Haiti's Next President: Michel Martelly.

You may remember Haiti. Back in January 2010 it was struck by a devastating earthquake that killed around 300,000 people. Initially the American President responded incredibly well deploying around 10,000 US troops to spearhead the relief effort. Then with the dangerous and difficult work done Obama choked and the reconstruction effort had to be delayed for eleven months while Haiti prepared for it's own Presidential election. During that time a Cholera epidemic struck the country and killed another 2000 people. When the election finally came it was a chaotic shambles that failed to produce a clear winner and a run-off vote had to be held. Amid allegations of fraud, an investigation by the Organisation of American States (OAS) and confusion over which two candidates would take part the run-off itself was delayed for a further four months.

That vote has now taken place and after another short delay the preliminary results were released on April 4th 2011. They show that Michel Martelly was the clear winner with 716,986 votes (67.7%) to Mirlande Manigat's 336,747 votes (31.74%).

These are only preliminary results because under Haitian election law there must be a 14 day challenge period for the candidates to raise any problems with the electoral commission and for the electoral commission to investigate any complaints. Although the release of the preliminary results was delayed by a couple of days the electoral commission seem to intend to stick to the original election schedule meaning that the challenge period will end on April 15th and the official results will be published on April 16th. This will allow the new President to take up office on May 16th.

While the run-off vote was certainly much better organised then the original poll there are, as with all elections, some reports that in some instances election procedure was not strictly followed. For example the results of the original poll and the names of the run-off candidates was not published in the correct government publication. Problems like these give the candidates plenty of opportunity to challenge the result and this seems to be something that Mirlande Manigat seems intent on doing. That is a shame because while technically a breach of the rules none of these problems are big enough to effect the result of the election and most certainly don't amount to fraud or vote rigging. So I think both sides should limit their challenges only to the most serious problems that could effect the result of the election because Haiti has already wasted far too much time and energy on this election and now is the time for action not arguing.