‘Sweet Micky’ wins Haiti’s presidential runoff

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – A controversial carnival singer who reinvented himself as a polished political outsider is poised to become Haiti’s next president, according to preliminary election results announced Monday.

Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly garnered 67 percent of the vote to 31 percent for longtime opposition leader and former first lady Mirlande Manigat, the Provisional Electoral Council said.

The announcement was greeted with fireworks as fans spontaneously paraded in the streets carrying Martelly’s pink posters and beeping their car horns.

Supporters ran in front of elections headquarters singing, “Martelly, the country is for you. Do what you like with it.”

But while Martelly, 50, won with a 2-1 margin, the results will likely be challenged by Manigat, 70, before they are certified.

After McClatchy Newspapers first reported the results Monday, Manigat’s campaign sent a letter to the justice minister accusing Electoral Council President Gaillot Dorsinvil of influencing the results during a Sunday night visit to the vote tabulation center.

Even with the challenge, Haiti’s streets remained free of the violence the international community had feared if Martelly had lost. Although there had been a perception for weeks that Martelly would be declared the winner, his campaign was unsure of the outcome even as advisers put him through governance tutorial courses and met to map out the transition.

The news of Martelly’s win was met with cheers and disbelief by Haitians here and abroad who witnessed his presidential bid, a well-financed modern campaign complete with foreign consultants and live Twitter and Internet feeds.

For some, the victory is a “rupture” with the last 25 years that have governed Haiti after the fall of the 29-year Duvalier family dictatorship. Others see more of the same as a political novice leads a nation struggling to dig out from the devastation of the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake, deal with a deadly cholera outbreak and drastically improve conditions for the country’s 10 million citizens.

“While Martelly is indeed a new leader, the structure of economic power remains the same and the old problems have not disappeared. In fact, the key players of yesterday have not vanished” said Robert Fatton, a Haiti expert at the University of Virginia who has been following the elections since last year. “Despite his dramatic eruption, Martelly may well be a case of ‘old wine in a new bottle,’ but time will tell.’ ”