Good news. Anyone connected with marmalade can't be all bad.
(N.B. "Marmelade" is the French spelling. French is the language of Haiti.)
From a Yahoo! AP article, Delays Slow Haiti Vote :
Delays Slow Haiti Vote Count By JOSEPH B. FRAZIER, Associated Press Writer [/] Thu Feb 9, 4:41 AM ET
MARMELADE, Haiti - A former president with strong support among Haiti's poor has taken an early lead two days after Haitians turned out in droves to elect a new leader, an aide to the candidate said, citing preliminary returns.
But delays in retrieving results from countryside slowed official vote counting, with ballot counts still being ferried to the capital on Wednesday by plane, truck and mule. Jacques Bernard, director general of Haiti's electoral council, said only a small percentage of balloting results had reached Port-au-Prince.
[…] But some polling stations posted unconfirmed local results outside. These showed strong early support for another former president, 63-year-old agronomist Rene Preval.
Preval's political adviser, Bob Manuel, said preliminary calculations showed the candidate having won 67 percent of the nationwide vote, with 16 percent of votes counted.
Preval, who is widely supported by Haiti's poor masses, was the front-runner among 33 presidential candidates. Shy and soft-spoken, Preval is the only elected leader in Haitian history to finish his term. He's also a former ally of Aristide, who remains in exile in South Africa.
[…] If no candidate wins a majority, a runoff between the top two vote-getters will be held March 19.
Although the claim of Preval's lead by his team couldn't be verified, early results posted at polling stations showed the candidate leading his opponents. At a large polling center near the huge slum of Cite Soleil, unconfirmed results taped to large columns inside showed Preval winning about 90 percent of the votes cast there.
Across the city in Petionville, home to many of Haiti's wealthiest citizens as well the poor Haitians who serve them, Preval took slightly more than 70 percent of the vote at a polling station, according to posted results.
Preval, in his rural hometown of Marmelade, emerged from his family home once on Wednesday, briefly dancing along to a band playing outside and waving to supporters. He didn't speak to reporters.
[…] The elections have been deemed vital to avoiding a political and economic meltdown in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation. In the aftermath of Aristide's ouster, gangs went on a kidnapping spree and many factories closed because of security problems and a shortage of foreign investment.
Associated Press writers Michael Norton, Andrew Selsky and Stevenson Jacobs in Port-au-Prince contributed to this report. [My ellipses and emphasis]
