Haiti will have to wait awhile

Looks like it will be awhile before Haiti knows the results on the election. Even with the low turn out it will take at least eight days before we know the results Ballots are being counted at polling places and tabulated at a warehouse computer center guarded by armed U.N. peacekeepers in an industrial park in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Turnout appeared to be extremely low in the capital, where voter apathy and fear of election-day violence were more common than political interest. President Rene Preval declined to comment on the turnout Sunday until official results are calculated.

U.S. Ambassador Janet Sanderson, who toured the tabulation center Monday, remarked that "Historically, off-year elections in the United States as well as in other countries tend not to be as well-attended as presidential elections. We'll have to see."

The international community gave at least $12.5 million, including $3.9 million from the United States, to help carry out the election.

Supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide — whose still-popular Fanmi Lavalas party was prohibited from running by electoral officials — had also encouraged citizens to stay away from the polls.

The party took credit for the apparently low turnout Sunday.

Voting for a 12th seat from the rural Central Department was halted by Haiti's provisional electoral council after demonstrators ransacked polling places and a poll supervisor was shot in the plateau town of Mirebalais. That race will be rescheduled.

On Monday, Haitian workers guarded by Chinese police in blue U.N. berets examined, scanned and tabulated the results reported by polling places across the country. The original ballots are archived elsewhere.

Since the Port-au-Prince facility is the only place where results are being tabulated, voters will have to wait for ballots to make hours-long journeys over Haiti's washed-out, dilapidated mountain roads and to be brought in by boat from surrounding minor islands.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission issued a statement Monday expressing its hope that the Haitian people and political parties will "await calmly the publication of results ... and that any dispute will be pursued through legal channels."