chamber of Deputies and the 30-seat Senate. Even the composition of parliament is uncertain following a disputed Provisional Electoral Council move, which gave 17 seats to Unity by reversing several results. Secondly, Washington has stopped supporting brutal Caribbean dictators, but finds itself unable to stop intervening in the affairs of the region. U.S. government money for Haitian reconstruction has gone overwhelmingly to U.S. contractors — to the tune of 97.5 per cent of nearly $200 million allocated. In addition, Washington put pressure on Haiti and South Africa, where the ex-President Jean-Bertrande Aristide was in exile, to delay his return until after the election. Mr. Aristide, Haiti's first elected President and the victim of a Washington-aided coup in 2004, is now back in Port-au-Prince. He cannot contest the presidency again, but will probably have considerable influence; that could be a problem for Mr. Martelly, whose landslide win is based on a turnout reduced to 23 per cent by a ban on Mr. Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party. It is to be hoped that Mr. Martelly can rise to the challenges and give Haitians the stable democracy they badly need.
Correction: In the first paragraph a reference to a colossal earthquake in Haiti in January 2009 is made. It should be January 2010.
