Haiti: A long-awaited presidential election finally happens – with a few minor hitches | Miami Herald

Haiti’s high-stakes, on-again, off-again rerun of the presidential election finally happened Sunday. Who will emerge the victor? With 27 presidential candidates and 179 others running for 16 Senate seats and 25 in the Lower Chamber of Deputies, the results won’t be known for days. But this Election Day, like the new fraud-deterrent purple indelible ink, was much improved over the last year’s — when the results were so marred by allegations of fraud that Haiti chose to rerun the contests — even with problems that included rising rivers that delayed voting at two centers in the Northeast and prevented it at two others in the Grand’Anse regions, plus ongoing rain and problems with voter registration lists. “It was a successful day,” said Leopold Berlanger, the president of the nine-member Provisional Electoral Council (CEP). “A day that unfolded in calm, serenity… and, in general, this day unfolded without violence.”