Rene Preval has been declared the new president of Haiti following mass demonstrations and accusations of fraud. Well, not just accusations, but a garbage dump full of ballot boxes. So in order to prevent large legal complications that would further decrease the legitimacy of the rule of law, the interim government and electoral council decided to allow Preval’s victory by removing blank ballots from the count.

Haiti’s interim government and the electoral council have declared Ren???? Pr????val the winner of the presidential election, ending frantic negotiations to stop violent street demonstrations in the impoverished Caribbean nation.

Mr. Rene Preval
“Ren???? Pr????val has been declared the winner with 51 per cent,” said Max Mathurin, the head of Haiti’s electoral council, said early Thursday morning on the radio. “We feel a huge satisfaction at having liberated the country from a truly difficult situation.”

With 90 per cent of the ballots counted from the Feb. 7 vote, Pr????val had been slightly short of the 50 per cent margin needed to win.

But under the agreement, which was brokered by Brazil, 85,000 blank votes that had been cast were discounted, giving Pr????val a 51.15 per cent share of the vote.

The simple majority prevents a March 19 runoff election.

Wish Preval the best of luck. He’ll need it. As I’ve said many times, elections alone do not make a democracy. What Haiti needs now are strong and dependable institutions that can channel the people’s will into actionable policy. Preval will have to clean up the judiciary, fight organized crime, build infrastructure and schools, and stimulate an economy where more than 3/4 of the population lives in poverty.

When we think of countries like this, we think of Africa, the Middle East, or Asia. We don’t think of the Americas. But Haiti is a place where you’re one of the very few people who are very, very rich or you’re one of the many who are very, very poor. Only the former have all the power and have no intent on working to change the country. Preval, no matter what he wants to do, he’ll have to work with these oligarchs and convince them that it is in their interest to help him help the people. Otherwise he’s going nowhere fast.

The protests that erupted in the wake of the election was something of a people power movement, though at times violent, similar to what happened in Eastern Europe over a year ago. It could have been worse. This is a place where children are armed with semi-automatics. But the end result is that the people’s choice for president won the office and can now be judged based on what he does for Haiti in the coming years. Hopefully one day it won’t be looked at as an open wound in the Americas.