Michel Martelly, a carnival singer with a colorful past who seized the mantle of change, is Haiti’s new president after storming to a landslide victory, preliminary results showed.
The 50-year-old faces the huge challenge of rebuilding the Caribbean nation, which was the poorest country in the Americas even before an earthquake in January last year flattened the capital, Port-au-Prince, and killed more than 225,000 people.
Martelly, with 67.57 percent of the vote, ended the dreams of former first lady Mirlande Manigat, who was vying to become Haiti’s first democratically elected female leader, but finished with a disappointing 31.74 percent showing.
The results, released late on Monday by the electoral commission, are not final because a period of legal complaints must be observed until April 16, but with such a large margin, Martelly’s victory seems all but assured.
His supporters engaged in peaceful celebrations on the streets of the capital’s Petionville area, though the US embassy reported gunfire from the festivities and urged its citizens to “stay indoors and avoid large crowds for tonight.”
Washington hailed the election results as an “important milestone” and urged Haitians to keep their demonstrations peaceful as the process moves forward.
It was an amazing turnaround for “Sweet Micky,” who was knocked out of the race in December only to be reinstated a month later after international monitors found massive fraud in favor of the ruling party candidate.
The bawdy entertainer was previously known for stripping and for ridiculing the government in satirical stage performances.
However, trading skirts for tailored suits, he led a slick campaign that succeeded in capturing the imagination of Haiti’s urban youth, the main voting block in a country where the average age is just 21.
He should now take office on May 14, after Haitian President Rene Preval, who has served the maximum of two terms allowed by Haiti’s Constitution, steps down.
Martelly has promised to tackle head-on Haiti’s institutional failings and counter its dependency on non-governmental organization handouts. He has also indicated he is eager to bring back the military, disbanded in 1995 after a history of coups and abuse.
More than 14 months after the earthquake, hundreds of thousands of survivors subsist in squalid tent cities, unemployment hovers around 50 percent and three in four Haitians live on less than US$2 a day.
After a perpetual cycle of political upheaval and natural disaster, the country of 10 million desperately needs to build viable institutions if it is to pull significant numbers out of poverty.
The international community, which pledged about US$10 billion in aid to help Haiti rebuild after the quake, has been reluctant to untie the purse strings until a peaceful transition of political power takes place.
November’s first round vote descended into farce as most of the 19 candidates demanded a new election before polls closed, accusing the ruling Unity party, Preval and the election commission of rigging the vote.
At least five people were killed in December after Martelly was adjudged to have finished third behind Manigat and ruling party candidate Jude Celestin, meaning he had not made the run-off.
After weeks of US-led pressure and a review by international monitors, Martelly was reinstated at the expense of Celestin, seen as Preval’s handpicked successor.
There had been calls to postpone the first round after Haiti’s first cholera outbreak in more than a century erupted in mid-October, prompting deadly riots targeting UN peacekeepers blamed for bringing in the disease.
Almost 4,800 people have since died, and with charities warning of an uptick in cases following heavy rainfall late last month, the health crisis will be one of the most -pressing problems facing Martelly.
Election squabbles were overshadowed in January by the shock return of former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, who is now under house arrest facing a slew of charges linked to his repressive 15-year rule.
And then, just three days before the crucial March 20 run-off, Haiti’s first democratically elected leader, former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, returned from exile in South Africa.
Aristide, a shantytown priest who rose to power as a champion of Haiti’s predominantly Catholic poor, could have affected the result if he had endorsed one of the candidates.
As it turned out, he honored a commitment not to upset the delicate political balance, but the presence of two giants of Haiti’s scarred past is a potential powder keg for Martelly.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing