Many Haitians appear as reluctant to replace their popular president as he is to leave office. Nonetheless, they are charged Sunday with electing a new leader to shore up their fragile democracy.
Constitutionally barred from succeeding himself, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide waited until Friday, the final day of campaigning, to endorse the man expected to handily win the balloting.His pick, Rene Preval, ended a three-week, lackluster campaign held under Aristide's shadow by saying he was ill and canceling a grand finale of rallies in Port-au-Prince.
The illness of the 52-year-old agronomist and onetime bakery owner may have been a ploy to avoid the possibility of violence. There has been relatively little during the campaign, but even so, a man with a knife was arrested at a Preval rally on Thursday, and leaflets scattered about the capital call him a traitor who tried to poison Aristide.
The near-certainty of Preval's victory, the lack of strong candidates and the brevity of the campaign took much of the excitement out of the election.
Campaigning also was overshadowed by demands from Aristide militants that he stay on for three years to regain the time lost in exile after military leaders ousted him. Aristide sowed confusion among his followers by appearing at times to be flirting with the idea.
His endorsement of Preval on Friday cleared the air somewhat.
"I was worried about voting, what with the rumors that Preval tried to poison Aristide," said Jean-Claude Martinel, a security guard. "But after what he (Aris-tide) said yesterday, I'm going to vote. I'll vote for Preval."
Despite the lack of enthusiasm among voters, the election is significant in that inaugural day would mark Haiti's first peaceful transition from one elected leader to another since independence from France in 1804.
"Real campaigning, free from violence, has been witnessed throughout the country," said Brian Atwood, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, in Haiti as an election observer. "These are good signs for a growing democracy."
The election also is the final test of the U.S.-led intervention that forced out military coup leaders and restored Aristide to office in October 1994 after three years in exile.
Spurred by a flood of Haitian boat people reaching Florida's shores and by the brutality of a regime that killed up to 4,000 civilians, President Clinton ordered U.S. troops to Haiti. The U.N. troops who replaced the Americans are scheduled to withdraw after the inauguration of the new president on Feb. 7.
The polls were to open for 12 hours at 6 a.m. Official results are not expected for almost two weeks.
An independent poll of 800 Port-au-Prince residents conducted Tuesday and Wednesday, published Friday, showed Preval winning with 64 percent of the vote. Independent candidate Leon Jeune, former chief of the new National Police, was a distant second with 15 percent.