Haiti party claims presidential win as count continues

The party of Haiti's former leader Michel Martelly attempted to cut short speculation over the result of a long-delayed presidential election, claiming victory Monday while vote-counting continued.

Martelly's PHTK declared the former president's anointed successor Jovenel Moise had won a clear majority and should be installed as president without waiting for a run-off vote in January.

Legally, only Haiti's Electoral Council can declare official results, and ballots from many areas of the poor and recently hurricane-swept Caribbean nation have yet to be counted.

But this did not deter Rudy Herivaux, PHTK spokesman, from declaring: "Candidate Jovenel Moise is president-elect of Haiti.

"We know this officially already. The country knows it. The whole world knows who is the president-elect of Haiti -- it's not a mystery."

Moise, an agricultural baron, was declared winner of the first round of voting in an earlier attempt to hold presidential elections last year, only to see the results cancelled after a ballot audit found evidence of large-scale fraud.

This year his party appears to be trying to go one better in the new poll by claiming more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round, eliminating opposition candidate Jude Celestin without the need for a second.

While this has yet to be confirmed officially, this year Celestin faced two other heavyweight figures -- popular leftist senator Moise Jean-Charles and Maryse Narcisse, spokeswoman for the party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

But Haiti must wait to find out if a split in opposition support has given Moise an early victory. The Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) is not due to report official tallies for eight days.

CEP head Leopold Berlanger warned late Sunday after polls closed that partial returns posted on the group's online tally are provisional and incomplete and should not be used to predict the result.